What's so sustainable about a bankrupt project?

It becomes easy to categorize an energy-hogging system as that which is not sustainable. There are a whole host of products providing creature comforts to which we have become accustomed and grown to expect within the last century. It is due to such systems that our collective quality of life has increased only to have the bottom drop out at the realization of their environmental destruction.

I recently ran across an article suggesting the validity of an air conditioner at an “eco-resort” in a tropical rainforest. At first glance, this seems a contradictory, counterintuitive, and blasphemous abuse of marketing for the sake of greed and profit. Upon closer inspection, it is this very “eco-resort” which has employed the locals to pamper its guests and provide a somewhat distant experience of the forest that they call home. It is because of the financial success of this resort, that these individuals are able to maintain employment. Without employment in an industry based on preservation, these locals would likely revert back to the next most profitable industry; logging or poaching of expensive or endangered resources.

Clearly there is a negative side to luxurious and perhaps unnecessary modern requirements such as air conditioning, but this must be considered on a large scale. Guests, specifically guests who are paying a lot of money, like to be comfortable. Guests who are not comfortable, are unhappy, and are unlikely to come back.

It is only with this meta-comprehension that the whole picture or system can be understood and concessions can be made. With this comprehension, an educated compromise ceases to be a failure in design and can become a component for the ecological, social, and of course financial success of a project.