Cultural frameworks

Every epoch seems to be characterized by a world view of what is good and desirable for society, and the present pursuit of development, and more recently sustainable development, reflects this world view. Consequently, despite the vast expansion in the world?s capacity to produce material goods and services over the past two centuries, further expansion of this capacity within a sustainable development framework remains an urgent imperative today. Yet the terms ??sustainable development?? and ??sustainability?? seem to have become so hackneyed that they have often been a source of confusion. Daly observes that the notion of sustainable development continues to be used for pursuing economic growth, and criticizes its ??growth ideology??. He argues that the present levels of per capita resource consumption in the USA and Western Europe, generally accepted as being developed nations, cannot be followed by all nations without destroying the ecological sources on which economic activities depend. He has argued that the concept of sustainable development is being used in ways that are vacuous, wrong, and probably dangerous.