Our experience suggests that, at worst, it is a rather vague notion that has something to do with the consumption of resources.
Instead of relying on an ever greater consumption of resources to generate growth, Brown says mankind needs to move to a fairer, more sustainable model.
Such an approach is considered green, or environmentally friendly, because it reduces the consumption of resources while holding down pollution added to land, air and water.
Sheer numbers and the rapacious consumption of resources, he predicted glumly, would condemn the human species to the same fate as the smallpox virus.
However, closed loop management of resources highlights a route towards sustainability, and allows us to measure the grade of sustainability from different choices, based on whether or not we are able to avoid the consumption of resources.
But this idyllic spot may soon be a thing of the past, with the threat of Bali – population 3.5 million – changing beyond recognition, a prey to the accumulated effects of mass tourism, unbridled consumption of resources and environmental collapse.
Collectors are tumbling over one another to rate contemporary art higher and higher, in a frenzy that feels religious — the market as a medieval cathedral under construction, whose consumption of resources declares the priority of immaterial belief over practical needs.
A few months before her disappearance, Hannah and a friend had gone to a meeting for "freegans," a group that tries to minimize its consumption of resources, and they'd visited grocery stores on the Upper East Side, collecting discarded food.
