Progress Toward Sustainability: A Report Card

• Author: Contributing Authors
• Pages: 15-26

CHAPTER 2

Progress Toward Sustainability: A Report

Card

The Contributing Authors

America is approaching a tipping point on sustainability. We are

recognizing that environmental problems also limit economic oppor-

tunity, job creation, and social well-being, and even compromise our

national security. While there continue to be holdouts who view

greenhouse gas emissions, loss of biodiversity, toxic chemicals,

sprawl, and other environmental problems as “merely environmen-

tal,” their number and influence is shrinking. It is also increasingly ev-

ident that we can build a more robust economy, improve national se-

curity, and create good new jobs by protecting and restoring the envi-

ronment. We are near the point where it will be impossible to take ac-

tion of consequence—whether it be in economic policy, education,

foreign relations, environment, or even the war on terrorism—without

this broader and deeper perspective on sustainability.

All of that said, the United States is not on the verge of actually be-

coming sustainable. Far from it. Since 2002, we have most often

moved in the wrong direction—toward greater consumption of en-

ergy,materials, land, and other resources, and more negative environ-

mental impacts, with damaging social, economic, and security conse-

quences. But we are at least reaching a point where decisionmakers

understand issues within a sustainability framework, and understand

why that perspective is both attractive and necessary.

The pace, scope, and intensity of sustainable development activity

has increased in the United States since 2002. At that time, in “virtu-

ally every area of American life, a few people and organizations [were]

exercising leadership for sustainability.”1The number of such people

and organizations, in both public and private sectors, has greatly in-

creased since that time. Their activities are increasing in confidence

and sophistication, they are achieving positive and attractive results,

and these results are encouraging others to imitate and improve on

what they have accomplished. They are also asking better questions,

and providing better answers, on what it means to be truly sustainable.

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