NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:The past and future of sustainable living

The five nations of the Iroquois, a group of Native Americans who lived in the eastern seaboard, adopted a constitution and laws hundreds of years before Columbus arrived. One of the laws of the Great Iroquois Confederacy stated that they must consider the impact of every decision on the next seven generations.

To put some perspective on what seven generations means, we can look at the lives of our seventh-generation ancestors.

My colonial ancestors were mainly farmers. They fought in the Revolutionary War and cleared land to grow corn and tobacco. They ate and wore what they grew on their farms and what they hunted. In contrast to today’s society their mottoes were “make do” and “waste not, want not.”

Back then, the United States was a wilderness to be explored and conquered. The population of our entire country in 1790 was less than four million people. Not only has the population of the U.S. grown enormously over the past seven generations, but we have radically changed our way of living. Most of those changes were improvements, but not all. One thing that we have lost is our connection to the land.

Over the past seven generations, Orange County has filled to overflowing. And yet more people arrive every day. We will be doing well if we can sustain the number of people who are living here now.

The Native Americans who lived in this area survived on what they found here, supplemented by trade for obsidian, soapstone and other needs of that era. Now we are dependent on a vast supply system that brings our food and water from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

The world has certainly changed. What will we do if the population of Orange County doubles again and yet again? With a world population nearing seven billion people, earth’s resources won’t stretch far enough to comfortably provide water, food, and fuel for everyone the way we use those resources now.

What we need is a paradigm shift in thinking about how we live. We need a change from our fundamental views of how we eat, drive, and shop.

Fortunately, we’re seeing more and more news about sustainable living.

Ghandi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” We certainly don’t want to tout ourselves as shining examples of environmentalism, because there are many people out there who are better at this than we are. Vic and I, though, are making an even greater effort to eat sustainably grown foods.

We certainly don’t want to go back to the days of yesteryear. It isn’t necessary to give up good living to practice an environmentally sound lifestyle. However, we’re all going to need to live lightly on the land if we are to sustain planet Earth long enough for another seven generations.