Making livable sustainable systems unremarkable

Livable and sustainable are more than differently scaled considerations, they belong to different qualitative types. Livability is dynamic and unplanned. Sustainability is about rate‐independent planning. Livability trumps sustainability in the present, but it is labile and so sustainability can wait it out until material pressures force a change. Sustainability is constrained but not determined by livability. Livability changes as resources become scarce. High gain systems take in fuel and burn it willy‐nilly, yielding to thermodynamic description. Low gain takes in low quality material and refines it so it can be used as fuel. The refinement has preferred outcomes and yields to descriptions of efficiency. Livability is high gain while sustainability is low gain. The conflict between livability and sustainability makes their consideration juxtaposed a complex system. I recommend that teaching global systems thinking in the early school years will give the next generation a clarity of vision and a flexibility of mind that will help greatly as the vice on resources tightens. Making livable sustainable systems matter of fact to the next generation, making it unremarkable is the only fully promising path forward. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.