Absolutely, re the Nate quote, and the post.

In the popular imagination, sustainable in its genuine sense, not as a commercial or duplicitous, politically touted, buzzword, is assimilated to, equalled to (as far as I have been able to figure out), renewable, as in a natural cycle that with ‘natural’ inputs, just spins on and on, a simple system with guaranteed, immutable, input (most often sunlight but not only), which steadily produces desired outputs, without any feed back loops. The metaphoric image appears to be an idealized vision of Nature itself: soil, rain, sun, pollination, non man-made events, *natural*, with minimal proper, decent, conventional, human work, like weeding by hand, will lead to germination and all those lovely flowers in the garden, grain in the fields, chirpy birds, and plump boars or deer waiting to be killed, etc.

The vision is both historic, resting on reliance on land, its control, management, usurpation (colonialism..), the self sufficient homestead, those rough and ready times, etc. An archaic paradise. Supplemented, sneakily, and mysteriously, by the idea of 'capital' in monetary terms (as pointed out by Nate.)

We are coming up to 7 billion ppl. Those who eat and survive are dependent on mechanized, fertilized, water-pumped, global-traded, agriculture.