New Release: SUSTAINABILITY BY DESIGN: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming our Consumer Culture
By John Ehrenfeld
Executive Director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology
Former Director of the MIT Program on Technology, Business, and Environment
This September Yale University Press published SUSTAINABILITY BY DESIGN: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming our Consumer Culture by John R Ehrenfeld with a Foreword by Peter Senge. This important new book traces the current threats facing the environment to the philosophy of human existence, echoing the notion of ‘being’ rather than ‘having’ of Erich Fromm.
With a growing awareness of the environmental threats to the natural and social worlds, the issue of “sustainability” has become ever more popular, spawning a host of new strategies. This may be doing more harm than good in the long-run according to John Ehrenfeld, a leading scholar of environmental management, as it perversely diverts attention from the real issue. Technocratic strategies like sustainable development, eco-efficiency, or corporate social responsibility are only band-aids. Technological quick fixes can, at best, reduce unsustainability, but cannot create sustainability—the real, but hidden, driving force for action.
Sustainability by Design shifts the focus from the problem-oriented, remedial frame of sustainable development to a positive vision beginning with a new definition: Sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever.
Ehrenfeld offers original and concrete examples of truly sustainable design, while highlighting where businesses, such as Apple, Toyota, and Xerox, to name a few, have already taken action toward achieving such goals.
The book challenges us all in terms of our behavior both as individuals and as a society, and it also outlines practical steps toward attaining the new mindset essential to creating sustainability.
The book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and your favorite bookseller, or through his website, http://www.johnehrenfeld.com
Joel Makower, Executive Editor, Greenbiz.com, and author of Green Strategies says, “John Ehrenfeld has been pondering sustainability longer and more holistically than most, and this book represents the delicious fruits of those labors. It is the story of his journey of discovery—the simple truths that turn out to be complex, the unintended ‘side-effects’ that shift burdens but don’t solve them, the half-measures that are necessary but insufficient to address our global challenges. In short, it is the story of all who strive for ‘sustainability.’ Along the way, Ehrenfeld deftly weaves physics and philosophy, storytelling, and systems dynamics to show what it will take for us to be healing to the planet and to ourselves. This is an extraordinary contribution.
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Andrew J. Hoffman
Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise
Associate-Director, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise
University of Michigan
Phone: 734.763.9455
Fax: 734.615.4323
Email: ajhoff@umich.edu
Web: http://www.andrewhoffman.net/
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