I
try not to ever use the highfalutin word "paradigm" because I find it
much overused and also because I have no idea what it means. For all I
know a "pair-a-dime" is just a nickel short of a quarter.
The
hip word "sustainable" is especially popular with the environmentally
conscious. I know one young man who actually graduated with a
sustainability degree in college who is now waiting tables at Olive
Garden. His life isn't exactly what I'd call "sustainable." And when an
"e" bank that only loaned to alternative energy companies went bankrupt a
year ago I'm quite sure it was because it had more Vice Presidents of
Sustainability than it had depositers.
I'm
probably the most unsustainable person in the world. Recently I read a
list of the 10 most unsustainable professions in the country and I was
surprised to discover that I've made a career out of four of them: I'm a
writer, owned a newspaper and have been a rancher and a cowboy.
According to the experts none of these careers was "sustainable" and I
should have ended up a homeless person living under a bridge with all my
possessions in a shopping cart.
Personally,
I think all this sustainability stuff is unsustainable. You can go to
all the sustainability conferences in the world and have a rock solid
business plan but the minute you put your plan into action, it will stop
raining, you'll lose a lease, a mad cow will pop up in your herd, your
horse will put you into a body cast for six months, Ted Turner will buy a
ranch right next door with bad fences and stock it with bison, the
climate will change (as it always does), or you're wife will leave you
and take your sustainability with her.
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