Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability Matters

by Randall R. Curren, Ellen Metzger

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.

Genres: Philosophy

307 pages, Paperback

Published February 2, 2018

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book for what it was and what it addressed. I’m still so thrilled to have found a book on the intersection of sustainability and philosophy. Overall, I found the book incredibly enlightening on numerous topics around ecological and throughput sustainability, human well-being, ethics, and meaningful education. The breadth of this book is ambitious. It was tedious in some parts and lacking in strong conclusive statements, but overall it was very well organized. Below is my long-winded summary of the book and short takeaways of each chapter.

Summary
We have to recognize that we are collectively living in ways that are diminishing opportunities for our generation and future generations to live well. Humanity has never faced a challenge as great in scale, peril, or complexity as human-induced climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in their 2013-2014 Fifth Assessment Report that “Humans are changing the climate, and it is extremely likely that we are the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century.” Global deforestation, desertification, overfishing, loss of wetlands, and growing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels make climate disruption the most serious problem facing humanity. As the health of global commons declines, life will become more difficult for everyone. This makes it not only morally compulsory but prudent to favor global coordination to address the problems of sustainability. Sustainability is ultimately not a science but an art of social coordination. If taking care not to harm others is a fundamental duty of common morality, then it means we are morally obligated to try and solve the challenges of sustainability we face today so that everyone is able to live well, now and in the future.

Ch 1. What Sustainability Is and Why It Matters
Sustainability is the preservation of opportunities to live well, both now and in the future, and relies on our ability to maintain the long term stability and capacity of the natural systems we rely on. Our living practices, sustainable or not, are shaped by cultural norms.

Ch. 2 Obstacles to Sustainability
Problems of sustainability are largely problems of social coordination. Enforcement of coordinative principles is needed to solve this collective action problem, and economist Elinor Ostrom argues this can be done most effectively through polycentric multiscale self-organization. This has already worked for a variety of environmental issues like fight against CFC’s and fishing/forestry certifications.

Ch. 3 Sustainability Ethics and Justice
Beginning with Kant’s theory of moral constructivism, the authors develop from tenets of basic moral duty the principles of sustainability ethics. If taking care not to harm others is a fundamental duty of common morality, then we are obligated to live sustainably, in a way that does not diminish opportunities for others in this world to live well. From Rawls’ theory of justice, a just government needs to promote sustainability by providing opportunities for all citizens to live well by satisfying their basic psychological needs, not necessarily by continuously increasing material wealth. The tl;dr of Sustainability Ethics as crafted by the authors is to act in ways that make sure humanity is sustainable, to seek fair terms of cooperation to promote sustainability, and to not make people reliant on unsustainable means.

Ch. 4 Complexity and the Structure of Opportunity
Rising complexity is unsustainable because it requires increased consumption and yields declining marginal benefits. A solution is voluntary simplification and more emphasis on cross disciplinary learning. Allowing for equal opportunity to learn and do good work is part of enabling people to live well.

Ch. 5 Managing Complexity: Three Case Studies
Sustainability problems are systemic action problems that need to be addressed through collaborative, provisional, and adaptive management, rather than traditional command and control approaches. The three case studies on energy, water, and food highlight the strengths and weaknesses and ultimately the necessity of collective action for managing sustainability problems.

Ch. 6 An Education in Sustainability
An education in sustainability needs to be multidisciplinary, combining geology, sociology, economics, technology, ethics, and more. It needs to teach self reflection, critical thinking, creativity, and prepare students to be engaged participants in the global cooperation needed to address sustainability issues. Everyone is entitled to an education in sustainability because everyone deserves to know how to live well in their world. To the authors, our greatest hope for creating a more sustainable world is by improving education in sustainability, thereby bolstering each subsequent generation’s ability to develop a more sustainable world.

[Kenneth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title should have been a give away of the underlying bias of this book, namely the assumption of Business as Usual and the continuing human domination of the planet, just on gentler terms. In this pretentiously written book ("sustainability pertains to the totality of practices of human collectivities." Collectivities?) the words "Sixth Mass Extinction" do not occur a single time. The fact that 40% of all the species on Earth are at risk of extinction by the end of the century is not mentioned a single time, nor is the fact that the current extinction rate is about 10,000 times the long term, sustainable rate. The fact that humans have changed the Earth more in the past 200 years, a mere 0.00000044% of total earth history than it has changed in the past 1 billion years is not even mentioned a single time. The fundamental meaning of sustainable MUST be arrived at in a long time frame and MUST be made from a frame of reference including all life and all living systems, not just human. The Earth does not exist for human benefit alone. We are one of millions of species, and all have the same inherent right to be here and thrive that we do. I found this POV completely lacking in the book. Many of the seminal thinkers and writers of Deep Ecology, like Joanna Macy and Thomas Berry, are not even mentioned or included in the bibliography. There was not a single reference I could find to the rich, thousands of year history of indigenous approaches to sustainability. The key words "Seven Generations", the single best statement of a sustainable living philosophy, are not even mentioned in the book, or referenced in the notes or bibliography.

I gave the book 2 stars because any book about sustainability is better than none, and I actually think the authors were trying to be informative and make a positive difference.

[Robert Irish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every book on sustainability seems to want to put a positive spin on where we are headed as a species. In this one, the focus is on what is required in education, but with little regard for the realities that ignore this. It’s clear that they’ve thought a lot about what is needed but that line of thought is less important than how it might ever be implemented.
The philosopher feels the need to build on and critique John Rawls, but that entire piece of the book adds little of substance to the overall argument. The case studies in the later chapters are interesting. The focus on water is good and helps to make the cases comparable.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense and interesting. I found the last few chapters more interesting with their case studies and applications to real life scenarios. Interested to learn more about "wicked" and "tame" problems. Will likely need to reread or take better notes as many of the technical parts where a struggle to understand.