Sustainability

In our field, as in many others, we use this term. It gets regurgitated in our discussions and sanctified through political endorsement. Sustainability is a safe word. It implies we don't need to change, we just need to make sure we don't necessitate change by forcing the acknowledgment of our own wastefulness. This language is terrible, and is so for strategic purposes.
Suppose we choose a new word. Rather than sustainable, perhaps it is the attainable that we should be aiming for in our design choices. This language imposes a trajectory of change. We are not trying to sustain a status quo, we're invoking a newly defined relationship to our environment.