Why are sustainable practices often elusive?

For at least 200,000 years, we humans have been trying to understand our environments and adapt to them. At times, we have succeeded; often, we have not. When we get it wrong—through anthropogenic exacerbations leading to the Dust Bowl and the growth of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico—the results can be disastrous. However, in both success and failure, we can learn from our past experiments and adapt.