The roots of sustainability

Academic Questions

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 20-53

  Ricketts, Glenn M ^a,b  

^a Raritan Valley Community College   (United States)

^b NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84873566391     PISSN: 08954852     EISSN: 19364709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12129-009-9151-5     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
2. In preparing this article, I am especially indebted to the groundbreaking work of Charles Rubin, whose 1994 book, The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994), provides a useful overview and thoughtful critique of the environmentalist movement.
3. Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), 10.
4. Ibid., 125.
5. A useful timeline of "Milestones in Environmental Protection" can be found at http://www.factmonster.com/spot/earthdaytimeline.html#1930.
6. Gro Harlem Brundtland et al., Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). A full version of the report is also available at Center for a World in Balance (http://worldinbalance.net/home.php), http://worldinbalance.net/intagreements/1987-brundtland.php
7. Murray Bookchin [Lewis Herber, pseud.], Our Synthetic Environment (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962).
8. Murray Bookchin, "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought," published in Comment, the author's newsletter, in 1964.
9. See Earth First! (http://earthfirst.com/).
10. Murray Bookchin, "What Is Social Ecology?" in Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. Michael E. Zimmerman and J. Baird Callicott (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), http://greenfrombelow.wordpress.com/murray-bookchin-what-is-social-ecology/.
11. Lynn White Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science 155, issue 3767, March 10, 1967, 1206, http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/lwhite.htm.
12. Ibid., 1207.
13. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, Inc.1968), prologue
14. Ibid., 66-67.
15. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 14.
16. Ehrlich, Population Bomb, prologue.
17. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology, 191-92.
18. See "Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962," http://www.campusactivism.org/server-new/uploads/porthuron.htm. For University of California materials on the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, visit http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificafsm.html
19. Environmental Media Association (http://www.ema-online.org/), About EMA, http://www.ema-online.org/about_us.php.
20. Franklin Russell, "The Totalitarian Ecologist," Life, November 5, 1971, 18, http://books.google.com/books?id=FkAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18-IA2&lpg=PA18-IA2&dq=Franklin+Russell,+%E2%80%9CThe+Totalitarian+Ecologist&source=bl&ots=1Lwm1HhFur&sig=2f0qmqLUv7xjCYoGPUYmUUSrle4&hl=en&ei=0GsjS5WGKMXYlAepycGCCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Franklin%20Russell%2C%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Totalitarian%20Ecologist&f=false.
21. Started in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman-known as the Weathermen and later as the Weather Underground Organization-was an American radical Left organization whose goal was to create an underground revolutionary party for the violent overthrow of the American government and the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship.
22. For a contemporary account of these developments still worth reading, see Nathan Glazer, "Student Politics and the University," The Atlantic, July 1969, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196907/glazer.
23. See also Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)
24. Theodore J. Lowi, The Politics of Disorder (New York: Basic Books, 1971).
25. Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Random House, 1971), 28.
26. William Tucker, Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Press, 1982).
27. John Richard Neuhaus, In Defense of People: Ecology and the Seduction of Radicalism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971), see especially chap. 4 and 7.
28. James Ridgeway, The Politics of Ecology (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1970), 208.
29. Barry Weisberg, "The Politics of Ecology," in The Ecological Conscience: Values for Survival, ed. Robert Disch (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Incl., 1970), 155.
30. Ibid., 17.
31. Mobilization for Survival was a coalition of groups that came together after the end of the Vietnam War seeking to link opposition to nuclear power, the nuclear arms race, and the antiwar movement in general.
32. Editorial, New Alchemy Institute (now the Green Center), Journal of the New Alchemists 6 (1980), quoted in Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac, The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America's Power Players (Chicago: Regnery Gateway Books, 1985), 74.
33. Rocky Mountain Institute (http://www.rmi.org/rmi/) "is an independent, entrepreneurial nonprofit think- and-do tank™ that drives the efficient and restorative use of resources. Established in 1982 by Amory and Hunter Lovins, what began as a small group of colleagues focusing on energy solutions has since grown into a broad-based Institute with approximately 90 full-time staff, an annual budget of nearly $15 million, and a global reach," http://www.rmi.org/rmi/About+RMI.
34. Amory Lovins, quoted in Isaac and Isaac, Coercive Utopians, 74, from a piece that appeared in the Spring 1981 Amicus Journal (now On Earth), a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
35. The quote is attributable, by some accounts, to the famous oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau: "Human society is too diverse, national passions too strong, human aggression too deep-seated for peaceful and warlike atoms to stay divorced for too long. We cannot embrace one while abhorring the other; we must learn, if we want to live at all, to live without both."
36. See, for example, Ecofeminism, by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva (New York: Zed Books, 1993).
37. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1980; New York: HarperOne, 1990), 2.
38. Colleen McGuire and Cathleen McGuire, Ecofeminist Visions Emerging, EVE online (http://eve.enviroweb.org/), "What Is Ecofeminism Anyway?" http://eve.enviroweb.org/what_is/index.html.
39. For details on the People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, see http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/EJSUMMITwlecome.html, at the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University (http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/Welcome.html).
40. See http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html
41. Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1992).
42. See Martin W. Lewis, Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992).
43. See especially, Rubin, Green Crusade, chap. 4.
44. The Encyclopedia of Earth (http://www.eoearth.org/), "Deep Ecology," http://www.eoearth.org/article/Deep_ecology.
45. The eight principles of the "Deep Ecology Platform" formulated by Naess and Sessions, which can be found at http://www.deepecology.org/platform.htm on the Foundation for Deep Ecology Foundation website (http://www.deepecology.org/index.htm), are: 1) The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth; intrinsic value; inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. 2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. 3) Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. 4) Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. 5) The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. 6) Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. 7) The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great. 8) Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
46. Murray Bookchin, "Social Ecology versus 'Deep Ecology': A Challenge for the Ecology Movement," in Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project, nos. 4-5 (Summer 1987), http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html.
47. Brundtland et al., Our Common Future, 6.
48. Ibid., 34.
49. The Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms (http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/ index.html) uses "sustainability" in the following category under "military capability" (http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/data/m/03391.html): The ability to achieve a specified wartime objective (win a war or battle, destroy a target set). It includes four major components: force structure, modernization, readiness, and sustainability. a. force structure-Numbers, size, and composition of the units that comprise US defense forces; e.g., divisions, ships, air wings. b. modernization-Technical sophistication of forces, units, weapon systems, and equipments. c. unit readiness-The ability to provide capabilities required by the combatant commanders to execute their assigned missions. This is derived from the ability of each unit to deliver the outputs for which it was designed. d. sustainability-The ability to maintain the necessary level and duration of operational activity to achieve military objectives. Sustainability is a function of providing for and maintaining those levels of ready forces, materiel, and consumables necessary to support military effort. See also readiness.
50. This diagram made its first appearance in Edward B. Barbier, "The Concept of Sustainable Economic Development," Environmental Conservation 14, no. 2, (1987): 101-110.
51. See Majah-Leah Ravago, James Roumasset and Arsenio Baliscom, "Economic Policy for Sustainable Development vs. Greedy Growth and Preservationism" (Working Paper No. 09-09, University of Hawaii, revised October 29, 2009), 3, http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_09-9.pdf
52. Wilfred Beckerman, A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth (Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 2002), xiii.
53. See http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=34756&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html and http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html.
54. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 269.
55. Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/), "1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," statement issued November 1992, http://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html.
56. Second Nature: Education for Sustainability (http://www.secondnature.org/).
57. Second Nature: Education for Sustainability, Mission Statement, http://www.secondnature.org/about/
58. American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/), Text of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/about/commitment.
59. David W. Orr, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994), 27.
60. Ibid., 41.
61. Andres R. Edwards, The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2005), 17.
62. Ibid., 9.
63. Ibid., 8.
64. Michael Crichton, "Environmentalism as Religion," address to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, September 15, 2003, http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html.
65. Freeman Dyson, "The Question of Global Warming," New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494.
66. Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000)