nt trend of urban sprawl is causing the earth’s resources to be used at an unsustainable rate while also contributing to pollution. Urban sprawl is “the rapid expansion of metropolitan areas through building housing developments and shopping centers farther and farther from urban centers and lacing them together with more and more major highways. Widespread development that has occurred without any overall land-use plan.“ (Nebel and Wright, 2000, p. 648). Given that urbanization causes a loss of habitat, air pollution, land pollution, water pollution and a drain on non-renewable resources it is one of the largest threats to sustainability. If the trend is not reversed, the cycle that occurred with the gas shortage in the United States in the mid-1970’s will re-occur worldwide. The world’s resources will not meet with ever-increasing demand imposed by disbursed and growing population. This will lead to a situation more severe than a gas shortage; there could be a global repeat of Easter Island. Why It Is Important The goal of lifestyle sustainability is to reduce the use of resources to a level where they can regenerate faster than they are consumed, and to conserve the biodiversity of those resources. Future generations will depend on the earth to provide for their basic needs and desires, just as current generations do. If the current trend of environmental destruction continues, future generations will find themselves unable to provide for basic needs and many forms of life could become extinct. Biodiversity is important for many reasons. Approximately 1.75 million species of plants, animals, and microbes have been examined, named, and classified, but scientists estimate that between 4 million and 112 million species have not been systematically explored.”(Nebel and Wright, 2000, p. 260) Mankind has found many ways to use these catalogued and categorized species for medicinal purposes. However, if b...
