Sustainability = Living Within the Renewable Cycle

We often use the term "Sustainable & Renewable" without much thought and thinking aloud lately, I wondered what it meant philosophically.

As we are all aware, nothing on Earth is new; everything that existed now had existed in its absolute content quantum, its form may have changed and its content remained conserved just as energy and matter are.

The Law of the Conversation of Matter and Energy states that Energy and Matter cannot be destroyed; they can only be transformed as succinctly expressed by Albert Einstein's E=mc2.

This being the case, we ought not to run out of resources, but the empirical evidence is that we do, and always too.

Take the case of drinking water.

The next time you take a drink, think for a while, it may have been someone's urine and after you have drank it, it may come back as clean recycled fresh water in someone else glass.

How? You may ask.

Well, thanks to the Hydrological Cycle (one of the many major cycles that recycle Earth's resources: the Nitrogen Cycle, the Carbon Cycle etc).

Scientist believe that the quantum of water on Earth has been fixed during the Jurassic Period and there are no new water; just fresh recycled water, compliments from the Sun.

Used water evaporated under the power of the Sun to form clouds that fall as precipitation: rain, snow, hail etc that fills up rivers and get treated to become potable water for us.

Conceptually, we ought not to run out of fossil fuel too, but the reality is because unlike water, the recycling gestation period of oil is not in a matter of weeks, months, years, decades or centuries but eons!

Therefore, when we run out of clean potable water, let us realize that this ought not be the case because the Recycling Cycle is within Renewability; it is our abuse and/or overuse that pushes it beyond its sustainability.

As Gandhi puts it, "The world has enough resources to satisfy our needs; never our greed".

So, use resources wisely and judiciously, always within its renewability cycle so as to remain sustainable, for our sake, our children' sake and our children' children' sake.