sustainability: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given, and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.
    social, environmental, economical, (bearable, viable, equitable) = sustainable
    
impact formula: method of determining ongoing environmental impact
    
IPAT theory of environmental impact: expresses a balance among interacting factors; I = PxAxT; not meant to be mathematically rigorous, but to provide a way of organizing information from a 'first-order' analysis
    I: impact of a given course of action on the environment
    P: relevant human population for the problem at hand
    A: affluence, level of consumption per person
    T: impact per unit of consumption (general term for technology, interpreted in its broadest sense as any human-created invention, system, or organization that serves to either worsen or uncouple consumption from impact)
    
SI=PxC/PxI/C
    SI: sustainability impact
    P: population
    C/P: consumption per capita
    I/C: impact per consumption
    
Malthusian catastrophe: the point in time where population growth outpaces agricultural production, or permanently surpasses it, and people starve or some unforeseen check on the growth of population (social or unnatural) asserts itself
    Malthusianism: the idea that, with unchecked exponential population growth and arithmetical growth of food supply, there would be a vast decrease in wealth and the population in question would be forced to live on subsistence levels, and the growth of the population should then necessarily be checked by social constructs or through 'positive checks' that reduce the current population to a more sustainable level
    neo-Malthusianism: people who advocate population control with concern not only for food supply but other environmental factors and needs
    
Point of Crisis: intersection between growth of population and the availability of food production; leads to starvation of the population in question
    
J-curves: growth curve for systems where the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the system itself, for a short time, and then subsequently crashes
S-curves: growth curve for systems that match the resources available, grows quickly at first and slows down as the system reaches carrying capacity

carrying capacity: the limit at which a population can grow dependent on the resources available