University of Illinois, 2012. β 637 p.
Foreword
Sustainability is derived from two Latin words: sus which means up and tenere which means to hold. In its modern form it is a concept born out of the desire of humanity to continue to exist on planet Earth for a very long time, perhaps the inde nite future. Sustainability is, hence, essentially and almost literally about holding up human existence. Possibly, the most succinct articulation of the issue can be found in the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The report entitled Our Common Future primarily addressed the closely related issue of Sustainable Development. The report, commonly know as the Brundtland Report after the Commission Chair Gro Harlem Brundtland, stated that Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Following the concept of Sustainable Development, the commission went on to add Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a xed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus, in the nal analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will. Sustainability and the closely related concept of Sustainable Development are, therefore, very human constructs whose objective is to insure the very survival of humanity in a reasonably civilized mode of existence. Here, however, I will focus primarily on Sustainability.
The seriousness of the issue of Sustainability has become increasingly important and obvious over the last fty years driven by an increasing human population with increasing per capita resource consumption on a planet which is after all nite. Note that the World population increased from approximately 2.5 billion in 1950 to about 7.0 billion in 2012. Furthermore, total World consumption expenditures rose from about 171 Billion in 1960 to approximately 44,000 billions in 2010 expressed in 2012 U.S. dollars. This is not to say that consumption is necessarily bad, but rather that there are so many people consuming so many resources that both the World environment and human consumption will have to be managed with far more care and delicacy than has been necessary in all of the historical past.
Contents
Introduction to Sustainability: Humanity and the Environment
The Evolution of Environmental Policy in the United States
Climate and Global Change
Biosphere
Physical Resources: Water, Pollution, and Minerals
Environmental and Resource Economics
Modern Environmental Management
Sustainable Energy Systems
Problem-Solving, Metrics, and Tools for Sustainability
Sustainability: Ethics, Culture, and History
Sustainable Infrastructure