What do we mean by “Green” and “Sustainable”?

A writer and friend Kate Cahow recently wrote:   

Today, we face the most critical environmental and energy challenges our times. Finding a way to live in harmony with our precious world is no longer just a lifestyle choice, it is a necessity.

The terms “green” and “sustainable” have recently become part of a vernacular that recognizes the huge impact we humans have on our collective home, planet Earth. For those who embrace green and sustainable principles, these terms represent a departure from “business as usual,” and a commitment to living in harmony with our environment.

As we can find in Wikipedia or other sources defining “sustainable“, it basically means an acitivity, product, technique or life style that can be sustained over time at minimal cost to the environment or to the human-plant-animal-land-water-air ecosystem of that environment. “Sustainable” often means giving back as much or more than is taken. Mountain-top removal for mining coal is not sustainable. Solar power is sustainable. Perhaps nuclear power would be sustainable if safe, low-impact, ecologically-sounds mining methods could be developed, as well as long-term, demonstrably-safe storage or, better still, utilization of nuclear waste.

“Sustainable“, above all, is a mind-set that values being conscious of how a human activity affects the immediate and extended environments over time and being intentional about minimizing negative effects and maximizing positive ones.

Practically speaking, “sustainable” means, “Can I keep doing this for a long time without messing in my own nest or someone else’s?

Using every part of a buffalo, killing only those animals necessary for the community was sustainable activity practiced by the Lakota, the Commanche, the Blackfoot.  Killing millions for horns, hide or “sport” was not sustainable.

Your great-grandparents’ organic (there were no aritficial fertilizers or insecticides) garden was sustainable, so long as they did not over-plant and knew to “rest” the land. Agri-business is not sustainable.

“Green” means an activity, product, technique or lifestyle that harmonizes with the natural world, helping keep the environment and its ecosystems naturally healthy.  “Green” means less, if any, pollution or other negative effects on the envrionment.  Proper ditching and “crowning” of a road is environmentally-friendly and, therefore, “green”. Running a drive or road straight up a mountainside is not “green”; the rapid run-off and erosion of banks and the road itself are obviously “not green”.

It is amazing how the obvious is so often overlooked. This is precisely why we and countless others are trying to raise consciousness about the necessity of a commitment to “green” and “sustainable”.

This “committment to living in harmony with our environment” that Kahow promotes is one that she and her husband Richard McDonald, PhD., entomologist, have lived for years at their home in the High Country community of Sugar Grove, NC, just outside of Boone. Go to the link on our website to see their “Green” Property in the Blue Ridge which is for sale, as they move toward downsizing.

Many people have followed in the footsteps of the likes of Rachel Carson, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Chief Seattle and Wendell Berry in honoring creation by living in harmony with it.  Kahow-McDonald are, as many Americans, modestly in that great stream of awakening. Their home, organic garden, passive-solar home features, strategically-placed shade, radiant-floor heating, high-efficiency wood stove, soalr panels that track the sun, minimal grass to cut and on-demand water heaters reflect their commitment. Their extremely low electric bills and Dr. McDonald’s effective bio-control of the hemlock woolly adelgid problem on their property’s hemlocks underscores this commitment. (The hemlock woolly adelgid has devastated old-gowth hemlocks and is rampant throughout the Southern Appalachians. Dr. McDonald is at the forefront of bio-control in this region.)

We commend Dick and Kate for their green values and the sustainable life style that is exhibited in this property that they will pass on to someone else with similar values.