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Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture | 
 enlarge | Author: John R. Ehrenfeld
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 34616
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0300137494
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.927
EAN: 9780300137491
ASIN: 0300137494
Publication Date: September 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Buy @ Intellika and save. Heavily discount book, NEW .Retails for $ 28.00+. NEW, Mint Gift Quality Condition. Includes FREE Delivery Confirmation Tracking.
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Product Description
The developed world, increasingly aware of “inconvenient truths” about global warming and sustainability, is turning its attention to possible remedies—eco-efficiency, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility, among others. But such measures are mere Band-Aids, and they may actually do more harm than good, says John Ehrenfeld, a pioneer in the field of industrial ecology. In this deeply considered book, Ehrenfeld challenges conventional understandings of “solving” environmental problems and offers a radically new set of strategies to attain sustainability. The book is founded upon this new definition: sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever. There are obstacles to this hopeful vision, however, and overcoming them will require us to transform our behavior, both individually and collectively. Ehrenfeld identifies problematic cultural attributes—such as the unending consumption that characterizes modern life—and outlines practical steps toward developing sustainability as a mindset. By focusing on the “being” mode of human existence rather than on the unsustainable “having” mode we cling to now, he asserts, a sustainable world is within our reach.
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| Customer Reviews:
Thinking for a Change October 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mr. Ehrenfeld offers a broadly appealing and immediately accessible definition of sustainability: "sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever."
Now isn't that what we really want? And to address this higher view of things, don't you necessarily need to think more deeply about the issue than simply neutralizing a negative situation--which is what virtually every other book in this genre attempts to do?
That's what I like about this book, that Ehrenfeld takes a systems look at a systemic issue. He looks at mindset -- the subtitle is "A Subversive Strategy for transforming Our Consumer Culture" -- and that's what is so attractive.
Ehrenfeld, formerly of MIT (a noted breeding ground for systems thinkers), is executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology and senior research scholar at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and you can tell he's been thinking about this for a long tim. It shows in how he approaches the challenge of sustainability. For example, he uses words and phrases that resonate will resonate with anyone who is interested in a more mindful approach to a complex issue. "Reflection" is the first threshold to cross, he says. And he talks about "structures," which appeals to my sense of the importance in properly framing problems. And he talks about "nurturing possibility."
You see, we too often incorrectly ask the question "What are the alternatives" before we ask "What is possible?"
If you're a fan of Peter Senge (who writes the Foreword) and The Fifth Discipline like I am, you'll enjoy the author's foray into single and double loop thinking. From there, he looks at root cause, that being an addiction to resources (a phrase I often use!) linked to the cultures of consumption in the modern, industrialized world. And then he offers his definition of sustainability, and the whole construct hangs together quite nicely.
Woven throughout the book is a subtext of respect, of simply caring about others and the world we live in enough to wrap our designs around that thought in a very purposeful way. If only we could hold that core value tightly enough, hold on to the tension created between where we are and where we need to be, our designs -- our innovation processes and innovative outcomes -- would go far in moving the planet toward a sustainable vision of the future.
And that future, the author says, does not have "a revolution waiting in the wings," because he does not believe "that such a revolution would necessarily be the best change mechanism."
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