Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions Paperback

India

Haydn Washington

What is sustainability? Much has been said about the terms `sustainability' and `sustainable development' over the last few decades, but they have become buried under academic jargon. This book is one of the first that aims to demystify sustainability so that the layperson can understand the key issues, questions and values involved. Accessible and engaging, the book examines the `old' sustainability of the past and looks to the future, considering how economic, ecological and social sustainability should be defined if we are to solve the entwined environmental, economic and social crises. It considers if meaningful sustainability is the same as a `sustainable development' based on endless growth, examining the difficult but central issues of overpopulation and overconsumption that drive unsustainability. The book also explores the central role played by society's worldview and ethics, along with humanity's most dangerous characteristic - denial. Finally, it looks to the future, discussing the `appropriate' technology needed for sustainability, and suggesting nine key solutions. This book provides a much-needed comprehensive discussion of what sustainability means for students, policy makers and all those interested in a sustainable future.

1138812692

9781138812697

English

Taylor & Francis Ltd

01 Dec 2015

222

Haydn Washington is an environmental scientist and writer of 40 years' experience. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Sustainability' may be the most important word in our language, and also the most misused. This brilliant, deep, accurate, well-referenced book should do wonders to rectify that. It should be required reading for every high-school student, CEO, and politician.-Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Stanford University, USA. Demystifying Sustainability bids the modern world to abandon magical thinking. It provides just what the world needs most in its time of gathering crisis - a viable, alternative way-of-being that both celebrates the full spectrum of human potential and accurately represents the biophysical realities within which the human animal must function.-William Rees, University of British Columbia, Canada. Haydn Washington brings wide reading and experience, plus a sharp mind and sharp knife, to cut away the obfuscation and denial that mystify the discussion of sustainability. The book is accessible without any "dumbing-down", and does not evade the difficult questions of overpopulation, overconsumption, deification of growth, and overconfidence in the ability of technology to substitute for morality. Highly recommended.-Herman Daly, University of Maryland, USA.