Too Much Sustainability Isn’t Sustainable

Reader Contribution by Staff
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Are you feeling guilty about the environmental impact of your life? Are you having trouble reconciling your ideals for sustainability and the realities of making it happen around you? I have a personal story that might bring wisdom, perspective and relief to your plight.

I was 7 years old when I first became aware of pollution and I found it an ugly, evil and horrifying thing. The specter of environmental degradation was never far from my concerns as I grew up, either. So much so, that when I was 12 years old, I remember thinking to myself that I would gladly give up my life and die as a sacrifice, if such a thing would rid the world of the ugliness of pollution.  When I chose to build a life of rural self-reliance and sustainability on my property on Manitoulin Island in 1985, I was 22 years old, and my plan was to build a home and life that would never contribute one iota to the degradation of the earth that I loved so much. This was my ideal coming into the venture, but something unexpected always kept getting in the way.

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