A sustainable existence in harmony with the planet can be achieved with today's "existing" technology without financial hardship, unreasonable sacrifice, or impairing the quality of life. On the contrary, the current path of human existence has been known for over a hundred years to be unsustainable, based on finite resources whose depletion is directly responsible for inflation, economic chaos, international conflicts, environmental devastation, global warming, and an ever-eroding quality of life.

Actions to redirect the human course toward survival have often been haphazard and misguided, leading to solutions that created ever-bigger problems, and unintended consequences such as DDT, nuclear power, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, plastics, food additives, x-rays, better insulated homes, food preservatives, aerosols, thalidomide, genetically modified organisms, neutron bombs, etc., etc., etc.

The Green Earth Paradigm offers a means by which to gage actions versus benefits to derive a better understanding of potential outcomes to mitigate unintended consequences. There are five criteria by which to measure any action to determine its sustainability. These are energy, environment, education, agriculture and public health. Any potential action must be evaluated collectively against all five criteria to determine its true sustainability potential.

For any given resource or action, the equations must be balanced as follows:
• Energy — consumption versus renewal
• Environment — impact versus recovery
• Education — understanding versus confusion
• Agriculture — value versus challenge
• Public Health — benefit versus risk

This concept is discussed in much greater detail in the Sustainability Index Report: Analysis and Derivation of the Green Earth Paradigm.