Sustainability, from the series Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen By María García Maldonado, Rosario García Meza, and Emily Yates-Doerr, the main point that I took away was that sustainability is a western concept developed by the people most responsible for climate change. The example the article gives of Marta shows that we push this concept on communities that have known and practiced it more effectively than us for generations. 

To truly tackle the issue of sustainability, I think it’s important that we look beyond western concepts and to “the various strategies of world-making that, for example, Indigenous and Latin American peoples have cultivated for generations.” After all, global warming is a global issue–although we may not be able to place the blame for its cause evenly on all humans, it is now an issue that is affecting all humans–and that means it requires global solutions. It requires nations and communities working together and striving for common understanding across language barriers. Simply pushing our western idea of sustainability on communities around the world is not going to solve anything, it will only do more harm.

Besides, the United States has the second-highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, so we have no ground to stand on when it comes to defining “sustainability”. We should clean up our own mess before claiming to have a solution that can be applied around the world.