Building a sustainable society is perhaps the greatest test that the world has ever faced. Prosperity has been created by ruthless and ill-disciplined mining of the world's resources, compounded by a cavalier disregard for the implications of pollution from industrial and agricultural processes. Today's generation has borrowed from the future by grabbing prosperity now and imposing the cost on the next generation. In this startling and informative book, which will appeal to both students and general readers, award-winning writer Chris Goodall provides a coherent new explanation of what sustainability actually is. Goodall then goes onto explore nine key sustainability challenges, applying the theory of sustainability to look at food, travel, clothing, electricity, heating and cooling, paper and cardboard, construction, consumer electronics, and air travel.

A philosopher and a scientist propose that sustainability can be understood as living well together without diminishing opportunity to live well in the future. Most people acknowledge the profound importance of sustainability, but few can define it. We are ethically bound to live sustainably for the sake of future generations, but what does that mean? In this book Randall Curren, a philosopher, and Ellen Metzger, a scientist, clarify normative aspects of sustainability. Combining their perspectives, they propose that sustainability can be understood as the art of living well together without diminishing opportunity to live well in the future. Curren and Metzger lay out the nature and value of sustainability, survey the problems, catalog the obstacles, and identify the kind of efforts needed to overcome them. They formulate an ethic of sustainability with lessons for government, organizations, and individuals, and illustrate key ideas with three case studies. Curren and Metzger put intergenerational justice at the heart of sustainability; discuss the need for fair (as opposed to coercive) terms of cooperation to create norms, institutions, and practices conducive to sustainability; formulate a framework for a fundamental ethic of sustainability derived from core components of common morality; and emphasize the importance of sustainability education. The three illustrative case studies focus on the management of energy, water, and food systems, examining the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Australia's National Water Management System, and patterns of food production in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.

Calgary, Alberta is a culturally diverse urban metropolis. Sprawling and car-dependent, fast-growing and affluent, it is dominated by the fossil fuel industry. For 30 years, Calgary has struggled to turn sustainability rhetoric into reality. Sustainability Matters is the story of Calgary's setbacks and successes on the path toward sustainability. Chronicling two decades of public conversations, political debate, urban policy and planning, and scholarly discovery, it is both a fascinating case study and an accessible introduction to the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A clear-eyed view of the struggles of turning knowledge into action, this book illuminates the places where theory and reality converge and presents an approach to municipal development, planning, and governance that takes seriously the urgent need to address climate change and injustice. Addressing a wide variety of topics and themes, including energy, diversity, economic development, and ecological health, Sustainability Matters is both a critique of current practice and a vision for the future that uses the city of Calgary as a microcosm to address issues faced by cities around the world. This is essential reading not only for every Calgarian working for a vibrant and sustainable future, but for all those interested in in the future of cities in a post-carbon world.

Humans are not living within our ecological means. We are using the earth’s resources at a pace that cannot be maintained. We have already seen evidence of the fallout associated with ecological overconsumption and continued abuse of environmental systems will create increasing challenges both today and into the future. Our depletion of natural systems minimizes the possibilities available to future generations who are expected to somehow rely on innovation and ingenuity for their survival. Yet, despite the challenges we face, governments, individuals, non-profits, educational institutions, and corporations are all heralding the promise of sustainable development to save our environmental systems from collapse while allowing for uninterrupted economic growth. Today, the concept of sustainability is a widespread goal that nearly everyone supports. At the same time, almost no one means the same thing when they use the term. Sustainability is so broad and overly used that it seems to mean everything to everyone. The result is that the concept has lost its meaning. In this book, the authors examine the misuses and abuses of "sustainability" and seek to refine and clarify the concept. The authors offer a new definition of sustainability – what they call neo-sustainability – to help guide policies and practices that respect the primacy of the environment, the natural limits of the environment, and the relationship between environmental, social, and economic systems.

There is a strange disconnect between the scientific consensus and the public mind on intelligence testing. Just mention IQ testing in polite company, and you'll sternly be informed that IQ tests don't measure anything "real", and only reflect how good you are at doing IQ tests; that they ignore important traits like "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences"; and that those who are interested in IQ testing must be elitists, or maybe something more sinister. Yet the scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world's top scientific journals. This book will offer an entertaining introduction to the state of the art in intelligence and IQ, and will show how we have arrived at what we know from a century's research. It will engage head-on with many of the criticisms of IQ testing by describing the latest high-quality scientific research, but will not be a simple point-by-point rebuttal: it will make a positive case for IQ research, focusing on the potential benefits for society that a better understanding of intelligence can bring.

Mathematics often gets a bad press. Describing someone as 'calculating' or 'rational' is hardly as flattering as being labelled 'artistic' or 'creative' and mathematicians in movies or novels are often portrayed as social misfits who rarely get the guy or girl. No wonder some folks say 'oh I don't care for mathematics, I was never any good at it' with a wistful sense of pride. Yet professional mathematicians talk of the subject differently. They look for elegant solutions to problems, revel in playing around with mathematical ideas and talk of the creative nature of mathematics. As the Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaya said "It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul." So why is there such a gap between the views of everyday folks and professional mathematicians? Part of the problem lies in how most of us were taught mathematics in school. The mathematics served up there is presented as a series of de-contextualised, abstract ideas, wrested from the human struggles and interactions that gave birth to the ideas. Through looking at some of the history of mathematics, psychological studies into how we come to know mathematics and key ideas in mathematics itself, the intent of this book is, if not to make the reader fall in love with mathematics, then at least to come to understand its nature a little better, and perhaps care a little more for it. In short, this book explores the human side of maths.

We are all risk takers. In life and in business, human attitudes towards risk are terrifyingly irrational. We hugely over-estimate short-term risks (standing near a cliff edge, or selling to someone who may not be credit worthy) but we under-estimate long-term risks (smoking, or acquiring a large company). This book seeks to understand risk from the human perspective. Why do we decide the things that we do, and how can we do it differently or better? This book should be required reading not just for students of business or economics, but for anyone faced with making important decisions.