Okay heres the problem with being capitalist (or communist, socialist, or anything else that exists on a large scale today) AND talking about sustainability.

You just cant have your cake and eat it too.

Overarching all things in our world is the dominant ideology of profit. Nothing will ever get done unless it makes money.  

Case closed.

But you may say that there are things that have a positive outcome and generate profit.  You probably are right, but in the end the waste way outweighs any benefit from benevolent moneymaking.

Here's why.

In money structures, if supply goes up, prices go down, if things are scarce, prices go up. That is to say that making things abundant is a negative thing in a money system.  Don't believe it, go buy a diamond.  They aren't rare at all, but when one company owns 90% of the mines, they can make it as rare as they want. Thus charging whatever they want.

The whole point of sustainability in terms of energy is to make the energy produced for clean sources so abundant that we would have no use for anything else.  That would be terrible for profits.  They would plummet like the Hindenburg.

So that will never happen ever...

But energy is such a small part of our problem.  What about the endless stream of garbage we produce?  The run off of rivers that create dead zones in the oceans and rivers themselves? Oil spills, and not just the accidental ones. (yes there have been many intentional ones too) The dumping of chemical waste in rivers, lakes and oceans and all of the other real pollutants.  You know, the ones that we KNOW we are causing.  Why do we do this? its simple, it is cheaper that way.  How much profit would they make if they had to properly dispose of things in a safe way? Umm try negative profit...

What about planned obsolescence? Everything that you can buy was made to break in a reasonable amount of time. Most electronics have a useful life of 6 months.  Thats funny because most circuitry has no moving parts, so whats breaking? Well, being that most people have absolutely no knowledge on anything scientific or skilled trades (over 70% of people are employed by the service industry),  All they have to do is make one resistor in the circuit that degrades over time as a current runs through it. At a certain point after a mathematically defined amount of time, the resistor no longer conducts at all, and what you have is a coffee machine/ cell phone/ computer/ etc that will never work again.  Don't believe it?  Then why do we have a multi-billion dollar auto service industry?  Certainly things break, but do they need to break this often?

They don't. period.

If they break, you have to buy more, and ultimately, that's the goal.  To keep us all cyclically consuming every day.  It can almost be thought of as a hidden tax.  Everyone that reads this has seen something that is relatively new, has never been dropped/ mistreated break for no apparent reason.

Same thing with fuels.  We have had the ability to make transportation without fuels a reality for along time, but its not gonna happen.  Thats why the things they really push for are hydrogen power, bio fuels, flexible fuel tanks, hybrids, etc.  They want to make sure that, no matter what, you are buying something at a minimum of every week.  When you get right down to it though, there is almost nothing sustainable about personal transportation anyway, even, albeit to a lesser extent, EV's.  Trains are the only way to go and in the USA we had 'em for many years, but good ol' GM and Ford and Chrysler did everything they could to buy 'em up and tear 'em up.

As long as there is money, we need to stop the sustainability debate. You cannot have both ever.  It just doesn't make ANY sense at all ever in a million years never ever ever. ever.

So you still wanna talk sustainability?

Start here.

1. Generate sufficient power from clean sources.

2. Eliminate all jobs through automation.

3. Any remaining jobs (service industry) will be eliminated with the subsequent fall of the monetary structure.

4. Destroy the profit structure, it is outdated and irrelevant.

5. tear down our cities and build new ones, of course with automation. This is not a far fetched idea to build structures with automation. In fact, it is already completely possible.

6. Eliminate roads, tear em up, recycle em. Recycle the cars
while you are at it, we have no need for them where we are going.

7. Recycle most of the airplanes too.  They are outdated too.

8. Replace the entire transportation with the ET3.  This is a high speed maglev train that travels through an evacuated tube. No rolling resistance, no air resistance. Goes 4000 MPH, uses 2% of the energy it would take an airplane to go the same distance. Can run on solar/ geothermal/ whatever. No batteries.  Forget everything else.

9. Eliminate gov't/ police/ military. Again outdated institutions that do little outside of their own self-preservation.

10. Eliminate religion.  Another outdated useless institution. I mean all of them.

11. Use this new system of automation and transportation to make everything anybody needs free for the taking. NOT ONE PERSON EXCLUDED.  There would be no reason for crime or war or anything else.  Build everything with machines to the highest standard technologically available.  Build everything with recycleability in mind.  Without money, there is no need for shoddy craftsmanship or corner cutting.

Its not perfect, it just better.

Oh, I forgot to add... make one single law.

Everybody must be in school at all times.  Obviously this would require a complete face lift from the way we currently educate, but there is no point in making this system if the people in it are not going to have the capacity to think critically.