Wasted: Counting The Costs Of Global Consumption (earthscan Library Collection: Sustainable Development Set)
by Michael Redclift /
2009 / English / PDF
28.7 MB Download
Sustainable development cannot be achieved solely at the
international level. Without the creation of more sustainable
livelihoods, it will remain a utopian and elusive goal. Yet given
the huge differences in economic development and levels of
consumption between North and South, how might this be brought
about?
Sustainable development cannot be achieved solely at the
international level. Without the creation of more sustainable
livelihoods, it will remain a utopian and elusive goal. Yet given
the huge differences in economic development and levels of
consumption between North and South, how might this be brought
about?
Taking the 1992 Rio Summit as its point of departure, Wasted
examines what we now need to know, and what we need to do, to live
within sustainable limits. One of the key issues is how we use the
environment: converting natural resources into human artifices,
commodities and services. In the process of consuming, we also
create sinks. Today, these sinks--the empty back pocket in the
global biogeographical system--are no longer empty. The fate of the
global environment is indissolubly linked to our consumption:
particularly in the energy-profligate North.
Taking the 1992 Rio Summit as its point of departure, Wasted
examines what we now need to know, and what we need to do, to live
within sustainable limits. One of the key issues is how we use the
environment: converting natural resources into human artifices,
commodities and services. In the process of consuming, we also
create sinks. Today, these sinks--the empty back pocket in the
global biogeographical system--are no longer empty. The fate of the
global environment is indissolubly linked to our consumption:
particularly in the energy-profligate North.
To understand and overcome environmental challenges, we need to
build the outcomes of our present consumption rates into our future
behaviour: to accept sustainable development as a normative goal
for societies; one that is bound up with our everyday social
practices and actions. In this absorbing book, Michael Redclift
argues that the way we understand and think about the environn1ent
conditions our responses, and our ability to meet the challenge,
and discusses tangible policies for increased sustainability that
are grounded in recent research and practice.
To understand and overcome environmental challenges, we need to
build the outcomes of our present consumption rates into our future
behaviour: to accept sustainable development as a normative goal
for societies; one that is bound up with our everyday social
practices and actions. In this absorbing book, Michael Redclift
argues that the way we understand and think about the environn1ent
conditions our responses, and our ability to meet the challenge,
and discusses tangible policies for increased sustainability that
are grounded in recent research and practice.