Sustainability: The New Gay Cowboy 
By  James Ehlers

Personally, I think I still look better in black no matter what the new color is that year so I tend not to get too caught up in what might be fashionable. In fact, I am not sure if my wife realized I wore the same clothes every day all week that she would have married me. Good thing we only dated once a week. 

Fashion, of course, extends far beyond clothes, penetrating the lexicons of nearly every field — even environmentalism and pop culture. Today, and to be fair for a bit now, "sustainability" is and has been in vogue. I think this, more or less, is a good thing. I mean really, who wants to be "unsustainable" in any aspect of their lives? Sustainable is much better than withering or expiring, I think. 

Like the word "awesome," however, any word can be overused to such an extent that its meaning becomes diluted or, worse, that its commonality deceives us from recognizing something that truly fits the word’s actual connotation. A few moments in the company of teenage girls can usually redefine or dilute the word "awesome" for most of us. 

"Sustainability" in government, enviro- and corporate- speak, is fast approaching awesome proportions. 

Have you ever googled "sustainable" and "Vermont," for example? Try it. Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Institute for Sustainable Communities, Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative, Vermont Sustainable Exchange, Vermont Sustainable Architecture, Vermont Sustainable Design … You get the idea. The list of entries goes on. 

With all this focus on "sustainable," though, I am getting a little concerned. Shouldn’t we be prospering? Would it be worse if there weren’t all those entries featuring "Vermont" and "sustainable" in the Google search? A way of life couldn’t be reduced to just a trend, like a autumn outfit, could it? Certainly, no one of us would consider our lack of new private sector job opportunities, layoffs from current jobs, rising taxes of all flavors, deteriorating water quality, failing farms, impending utility rate increases, spiraling budget shortfalls, and the mounting unfunded teacher and state employees’ pension and benefits liability sustainable. 

It befuddles me then why we turn to initiatives such as wind and solar energy, farming, "cow power," and "the creative economy" to turn the tide. I don’t see how anything truly sustainable could require subsidy — all of which the previously mentioned do. By definition, sustainable should be self-sufficient; otherwise we might be experiencing an awesome corruption of the word’s connotation. It does not seem sustainable to me that we could afford to underwrite yet other endeavors when we still have not figured out how to pay for the ones we have already undertaken. If sustainability is personified as "living simply," we sure are complicating matters for ourselves. 

Ironically, with all the calls for sustainability, the only engine powering the "living simply" philosophy is the act of simply living in the face of economic deprivation. All the data regarding consumption of resources the past year indicate as much. It would appear we turn to sustainability only when faced with unsustainability, rhetoric aside. And if we continue to funnel state funds into fairy tales, the worse is yet to come. 

Fortunately, a new year is on the horizon, an election year no less, and if we are serious about practicing what we preach, we will resist fads, and return to only truly sustainable ethics: hard work, sacrifice, and frugality. A generation or more spent fawning over the odd, the whimsical, the self-centered, and the impractical has left us and our children in a precarious position. No time to amuse ourselves with penguins or cowboys, double denim or leather, the pixie crop or milkmaid braids, fresh leaves or burnt sienna. It appears reality is going to be the new reality. Perhaps my outfits of the week may catch on. 

James Ehlers is the publisher emeritus of Elk Publishing, Inc. and the founder of Livin’ Magazine.