2005 marks the beginning of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), but awareness of this event is practically nonexistent in the New York City public high school where the author teaches English. A concerted effort to teach for--or even about--sustainability in mathematics, science, business and humanities classes is more remote still. The reasons are as various as they are predictable: "poverty, ignorance, disease and violence"--the real "axis of evil"--and high-stakes testing thrown in for good measure. In this article, the author discusses two key issues specific to education that may help teachers deal more effectively with the obstacles keeping ESD from being better known and universally embraced in the schools: 1) curriculum; and 2) school culture. The important points to retain are that ESD requires a fully integrated approach to curriculum development; that small schools are by virtue of their scale better suited to do ESD; and that ideally the physical infrastructure should reflect the values and technologies which make ESD possible.