Why? Well, I like to think about where we are with sustainability today in relation to where we were in 1961 when President Kennedy said "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." There were a lot of doubters: the task seemed impossible, the money needing to be spent was huge and many asked 'what would it really give us?'. Sound familiar? But we did attain the goal---and more importantly, we went beyond! The inventions that were spawned in so many areas of science and engineering were then leveraged, not just to the moon, but to new products for our families and generated whole new businesses! The investment of the money and the commitment and passion to solve the myriad problems generated in this quest paid off in ways no one envisioned at that time.
We can look at sustainability as shooting for the stars! Sustainability is an umbrella concept covering so many things that it can be hard to get your arms around it. However, we can use sustainability as a way of driving our thinking about specific problems to frame the new questions and the challenges they present. Then we will see the passion of our scientists racing to find answers to these challenges and ultimately generate solutions that spawn new companies, new jobs! See you in the future!
