The best article on sustainability that I've read recently ...

... isn't technically about sustainability. It's about food. Or, more technically, our agricultural system. It's here. You should go read it and then come back. I'll wait.

OK, so what did you think?

My first impression was that the writer (Paul Roberts) got it right on a number of fronts. Among them:

1. Sustainability (and not just sustainable food) isn't a yuppy issue. And it won't be solved with yuppy solutions. Affordability is key, which is one of the reasons why real sustainability has a social justice component to it.
2. Sustainability will require real systemic change. Tweaks at the margins won't do it. Real change creates (at least emotional) discomfort. That's why people fear it.
3. Truly sustainable practices will often require more in the way of labor inputs than do the "efficient" industrial practices we're now used to. That's OK. We have the labor to spare. We just call it unemployment. (BTW, distrust any arguments that sustainable practices aren't efficient. "Efficient" in terms of what input? Usually, it's money. You can't eat money.)
4. There will be issues of scale.
5. The nature of cities (particularly, really big cities) will change.
6. Free market mechanisms won't, by themselves, get us to sustainability. At least, not without causing unimaginable levels of famine, plague, and other forms of destruction. On the other hand, if you go back to Adam Smith, the originator of what we now call free market capitalism, he never saw it as the answer to all questions. Smith was a far more subtle thinker than many of the people who now pray to him.
7. And yes, some things (foods among them) are going to cost more. But some things are going to cost less. And some things we're now spending money on, we'll find we really never wanted, anyways.