ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the ethical priority in sustainability with two types of argument: a negative and extrinsic argument about institutional failure, and a positive and intrinsic argument about the nature of sustainability as self-reliance. The sustainability Cultural Revolution is a rotation movement, according to the original meaning of revolution'. It drives us back to ethics in itself, to the simple idea of an ethical dimension in our personal life, to the consequences on community behaviour of the change. According to this micro-political and anti-institutional approach, sustainability is not a but the ethical turn in our global culture. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau provides a pattern of self-reliance ethics that is at the same time political economy. Thoreau's entire philosophy is a model for change towards sustainability, an ethical change. Sustainability is a challenge to our lifestyle, to our personal lifestyle and to our social lifestyle.
