世界环境与发展委员会将可持续发展定义为“既满足当代人的需求，又不损害后代人满足其自身需求的能力的”发展。认识到这是个值得追求的好提议，人们提出了解决这一问题的方案。这些众多方案中包括控制人口数量，中止欲望以遏制贪婪。基于这样的前提，无论是为了人民发展还是依靠人民发展都站不住脚。通过控制人口数量来减少人口增长无法保证其自身的人力资源未来的激增。如果对维持生命需要的商品非常贪婪，那么学会遏制贪婪可以减少人口；因此，当代人和后代人可能达不到足够健康来持续增长。尽管政府干预正在积极开展，家庭的作用却一直被忽视。此次讲座将解释为什么家庭以及努力保护传统家庭是可持续发展的关键。讲座将引用亚里士多德关于家庭、公民权和教育的概念来进行说明。
The World Commission on Environment and Development defines sustainable development as the kind of “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Recognizing that this is a good that must be pursued，solutions were proposed to address this concern. Among these solutions are population control and curbing greed through cessation of desire. Both positions are untenable based on the premise that development is by people and for people. Reducing population growth through population control will not assure the future of its own pool of human resources that will spur growth. Training to curb greed may lead to a weak population if the greed is directed to goods needed to sustain life；hence present and future generations may not be healthy enough to sustain growth. While governmental intervention has been actively pursued，the role of the family has been neglected. This lecture will explain why the family and the efforts to preserve the traditional family will be the key to sustainable development. It will use Aristotle’s notion of the family，citizenship and education to illustrate this claim.
