Mr. Michael Sean Selfridge
Director of Communications
Federation of World Peace and Love

One of today's great challenges is achieving sustainability, most experts in the scientific community agree that our current path is not sustainable and as such, we are degrading our living environment at an ever accelerating pace. Sustainability is in essence, balance; balancing our consumption with the replenishable production capabilities of our environment.

As we consider how to achieve sustainability we must consider what is hindering us in achieving this goal. Greed certainly plays a critical role; our desire to take more than is freely available and replenishable. Such as not only picking the apples from a tree but also chopping the tree down for the wood. We've built a extensive system to quantify what we take through commoditization.

Commoditization is neither good nor bad; the process can aid society in recognizing the value or merit of a person or thing. A significant risk in the process of commoditization is failure to fully recognize the merit of that person or thing which results in a miss-valuation.

For example, oil is frequently valued by its ability to efficiently store energy and the amount of work that can be done by burning it; be it driving a car down the road or generating electricity. Often overlooked is its ability to safely store the carbon and other toxic materials that once made our planet uninhabitable and thus the dire consequences of burning it and releasing those toxins back into our environment.

A more humanistic example is the commoditization of people's lives, where people are valued based on their ability to do work and how much profit can be made off of their labor without considering their contributions to society.

Some things such as volunteerism don't easily fit into this model of commoditization which doesn't recognize the value of giving away time, yet looking out for others is the fabric of what society is built upon; after all none of us made it were we are today on our own, we leveraged an extensive social, educational, legal and transportation infrastructure that was developed by those who have come before us.

We all know the emotional rewards of helping others, doing so is hardwired into our beings, because doing so has helped us to evolve to where we are today. So if we want to achieve a sustainable state, we must properly value that which is important and let go of the greed in our hearts, starting by doing good for others.