At the threshold of the 21st Century, we are faced with a host of regional and global challenges for current and future generations. During the industrial era, humanity has exploited the earth’s natural resources—from fossil fuels to ancient aquifers—in our redesign of daily life. While this rapid consumption of seemingly endless resources allowed for the development of unforeseen wealth, luxury and technological advances, its costs and ensuing challenges are equally unprecedented. These costs and challenges appear in habitat and biodiversity loss, global climate change, erosion of healthy soils, decreased access to safe food and fresh water, increased air pollution and spiraling economic trends that potentially undermine our hope for a sustainable future.

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Here at Sustainable Settings we look to the post-industrial era as an opportunity to confront the challenges of resource scarcity and ecological degradation and to create and model integrated strategies for sustainable living. Foundational to our mission is a vision of hope. Recognizing that the release of human opportunity is at the heart of sustainable development, we hold a vision of hope that is grounded in the sheer vigor, ingenuity and collaboration that have driven past social and cultural transformations. By embracing the interconnectivity of culture, economy and environment, we seek community- and market-based solutions for sustainable living that are socially responsible, economically viable and environmentally sound, and work to disseminate these solutions from our whole systems learning center to a broad range of people through our education and outreach programs.