Against Sustainability responds to the twenty-first-century environmental crisis by unearthing the nineteenth-century U.S. literary, cultural, and scientific contexts that gave rise to sustainability, recycling, and preservation. Through novel pairings of antebellum and contemporary writers including Walt Whitman and Lucille Clifton, George Catlin and Louise Erdrich, and Herman Melville and A. S. Byatt, the book demonstrates that some of our most vaunted strategies to address ecological crisis in fact perpetuate environmental degradation. Yet Michelle C. Neely also reveals that the nineteenth century offers useful and generative environmentalisms, if only we know where and how to find them. Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickinson experimented with models of joyful, anti-consumerist frugality. Hannah Crafts and Harriet Wilson devised forms of radical pet-keeping that model more just ways of living with others. Ultimately, the book explores forms of utopianism that might more reliably guide mainstream environmental culture toward transformative forms of ecological and social justice. Through new readings of familiar texts, Against Sustainability demonstrates how nineteenth-century U.S. literature can help us rethink our environmental paradigms in order to imagine more just and environmentally sound futures.

From one of the world's leading experts on the subject, a fully updated introduction to the sustainability movement from the 1600s to today The word is nearly ubiquitous: at the grocery store we shop for sustainable foods that were produced from sustainable agriculture; groups ranging from small advocacy organizations to city and state governments to the United Nations tout sustainable development as a strategy for local and global stability; and woe betide the city-dweller who doesn't aim for a sustainable lifestyle. Seeming to have come out of nowhere to dominate the discussion-from permaculture to renewable energy to the local food movement-the ideas that underlie and define sustainability can be traced back several centuries. In this illuminating and fascinating primer, newly revised and updated, Jeremy L. Caradonna does just that, approaching sustainability from a historical perspective and revealing the conditions that gave it shape. Locating the underpinnings of the movement as far back as the 1660s, Caradonna considers the origins of sustainability across many fields throughout Europe and North America. Taking us from the emergence of thoughts guiding sustainable yield forestry in the late 17th and 18th centuries, through the challenges of the Industrial Revolution, the birth of the environmental movement, and the emergence of a concrete effort to promote a balanced approach to development in the latter half of the 20th century, he shows that while sustainability draws upon ideas of social justice, ecological economics, and environmental conservation, it is more than the sum of its parts and blends these ideas together into a dynamic philosophy. Caradonna's book broadens our understanding of what sustainability means, revealing how it progressed from a relatively marginal concept to an ideal that shapes everything from individual lifestyles, government and corporate strategies, and even national and international policy. For anyone seeking understand the history of those striving to make the world a better place to live, here's a place to start.

The International Conference on Environment: Survival and Sustainability, held at the Near East University, Nicosia, Northern Cyprus 19-24 February 2007, dealt with environmental threats and proposed solutions at all scales. The 21 themes addressed by the conference fell into four broad categories; Threats to Survival and Sustainability; Technological Advances towards Survival and Sustainability; Activities and Tools for Social Change; Defining Goals for Sustainable Societies. Activities and tools that move the society towards greater sustainability were emphasized at the conference. These included environmental law and ethics, environmental knowledge, technology and information systems, media, environmental awareness, education and lifelong learning, the use of literature for environmental awareness, the green factor in politics, international relations and environmental organizations. The breadth of the issues addressed at the conference made clear the need for greatly increased interdisciplinary and international collaboration the survival and sustainability concept. The exchanges at the conference represent a step in this direction.

Sustainability is based on a simple and long-recognized factual premise: Everything that humans require for their survival and well-being depends, directly or indirectly, on the natural environment. The environment provides the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Recognizing the importance of sustainability to its work, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working to create programs and applications in a variety of areas to better incorporate sustainability into decision-making at the agency. To further strengthen the scientific basis for sustainability as it applies to human health and environmental protection, the EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to provide a framework for incorporating sustainability into the EPA's principles and decision-making. This framework, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, provides recommendations for a sustainability approach that both incorporates and goes beyond an approach based on assessing and managing the risks posed by pollutants that has largely shaped environmental policy since the 1980s. Although risk-based methods have led to many successes and remain important tools, the report concludes that they are not adequate to address many of the complex problems that put current and future generations at risk, such as depletion of natural resources, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. Moreover, sophisticated tools are increasingly available to address cross-cutting, complex, and challenging issues that go beyond risk management. The report recommends that EPA formally adopt as its sustainability paradigm the widely used "three pillars" approach, which means considering the environmental, social, and economic impacts of an action or decision. Health should be expressly included in the "social" pillar. EPA should also articulate its vision for sustainability and develop a set of sustainability principles that would underlie all agency policies and programs.

The consensus is clear - climate change is the defining challenge of our time. Meeting this challenge requires a collaborative and inclusive response from all segments of society - including private businesses. What role then for competition law and policy? This important and timely book gathers academics, enforcers, economists, lawyers, and industry representatives to explore the applications and limitations of EU competition law in achieving environmental sustainability aims in line with the European Commission's Green Deal as well as the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. They identify the challenges of integrating environmental considerations into competition analysis presented by the existing framework, whether through cooperation by businesses, practices by dominant companies, or consideration of sustainability efficiencies in merger assessments. Practical examples across various sectors are also provided, alongside agency views from different jurisdictions, to illustrate how competition policy can facilitate a sustainable economy.

This book provides a clear, critical, and timely analysis of the state of corporate sustainability within the context of the climate crisis. It offers not only a substantive critique of the current efforts but also clarity about the changes needed and how to implement them. The book goes beyond the more common debate on shareholder capitalism vs. stakeholder capitalism to explain the shortcomings of the current approach to sustainability in business, which the author describes as sustainability-as-usual. Using strategic design lenses, the author proposes a new model of awakened sustainability, which offers a transformational shift in corporate sustainability to ensure companies fairly and effectively address the climate crisis. The book presents the numerous changes needed in the environment in which companies operate to enable awakened sustainability and how these changes can be realized. Grounded in the scientific community’s calls for urgent action on climate change, this groundbreaking text provides scholars with an evaluation of current and future trends in corporate sustainability. It connects the dots between the progress made in the last five decades and the opportunities entailed in the work on a regenerative and just vision for companies in this decade and beyond.