Education for Sustainable Living, Environmental Respect, and Celebrating the Quality of Life.

Sustainability - What is it to you? 

By definition, to sustain means to give support, to nourish, or to prolong something.  The purpose of this educational effort is to help Maine citizens look holistically at the sustainability of our lives and our world.  

As we look to the future, our society faces  many serious threats:  limited water resources; overuse of fossil fuels (potentially leading to climate change); species depletion; and resource consumption.  Many of these larger societal threats are impacting our state as seen by mercury contamination of fish and poor air quality.  Maine citizens are working more and have less to show for it.   People have less time for family, for preparing good food and eating well.  The byproduct is increased stress, obesity, and the increased health complications associated with it.  Lastly, the character of the New England landscape is changing.  Sprawl is steadily eating up the landscape, reducing wildlife habitat, creating more impervious surface area, and permanently removing land from potential agricultural production. 

While all of these topics may seem like separate issues, they are highly connected, and these issues pose real threats to our future.  Through the Environmental Sustainability Project, we are educating Maine citizens about the connections between energy use and environmental health, lifestyle choices and personal health, and land use impacts on the character of the landscape. Our goal is to demonstrate these connections.  Most importantly, we try to show how making changes in one area can have profoundly positive effects on many others.  By supporting local agriculture (CSA and farmers markets), less energy is wasted in food transportation, local economies are supported, and citizen health is improved by consuming better food.  By supporting local farms, we can help maintain the open space, undeveloped character and reduce sprawl.  Through providing people with research-based information, we can begin to make changes in our lives that will not only reduce our impact on the environment, but begin to create the healthy lifestyles and healthy sustainable communities that we desire. 

Most of us take the approach that what I do doesn't matter.  We say .. it's only me.  Today there are over 6.55 billion people trying to exist on this shiny blue, tan and green orb represented below.  The Earth is really not that big.  We are all in this together and if we hope to continue, we have to learn what we can do and begin to work at it like tomorrow really matters.  This is what this educational program is all about.  If you are interested, please read on.

Putting knowledge to work with the people of Maine

A Member of the University of Maine System
Last Modified: 09/13/2006
These pages are currently being maintained from the
Water Quality Office, University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Send comments, suggestions or inquiries to John Jemison

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