On the subject of sustainability...

SUSTAINABILITY

noun

1. The ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. 
2. Environmental Science: The quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance: The committee is developing sustainability standards for products that use energy.

 

The other day I found myself trying to explain the idea of sustainable cruising to someone and found the process a lot more complicated than expected. It is really a very simple concept and not complicated at all. Basically, sustainable cruising is simply just living within our means.

Simple right?

In hindsight, I've come around to the idea that maybe it's not all that simple. As it happens, the majority of folks I know actually don't live within their means or, to be more precise, are so close to the edge that any unforeseen dip in their income puts them into unsustainable territory.

Worse, it's not just a large percentage of individuals living in an unsustainable manner but the cities, states, and countries that they live in are also not working in a sustainable fashion. Even the world we live in is being run in a way that, considering it has finite resources but an ever-increasing population and demand on those resources, works on the premise that we can somehow continue population and economic growth forever without adverse effect.

So, considering that most everyone on the planet is not living within their means, it sorta/kinda makes the whole concept of sustainability something of a foreign concept to a lot of folks and yes, Dear Reader, a lot of those folks are interested in boats and cruising.

Which, I guess, also has a lot to do with not everyone quite getting the whole VolksCruiser concept which is really just about getting a boat and cruising off into the sunset in a sustainable fashion.

Some more on the subject soon come...

Speaking of sustainability...