I don't know anyone who doesn't have some reservation with the term "green" to describe the movement toward a more environmentally sound future. (Brian Butler, owner of Boston Green Building and a recent respondent to my "Green People" series (and how inadequate is that as a name for a series!) is the most recent example I've encountered.)

But in the past couple of days, I've read two criticisms of "sustainable," which is clunky, but at least it's more specific and doesn't suffer for trendiness. (Actually, it's one criticism, expressed by two sources.)

One was published in 2002, making it not even a new objection. It was in a very credible-to-me source, "Cradle To Cradle," the seminal treatise by William McDonough and Michael Braungart that I started to read, and blog about, months ago. They ask what you would think of someone who described his marriage as sustainable.

Well, yes, there is that.

I came across the passage only last night. Then, this morning, I was picking through Wired's list of 15 people the next president should listen to and there was Mitchell Joachim saying the same thing. It makes me think that Joachim read the same book I'm reading — few people of any weight in the environmental fields haven't — but for all I know, it didn't originate in C2C either.

I suppose I'm reacting as much to the coincidence as anything else. And, I'll concede that names are less important than the work toward change. But they're not unimportant, either.

Any ideas? Leave 'em in the comments, please.

["Update": I was speaking with Andrea Atkinson of The Green Roundtable later in the day and mentioned this post, and she added some perspective (on the meat, not the name): "We should be moving toward regenerative. But we’re not even at sustainable yet. If that’s our buzz word, I’m fine with that because we haven’t done any better."]