It was heartening to see all the earnest and brilliant testimonies to sustainability from young readers in your Xpress Earth Day issue [April 19]. However, I didn’t see any of them talking about the elephant, the dinosaur and the blue whale in the room: economic development and growth. One need only look at the shattered stands of trees resulting from building motels, strip malls and big-box stores. Because of this, the word sustainable has become a front word disguising ever more development, ever more environmental atrocity. Until that fact is confronted, we will sustain ourselves right into an asphalt-covered, treeless future: an environmental injury and a vision of ugliness.

Source: New York Times May 20, 2023 23:01 UTC