The search for sustainability

What is a sustainable lifestyle?

Sustainability is getting a whole lot of press, and the word gets bandied about without giving clear definition to the terms. Since the Macintosh comes with a built-in dictionary, I looked up the terms.

sustainable |səˈstānəbəl| (adjective)
able to be maintained at a certain rate or level : sustainable fusion reactions.
• Ecology (esp. of development, exploitation, or agriculture) conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.
• able to be upheld or defended : sustainable definitions of good educational practice.

lifestyle |ˈlīfˌstīl| noun
the way in which a person or group lives : the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
• [as adj. ] denoting advertising or products designed to appeal to a consumer by association with a desirable lifestyle.

A sustainable lifestyle is a way of living that is able to be maintained indefinitely while maintaining balance, avoids the depletion of natural resources, and withstands constant self-scrutiny.

This is Finn, and his life of doting affection, free food, sunshine-soaked lounging, and toy-chasing is quite sustainable.

I moved to San Francisco to learn how to live a sustainable lifestyle. I wanted to sell sustainable lifestyles with Green Grass Real Estate, but I realized that I wasn't living one. The culture of real estate changed me over the years. I became focused on earning money, success, and living as fully and richly as possible - not on sustaining myself. I never really knew what it meant to take care of myself, and I'm still learning. I moved out to study under my sister, Tiffany Elston, the guru of green.

She was born and raised in Taos, NM, which is a spiritual, artistic, and highly green community. The Earthship originated just outside of Taos, and it's also home to the Taos Pueblo, the oldest continually-inhabited structure in North America. The Pueblo is built out of adobe, and dirt-based construction is about as green as it gets. Tiffany was always a rock star, and when she was 16 she won an award for an essay about her vision of the Sustainable Taos of 2020. She went on to study Human Ecology at the College of the Atlantic, and they take a multi-disciplinary look at the ways that human beings interact with the planet. During her still-ongoing undergraduate tenure, she's also gone on an intense educational tour to experience the impact of globalization around the world firsthand, and did an internship with the City of San Francisco's green building department.

This blog is going to tell the unfolding story of our quest to help in the conceptualization and actualization of a more sustainable future for humanity. Unlike a lot of environmentalists, whom I love dearly, I'm not worried about the future of the planet. I was just reading a nice article in Utne about a method of pollution-reduction that uses algae to eat the icky stuff before it goes into the air. When humanity blasts itself off of this earth, it'll take the planet a few million years to repair itself. Any number of species will never recover, and the world will never be the same. It's certainly not a desirable outcome, since it's predicated on the elimination of our species.

As a people, we have a lot to be worried about. I remember the weather being a lot different when I was a kid. The glaciers are melting, hurricanes are increasing in frequency, and the urban heat index charts are off the scale. New diseases are popping up every day, war-mongering greedy bastards are destroying whole populations, and Americans are completely disconnected from reality, with staggering effects.

These things used to depress me. My goal in starting my company was to change the world, to make it better, and every day when I looked at the news it got so much worse. How could a green condo possibly make a difference? What the fuck does recycling matter when with a single stroke of the pen, legislation sets us back 20 years? How could I possibly be content with martyring myself to feel better about my role in this sludgepot of jealousy, greed, and discontent?

I've had a lot of realizations and perspective-changing events occur in the past year. This shift in my focus is helping me to become comfortable with my role in the grand scheme of the cosmos, but not in an airy-fairy happy-hippie lovey-dovey bullshit kind of way. My goals are to impart a logical explanation, to tell a good story, and to study the emerging trend of sustainability.


This is the Rainbow Grocery, a worker-owned cooperative that makes whole foods look understocked and understaffed. It's incredible, friendly, a great deal (nothing is cheap in San Francisco), and completely stuffed with the natural, organic, and fair-trade products that are essential to a sustainable lifestyle.



Housing is at a premium in San Francisco. We're going to be working directly through Tiffany's city connections to help to create more affordable housing, and we'll be doing it green.

I really like this building - not only did someone adhere furniture to the exterior, it's got great architecture and needs a total rehab. This is a perfect candidate for high-density affordable green development. We could keep the existing brick exterior and add tons of insulation, solar panels, and a green roof.

I feel a sense of responsibilty to use my knowledge of green construction and my communication skills to share this with the world. This blog is the continuation of that process, and it will be a long one.