Sustainability in Hawaii

In 1990, NASA launched the Voyager I. As it left the solar system and traveled on for another six billion kilometers away from Earth, it took the famous photograph, ‘Pale Blue Dot.’ In this iconic photography, Earth is portrayed as an insignificant, fragile speck in the vast and endless expanse of the cosmos. Nevertheless, on that tiny pixel lay all of the wonders we humans have ever known - wonders that are now threatened by human development. As pollution, global warming, climate change, habitat destruction and exploitation of resources threaten the “pale blue dot,” the demand for sustainable development that meets our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs grows every greater. However, sustainable practices promise a future where economic and environmental needs can coexist in harmony. Sustainability calls for protection of our natural world for generations to come – this has always been the challenge of environmental stewardship. It is the responsibility of our generation and community to right some of our wrongs against nature, to learn to work together to seek common solutions, and to move forward embracing a new brand of sustainability: that of the future.
Some argue that we face the most significant financial challenges since the Great Depression and that it would financially impossible or imprudent to fund and pursue sustainable practices in Hawaii. Yet, in we are facing environmental issues such as rising temperatures and advancing oceans, emissions and extinction, habitat destruction and urban sprawl, encroaching pollution and expanding populations. Human development has provided me with a place to live, roads and highways to drive on, shopping malls and movie theaters for entertainment, hospitals for me to get vaccinated at and receive medical attention, supermarkets to buy food at, and schools to receive an education at. Yet I can also personally attest to the wonder of walking on a dew-laced