Renewable resources, such as plant material (collectively referred to as biomass) and wind power, play a major factor in moving toward a sustainable society. However, the terms renewable and sustainable are not synonymous. It seems as though they are used interchangeably in everyday conversations. The most egregious example of this seems to arise when talking about biomass. Plants as a broad category regrow, so they are by definition renewable. Just because they can regenerate does not make them sustainable.

Sustainability has hundreds of definitions. For transparency sake, I am using the general notion of sustainability as follows: using resources in a way that does not deplete their numbers for future generations. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon – the overuse and disappearance of plant life – comes from the remote island of Rapa Nui. More commonly known as Easter Island, Rapa Nui sits roughly 2,000 miles (3,500 km) off the coast of Chile. Fifteen years ago Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (reviewed in Monday’s post), wrote an article for Discover magazine that served as the basis of the aforementioned book. In both the book and the article Diamond details the rise and subsequent fall of the society that inhabited the island for approximately 1,000 years. The main lesson is that the islanders did not sustainably manage their resources. The population exceeded what the island could support and crops – renewable resources – were harvested faster than they could regenerate.

The beauty of wind, solar, and geothermal power lies in the fact that they are continually replenished without humankind having to coax them from the soil. In the ultimate sense of the term they are finite, but on a human scale these resources are in fact infinite. This does not excuse us from engaging in behaviors like green building, energy conservation and efficiency, or moderation. It is incumbent upon us to use the resources that we have wisely, what I would call “sustainably.”

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