Ecological footprint analysis has been used worldwide in a variety of organizations educational institutions) and at different levels organizations, cities, regions, countries). Universities also calculated their ecological footprints, for various reasons: e.g. to answer the societal appeal to integrate sustainability into their core business, to perform a sustainability assessment of their operations, to use as an educational tool with students, to use for policy development. In general, performing an ecological footprint analysis is a way for (...) higher education to ‘practice what they preach’, to monitor sustainability performance and raise awareness among the university's community. This article focuses on the calculation of the ecological footprint and discusses the possibilities to use this tool for campus operations, educational purposes and policy development. (shrink)

Our life, by its biological nature, is in an indestructible dependence on energy. At the same time, energy is an important criterion on which we report the progress of humanity. Historically, progress divides our world into distinct stages, called Industrial Revolutions. Each stage has encompassed more fuels, new technologies, inventions, humans behavioural changes and much more worrying environmental issues. Energy techniques, new extractions and transportation improved in nineteenth and during twenty-century energy consumption, especially electricity, rise significantly with, on the one (...) hand, a continuous influx of fossil fuels and, on the other hand, continuous increase of the quantities of toxic waste, visible or not, from the other industrial branches and human activities, consequences of the energetical progress. The purpose of this paper is to point out some aspects regarding ecological footprints of electrical industry and energy industries during their development and to establish connections between the distinct role of energy in each period of industrialization and its impact on the environment, education, science, arts and cultural dimensions of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ecological Footprints: An Essential Franciscan Guide for Faith and Sustainable Living by Dawn Nothwehr, and: The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity by Willis JenkinsJeffrey MorganEcological Footprints: An Essential Franciscan Guide for Faith and Sustainable Living Dawn Nothwehr Collegevile, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012. 368pp. $39.95The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity Willis Jenkins Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013. 304pp. $34.95Dawn (...) M. Nothwehr, OSF, and Willis Jenkins have written, so it seems, incommensurable books about the relation of religion to environmental problems. The central issue between them is whether or not it is possible to move from a theological tradition to fitting, ecologically responsible moral action. Nothwehr is quite confident that we can, and the first half of her Ecological Footprints: An Essential Franciscan Guide for Faith and Sustainable Living is, as the title suggests, a primer in Franciscan theology that moves toward a theology of sustainable living. After two opening chapters on scripture and the environment, the distinctly Franciscan quality of the guide really begins as Nothwehr surveys, over four chapters, the cornerstones of Franciscan theology: Clair, Francis, Bonaventure, and Scotus. Nothwehr’s main effort in these chapters is to draw out major themes in each figure’s work and to suggest how these themes might inform a contemporary ethics of sustainability. With heavy reliance on contemporary scholarship, Nothwehr covers significant ground: creation, the Trinity, Christology, sacramental theology, deification, panentheism, theological anthropology, and more. The effect is a bit dizzying, but a few focal lenses emerge. Across these major figures there is, Nothwehr contends, a profound commitment to the interrelatedness of all things, kinship throughout cosmos, [End Page 219] and the need for mutual respect among all creatures; all this is grounded in a vision of the Incarnation as the divine affirmation and deification of all things (121). That is, the Incarnation is the fullest revelation of the mutual love between the persons of the Trinity that shines forth throughout the creation and that summons each of us to treat all creatures as equals, as brothers and sisters united in one household (94). The ethical takeaway is straightforward: if we really held these (or similar) theological convictions, our ecological habits should follow suit (see, for example, 86).The difficulty is that environmental problems are complex and confuse our moral agency; furthermore, there is a general “spiritual malaise” that reinforces an entrenched apathy to do anything about those problems. The second half of the book takes up these complex problems, and it is there that Nothwehr hits her stride. Chapters 7 through 10 are all well-done exposés that guide the reader through the intricacies of subtle, systemic injustices that conspire to reinforce global warming (chapter 7), the global water crisis (chapter 8), problems of food access and security (chapter 9), and the crisis of peak oil and sustainable energy (chapter 10). The connection between these exposés and the earlier chapters on particular Franciscan theologians is loose but significant. While the earlier themes are not so much worked into the later chapters as they are very briefly referenced and invoked here and there, the point is that these themes from this tradition have the capacity to awaken us from our malaise and help us take responsibility for our world. In short, the Franciscan tradition, as a distinct theological worldview, can provide both motivation and a fair amount of practical guidance to help us confront the environmental problems facing us.Nothwehr’s book is the kind of book Willis Jenkins claims he initially set out to write: a book that helps us see how “theology matters to processes of cultural change” and provides “grammars of belief” sufficient to “generate satisfactory responses to representative problems of human power” (vii). But in setting out to write such a book, Jenkins found that such problems overwhelm the moral repertoires of religious traditions. Environmental problems, in particular, frustrate attempts simply to put ideas into practice. This is not to say religious traditions can only be found wanting before the contemporary slate of overwhelming problems; rather, such problems provide religious traditions with opportunities for constructive reevaluation and renewal of their... (shrink)

According to the widely accepted principles of beneficence and distributive justice, I argue that healthcare providers and facilities have an ethical duty to reduce the ecological footprint of the services they provide. I also address the question of whether the reductions in footprint need or should be patient-facing. I review Andrew Jameton and Jessica Pierce’s claim that achieving ecological sustainability in the healthcare sector requires rationing the treatment options offered to patients. I present a number of (...) reasons to think that we should not ration health care to achieve sufficient reductions in a society’s overall consumption of ecological goods. Moreover, given the complexities of ecological rationing, I argue that there are good reasons to think that the ethical duty to reduce the ecological footprint of health care should focus on only nonpatient-facing changes. I review a number of case studies of hospitals who have successfully retrofitted facilities to make them more efficient and reduced their resource and waste streams. (shrink)

As Cuba achieves one of the lowest per capita ecological footprints in the world, the country’s overshoot day was on 1 December 2019, while some European countries already reach this limit in February (e.g., Luxembourg), monitoring the environmental preferences of the Cuban younger generation may offer valuable behavioral or pedagogical insights into such a society. As accepted standardized measures exist in the scales of 2-Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) and the General Ecological Behavior (GEB), both measures are following the (...) necessary psychometric requirement, as they have the unique advantage of repeated independent confirmation (and thus provide an external validity). These captured 40 items of reported behavior originating in six subscales that total in a single main cover score. The first one (2-MEV) monitors individual biocentric and anthropocentric preferences with a 20 item-set by relying upon these two higher-order factors of “Preservation” (PRE) and “Utilization” (UTL). Although many language versions already exist (33 in the case of the 2-MEV) for verifying validities and reliabilities of both scales, a country such as Cuba may affirm that this is due to expected cultural differences as well as their exceptionally low global footprint. Additionally, neither the individual connectedness with nature nor the diurnal preferences within the linear structural model showed a substantial relationship to PRE or UTL. Nevertheless, all the regression scores follow the expected positive or negative directions, albeit not all the fit scores turned out as satisfactorily. Apparently, the applied measures secure a good basis for measuring the attitudinal and behavioral framework, but will need further fine tuning to completely monitor the environmental preferences of Cuban adolescents. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive coverage of the role of ecological constraints in limiting the availability of natural resources for economic development. It discusses in detail the notion of sustainable development, the concept of ecological footprints, and population theory. It also analyses how the development of technology, policies, and institutions can relax these constraints in the context of major resources. The analytical discussion is carried out both at the conceptual and theoretical level and also at the applied level (...) in the context of Indian development. Addressing challenges arising from ecological limits, the book engages with the dynamics of and policies for conservation of an entire range of major resources-land and soil, water, forests, biodiversity, energy, non-energy, material, and waste absorption. It identifies the role of knowledge, values, human capital, and institutions in overcoming nature's constraints. This book has a good potential to be used as a supplementary reader in universities offering courses on environment and economics. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the concept of responsibility within sustainable consumption. The paper was inspired by interviews with individuals engaged in community action for sustainability, where respondents held a rather individualistic conception of responsibility. In order to develop a deeper understanding of responsibility I compare sustainable consumption, environmental justice and ecological citizenship literatures. This leads me to develop a new conceptual framework which explains responsibility in relation to the ecological footprint. This framework recognises both the responsibility (...) of the individual for sustainable practice and the limitations on individual action due to their context. It also allows for differentiation between individuals' responsibilities given people's circumstances and their ability to engage with change. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of ecological citizenship by looking at two sets of arguments. Those justifying the concept itself, and those criticizing the need to devise a new concept of citizenship and political community in relation to ecological problems. The paper argues for a shift in focus: instead of searching for a new concept of citizenship, we should adopt a different perspective capable of capturing the explanatory potentials of citizenship-related notions - especially citizenship action and political space (...) in which it is constituted - in the context of contemporary global ecological problems. (shrink)

This paper attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest a conceptual methodology with which ethics of corporate environmental management tools can be considered. The method includes two stages that are required for a shift away from the current dominant unsustainable paradigm and toward a more sustainable paradigm. The first stage is paradigmatic, metaphoric and normative. The second stage is a practical stage, which in turn, (...) is analytic, descriptive and positive. The method is applied to common industrial metabolism tools of ecological footprints (EF), environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and industrial ecology (IE). The application shows that all three tools can be used in business ethics, in particular, when the first stage of the method is applied to their use. (shrink)

Climate change confronts us with our most pressing challenges today. The global consensus is clear that human activity is mostly to blame for its harmful effects, but there is disagreement about what should be done. While no shortage of proposals from ecological footprints and the polluter pays principle to adaptation technology and economic reforms, each offers a solution – but is climate change a problem we can solve? In this provocative new book, these popular proposals for ending or overcoming (...) the threat of climate change are shown to offer no easy escape and each rest on an important mistake. Thom Brooks argues that a future environmental catastrophe is an event we can only delay or endure, but not avoid. This raises new ethical questions about how we should think about climate change. How should we reconceive sustainability without a status quo? Why is action more urgent and necessary than previously thought? What can we do to motivate and inspire hope? Many have misunderstood the kind of problem that climate change presents – as well as the daunting challenges we must face and overcome. Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World is a critical guide on how we can better understand the fragile world around us before it is too late. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, climate justice, environmental policy and environmental ethics. "This book offers a rare combination of tough-mindedness, analytic rigor, and passion as it tackles the greatest challenge of our time―climate change. For Brooks, it’s past time to acknowledge that climate change cannot be solved though the careful selection of good polices. Climate change is an unavoidable tragedy that we must endure but may be able to survive. Offering a program that emphasizes flexibility and adaptation, Brooks brings original insights to a debate that too long has been bogged down in wishful thinking and empty scholasticism." Professor Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago's Law School. (shrink)

An environmental history of Buddhism. The book addresses the basic concerns of environmental history: the history of human thought about "nature" or "the environment"; the influence of environmental factors on human history; and the effect of human-caused environmental changes on human society.

Solutions to the urban problems of the future must assume the new reality of megacities. The inevitable technological progress must find a balance with the ‘bio-ecological' recovery of the natural environment. In the vertical bionic city, all these occur; bio intelligence and giant structures of the city are merged into a single. These structures try to survive by relying on working together as a single organism alive, as ants work in their nest. What makes them so efficient? What makes (...) them work all together? What will be the future form of our building environment? Our future habitable environment is more likely to be in a vertical built form, against the horizontal city form. There are many reasons to believe that the new vertical cities will be more sustainable than the conventional horizontal cities. If this logic is accepted as the future scenario, then the question facing all planners and architects today is: Should we take this built form and make it more socially accepted, physically habitable, and human? This paper examines some of the key implications of this scenario, and the criteria for the design and planning of our future sustainable built environment as the vertical cities in the sky. (shrink)

On the basis of ecological footprint theory and tourism ecological footprint theory, the sustainable development indexes such as ecological footprint, ecological carrying capacity, ecological deficit, and ecological surplus of the research area were calculated and the long-term change pattern of each index was analyzed. This paper shows that the ecological footprint of the research area increases year by year, but the ecological footprint is always smaller than the (...) ecological carrying capacity, indicating that the area is still in the state of sustainable development. However, the per capita ecological surplus shows a decreasing trend year by year, indicating that the sustainable development of the region is getting worse. This paper proposes a reordering method of tourist attractions based on heterogeneous information fusion, and realizes the retrieval and reordering of tourist attractions based on user query and fusion of heterogeneous information, so as to help users make travel decisions. In view of the shortage of tourism commercial websites to passively provide scenic spot information, this paper puts forward a scenic spot retrieval method based on query words to enable users to obtain scenic spot information according to their needs, and constructs a tourist consumer data analysis system. The preprocessing methods and methods adopted by the data preprocessing module are analyzed in detail, and the algorithms used in the travel route analysis and consumer spending ability analysis are described in detail. The data of tourism consumers are analyzed by this system, and the results are evaluated. (shrink)

Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...) our countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, adopt plant-based diets, and otherwise reduce our individual emissions. But this approach has recently been challenged by authors like Bernward Gesang and Julia Nefsky. Gesang contends that it may be genuinely impossible for our individual emissions to make a morally relevant difference. Nefsky argues more generally that the expected consequences approach cannot adequately explain our reasons not to do things if there is no precise fact of the matter about whether their outcomes are harmful. -/- In the following chapter, author Howard Nye defends the expected consequences approach against these objections. Nye contends that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have metaphysically indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. He argues, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to deliver the result that we have the same moral reasons to reduce our emissions in Gesang’s scenario as in deterministic scenarios. Nye also shows how the expected consequences approach can draw upon these extensions to handle Nefsky’s concern about the absence of precise facts concerning whether the outcomes of certain acts are harmful. The author concludes that the expected consequences approach provides a fully adequate account of our moral reasons to take both political and personal action to reduce our ecological footprints. (shrink)

In pursuit of sustainable living, ethics researchers as well as consumers themselves have challenged the status quo of consumption as an institution. Fueled by global economic, environmental, and societal concerns, responsible consumption has become an integral part of the sustainability and consumption ethics literature. One movement toward sustainability consists of confining living space into a smaller ecological footprint. Although motivations for such a lifestyle have been examined, little research has investigated the process of how members of the tiny (...) house movement reconfigure learned consumption practices. This study investigates tiny house dwellers’ transformational experiences through the theoretical lens of contemporary institutional change. Qualitative analysis reveals that these challengers of the status quo face significant normative, regulatory, and cognitive hurdles. However, by engaging in sensemaking, validation, and change agency practices, tiny house dwellers have attempted to legitimize a new way of sustainable living that can be in conflict with existing institutions. Implications and future research are discussed in terms of how examining institutional change processes can be a vital part of ethics and sustainability research. Implications are also provided for how marketing organizations can consider modifying their market offerings to capitalize on this segment of society. (shrink)

While it is still some way from commercial production, in vitro meat is drawing significant media coverage. IVM’s promise is meat without suffering, with a diminished ecological footprint and potential for addressing global food shortages. For all its novelty, IVM has been present in creative literature since at least 1881, with a particular concentration of references appearing in Cold War science fiction. After an initial survey of the literary pre-history of in vitro meat, this chapter focuses on Frederik (...) Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s 1952 novel The Space Merchants, a stinging critique of post-war programmes of agricultural intensification that revolves around Chicken Little, a decades-old “hundred-ton lump of grey-brown rubbery flesh”. Although the novel nostalgically valorises a lost pastoral world of purportedly authentic human–animal relations, The Space Merchants is not a straightforwardly conservative text, however, but one which raises crucial questions about the cultural meaning and ideological function of IVM. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments are proliferating at an astonishing rate. Unsurprisingly, the number of meaningful studies addressing the social impacts of AI applications in several fields has been remarkable. More recently, several contributions have started exploring the ecological impacts of AI. Machine learning systems do not have a neutral environmental cost, so it is important to unravel the ecological footprint of these techno-scientific developments. In this chapter, we discuss the sustainability of AI from environmental ethics approaches. We (...) examine the moral trade-offs that AI may cause in different moral dimensions and analyse prominent conflicts that may arise from human and more-than-human-centred concerns. (shrink)

The recent global increase in environmental regulation does not necessarily signal improvement in firms’ ecological imprints. Like many markets, the Arab world is struggling to implement environmental compliance measures among local firms. For Arab countries, the reliance solely on formal policies to improve local firms’ ecological footprints may be risky given the evident institutional challenges to enforce environmental regulations, specially post the Arab Spring. Drawing from the literature highlighting the merits of combining formal and informal controls to ensure (...) successful implementation of a strategy, we argue that the emphasis for regulation must be accompanied by an emphasis for developing environmental ethics of individuals, who are the expected implementers of any environmental policy. In that light, we propose that the Eco-Islam phenomenon can serve as an influential and effective foundation for building organizational cultures with stronger environmental ethics among local small and medium enterprises. We explain the underlying maxims of Eco-Islam then conduct qualitative research among experts preaching or practicing the concept to gain better insights into the potential of leveraging it in Muslim-majority Arab countries. Finally, we conclude with insightful implications for local SMEs in the region. (shrink)

Present laws and regulations even in democratic countries are not sufficient to prevent the grave environmental threats we face. Further, even environmental ethics, when they remain anthropocentric cannot propose a better approach. I argue that, taking in considerations the precautionary principle, and adopting the perspective of post-normal science, the ethics of integrity suggest a better way to reduce ecological threats and promote the human good globally.

The main goal of this article is to explain the transdisciplinary training model developed at the National University of Education in Ecuador, based on the ancestral worldviews of Buen Vivir. Good Living is a philosophical and political concept of the Kichwa indigenous peoples in the Andean Region, where human beings are interconnected with planet Earth and the whole cosmos. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, in order to (...) face climate change and to restore the ecological footprint. This article first unifies scientific knowledge with ancestral wisdom, creating an inter-epistemological dialogue using a transdisciplinary approach. Second, the article explores the epistemological notions of transdisciplinary education: self-training, hetero-training, eco-training, and onto-training. Third, the article argues that as a result, Educational Sciences of Good Living emerged to design regenerative cultures that face socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene age. In sum, the article argues that training transdisciplinary educators implies an intercultural, decolonial, and biocentric approach that promotes their inner spiritual self-awareness, among other perceptive, affective, emotional, rhetorical, poetic, epistemic, creative, artistic, cognitive, and philosophical dimensions. (shrink)

Travis Rieder's Toward a Small Family Ethic confronts the effects of population growth and addresses what individual procreative obligations might follow from it. In this review, I summarize the main arguments that Rieder deploys to defend his position that those with large ecological footprints morally ought to follow a small family ethic. I express sympathy with some of his claims and praise the book's accessibility, but its short length inevitably means that some important issues are omitted or given only (...) superficial treatment. I highlight a few of those issues at the end of the review. (shrink)

To what extent is any individual morally obligated to live environmentally sustainably? In answering this, I reject views I see as constituting two extremes. On one, it depends entirely on whether there exists a collective agreement; and if no such agreement exists, no one is obligated to reduce her/his consumption or pollution unilaterally. On the other, the lack of a collective agreement is morally irrelevant, and regardless of what others are doing, each person is obligated to limit her/his pollution and (...) consumption to a level that would be sustainable if everyone were to act in this way. I argue that the truth is somewhere between these, but that a very precise specification of the extent of one's responsibility is impossible. Roughly, what can be said is that each individual ought constantly to strive to do more than she/he does currently and to push her/himself into new, uncomfortable territory, though no one is obligated to martyr her/himself for an environmental cause. (shrink)

Contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy utilization. As federal and state incentives for investments in RE technologies become more prevalent, RE sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy. RE utilization is recognized as a key component of “green” product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption. Yet, despite consistent evidence that corporate sustainability (...) initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance, the limited research that examines associations between RE initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established. Drawing on the natural resource-based view of the firm, we examine the association between RE utilization and firm financial performance over time. Annual ROI, Tobin’s Q, and operating margin for large U.S. firms identified as exceptional users of RE in the EPA’s Fortune 500 Top Green Power Partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7-year period and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings. Our research advances current knowledge about the influence of RE utilization by demonstrating that top RE user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors. As such, the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of RE utilization. (shrink)

Unsustainability is an old problem - human societies have collapsed with disturbing regularity throughout history. I argue that a genetic predisposition for unsustainability is encoded in certain human physiological, social and behavioral traits that once conferred survival value but are now maladaptive. A uniquely human capacity - indeed, necessity - for elaborate cultural myth-making reinforces these negative biological tendencies. Our contemporary, increasingly global myth, promotes a vision of world development centered on unlimited economic expansion fuelled by more liberalized trade. This (...) myth is not only failing on its own terms but places humanity on a collision course with biophysical reality - our ecological footprint already exceeds the human carrying capacity of Earth. Sustainability requires that we acknowledge the primitive origins of human ecological dys-function and seize conscious control of our collective destiny. The final triumph of enlightened reason and mutual compassion over scripted determinism would herald a whole new phase in human evolution. (shrink)

In this paper, we redefine the term luxus consumption to mean food waste and overconsumption leading to storage of body fat, health problems, and excess resource utilization. We develop estimates of the prevalence of luxus consumption and its environmental consequences using US food supply, agricultural, and environmental data and using procedures modeled after energetics analysis and ecological footprint analysis. Between 1983 and 2000, US food availability (food consumption including waste) increased by 18% or 600 kcal (2.51 MJ) per (...) person. This luxus consumption required 0.36 hectares (ha) of land and fishing area per capita, 100.6 million ha for the US population, and 3.1% of total US energy consumption. Luxus consumption increased more for particular foods, such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), 22% of which was used in carbonated beverages. As an example, the luxus consumption of sweetened soda, 31.8 l per capita, used 0.8% of the US corn crop (230,555 ha of land); 33.6 million kg of nitrogen fertilizer; 175,000 kg of Atrazine herbicide; 34 million kg of nitrogen fertilizer; 2.44 trillion kcal (10.2 PJ) for production inputs and post-harvest handling; and led to 4.9 million metric tons of soil erosion. Diet soft drink luxus consumption was 43.9 l/capita. Assuming half of US soft drink luxus consumption was bottled in plastic, the energy cost for plastics would have been 2.49 trillion kcal (10.4 PJ) in 2000. Total HFCS availability above baseline in 2000 required 4.6 times the resources used for soft drinks alone. This analysis suggests the utility and applicability of the concept of luxus consumption to environmental analysis and for estimating the effects of excess food utilization. (shrink)

One very important question about poverty is what rich people like us should do to fight it. In this article, I argue that we can, at little cost to ourselves, give tithes of our money and live within our so-called ‘ecological footprint’. At the end of the article, it is argued that we should, morally, do these things.

This article puts into conversation Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism and a particular expression of “African animism,” drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana. Nietzsche’s perspectivism extends interpretation beyond the human species into natural processes. Like perspectivism, African animism troubles the binaries—body/soul, nature/culture—that permeate anthropocentric thinking. Human-nonhuman relations are refigured as socio-ecological relations: the earth may be regarded as life-generating ancestors; baobab trees may approach humans as kin. These two images of the world intersect, but they do not mesh together. Nietzsche (...) adopts perspectivism as active intersections between dynamic processes, within an open universe that has not been predesigned for humans. Animism tends toward a world of personalized relationships that would reach harmony if we would only lighten our ecological footprint. I draw upon such resonances to advance a new ethic of experiential environmentalism that treats ecological threats as lived risks and shared experiences with a lively and communicating “environment.”. (shrink)

Environmentally oriented philosophers and educational theorists are now attempting to clarify how the ideas of John Dewey can be used as the basis for changing cultural practices that contribute to the ecological crisis. Although Dewey can be interpreted as a nonanthropocentric thinker and his method of experimental inquiry can be used in eco-management projects, Dewey should not be regarded as an environmental and eco-justice philosopher—and by extension, his followers should not be regarded in this light. (1) Dewey’s emphasis on (...) an experimental mode of inquiry did not take account of the knowledge systems of other cultures—particularly cultures that are more ecologically centered. (2) Dewey’s understanding of language prevented him from recognizing how the root metaphors (meta-cognitive schemata) he took for granted were also the basis, with several exceptions, of the Industrial Revolution. (3) Dewey’s failure to understand the complex nature of tradition, including the different ways in which intergenerational knowledge is shared and renewed, makes it difficult for his followers to address a central eco-justice issue—which is to regenerate within diverse cultural communities the non-commodified forms of knowledge, skills, and relationships that enable individuals and communities to have a smaller ecological footprint. (shrink)

When discussing the general inertia in climate change mitigation, it is common to approach the analysis either in terms of epistemic obstacles (climate change is too scientifically complex to be fully understood by all in its dramatic nature and/or to find space in the media) and/or moral obstacles (the causal link between polluting actions and social damage is too loose, both geographically and temporally, to allow individuals to understand the consequences of their emissions). In this chapter I maintain that both (...) categories of obstacles now play a secondary role: many people have a clear understanding of the physical and social dynamics involved in climate change. The main reason why so few manage to reduce their ecological footprint is an ethical short-circuit that does not allow most people to reveal their “true” climate-related preferences in their daily choices. This short-circuit manifests itself in two phenomena that can be analysed through the lens of moral psychology. First, as the possibility of anticipated utility approaches, individuals further discount expected future utility and may even reverse their preferences (due to the so-called immediacy multiplier, in addition to the better known and discussed future utility discounting). Second, individuals struggle to order their preferences transitively when presented with the opportunity to obtain small net marginal utilities in the short run. The intertemporal and collective structure of the climate problem creates fertile ground for both phenomena, which means that even those who are sincerely convinced of the need to contribute to climate change mitigation end up trapped in loops of procrastination, both first and second level. If, however, we can understand the origin of these phenomena, then we will be able to devise counteracting solutions that will speed up individual mitigation efforts. I will therefore briefly propose three ethical/public strategies to break the procrastination loop: pre-commitment; increasing the costs of marginal postponements; reducing the disutility of action that is likely to be postponed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 23-42 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming the Grip of Consumerism Stephanie KazaUniversity of VermontFor fifteen years the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D. C. has been publishing a review of the declining condition of the global environment (Brown et al. 1998). For the most part, the picture is not good. Much of the deterioration can be traced directly to human activities--urban expansion equates to species loss, (...) industrial manufacturing to air pollution, factory farming to water pollution, chemical agriculture to poisoned soil. Accelerating these environmental impacts are rapidly rising population numbers, increasingly efficient technologies, and consumption rates beyond the planet's capacity. These three have been linked by the equation I=PAT, or environmental impact=population size multiplied by affluence (or degree of consumption) multiplied by technology. Reduce any one of these and the impact drops; increase one or all three, and the impact rises, in some cases dramatically.Much of the conversation among scientists and technologists has focused on the P (population) and T (technology) parts of the equation, with grave concerns that rising population numbers are swamping earth systems, yet often with buoyant optimism that technological breakthroughs will solve everything. These two perspectives dominated political discussion for much of the 1960s and 1970s (Ehrlich et al. 1977 and Lovins 1977, among others). But by the 1980s the facts were incontrovertible: high rates of consumption were driving environmental destruction just as fast if not faster than rising population. At the 1992 Rio Summit in Brazil, representatives of southern countries demanded that high-consuming northern countries examine their own contribution to the environmental crisis rather than placing blame elsewhere. It is our obligation in the North to respond to these serious requests.How much do people in northern industrialized countries consume? Here are some indicator figures: Americans consume their average body weight (120 pounds) every day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, range lands, and forests (Ryan and Durning 1997, 5). In the United States, the number of shopping malls (close to 35,000) eclipsed the number of high schools in 1987 (Dunning 1992, 130). Since 1950 the per capita consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled, use of plastic has increased five times, use of aluminum seven times, and average airplane miles per person has soared 33-fold (Durning 1992, 29). As products have proliferated, we see the swelling ecological footprint behind each new thing: clear-cut forests replacing paper plantations in Thailand, toxic oil polluting native lands of Ecuador, women earning poverty wages assembling computer chips in [End Page 23] Malaysia--the stories are not as pretty as the products. Materials extraction, production, distribution, use, and waste disposal--all of these have ecological costs, many of which are life threatening.Why should Buddhists and Christians address consumption? For starters, it is a nonsectarian issue; responsibility cuts across denominations and religious belief systems. Collaboration of all kinds is needed to take apart this juggernaut of complex causes and conditions. I believe the Buddhist tradition has powerful analytical tools and spiritual practices which may be helpful in this undertaking. These may aid or inspire similar efforts explored through the Christian heritage. A survey of the landscape and the literature shows it is shockingly clear: the challenge here is enormous. It will require all the spiritual insight, dedication, and sheer stamina we can bring to it. This work cannot be done alone; we need each other's help to keep going through the many obstacles.To date, Buddhist initiatives in this conversation have been modest. Several popular books have brought Buddhist perspectives to bear on consumption issues, most notably E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1975) and Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild (1990). Both works popularize practices of simplicity and restraint, flavored by the exotic Western fascination with Eastern thought. Several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. have taken up particular sub-themes addressing over-consumption. Philip Kapleau has sounded an ethical call for vegetarianism based on the first precept, "no killing" (1982). Robert Aitken has taken a stand for reducing wants and needs to simplify... (shrink)

This article sets out to draft a preliminary sketch of an environmental history of photography, as opposed to a history of environmental photography. It shows that such a history should be rooted in a conceptualization of our geological epoch as the Capitalocene: the age of capital. Seen in this light, photography can be understood as part of a longer history of what the article describes – building on the work of activist and journalist Raj Patel and environmental historian Jason W. (...) Moore (2018) – as the ‘cheap image’. In this way, photography is shown to offer a succinct expression of the Cartesian dualism that Patel and Moore see as being at the heart of the Capitalocene: the externalized image of capital N nature that this world ecology necessitated. The article considers Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2022) a recent exhibition and catalogue that attempted to narrate in exhibition form a history of photography from such a perspective. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the work of several artists from this exhibition who are seen as exemplifying ‘metabolic realism’, a new critical photo-based artistic approach. (shrink)

The California power crisis and September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001 have reinvigorated debate over the electric power system’s vulnerabilities. But beyond the threat of terrorist attacks on nuclear power stations and the issue of insufficient power, a central, fossil-, and nuclear-based electric power infrastructure carries additional risks. These include aging transmission and distribution systems, environmental impacts, and the failure to bring power to 1.8 billion people in the developing world. Such vulnerabilities could be lessened through small-scale, decentralized technologies. These (...) micropower units exhibit many hidden benefits, such as improved fuel supply diversity, strengthened transmission and distribution systems, and a lower ecological footprint. Micropower is emerging in two niches: developed nations where businesses place a premium on power reliability and developing-nation regions where small-scale power is the most economical means of alleviating power poverty. But broader deployment of micropower requires removal of market barriers and greater use of innovative financing. (shrink)

The bioclimatic architecture is still fascinating to all of us. The lack of energy that the world is facing nowadays is forcing architects and engineers to implement smart solutions benefiting at the maximum from nature itself without considering the primary sources of energy that the world is actually using. Bioclimatic design has the roots in history, despite the fact that little attention has been paid to it throughout history. It is important to understand how natural systems operates, creating closed or (...) semi-closed systems that mirror the ecological systems on Earth. The components of bioclimatic design deal mostly with: climate type and requirements; adaptive thermal comfort; vernacular and contextual solutions; tools and assessment methods; microclimate; sun path; wind; rain; passive and active systems and responsive forms. The aim of the bioclimatic design is to improve the natural environment through the utilization of clean energy and renewable energy system; to reduce the need for energy for heating purposes; and to reduce the energy for cooling proposes, air conditioning and lighting. Furthermore, bioclimatic design involves changes in regulation, improves the house comfort, and also improves urban quality of life. Bioclimatic buildings also include the use of building elements such as walls, windows, roofs, and floors, in order to collect, store, and distribute solar thermal energy and to prevent overheating. The aim is to manage the energy flows providing comfortable conditions during the entire year and the entire day. Minimization of thermal losses and utilization of climatic conditions (climate; microclimate, sunrise) are other important issues to consider. According to many studies, the best orientation for a building in order to maximize the heat gain during winter is east–west and the primary façade should face south. Sustainability is mostly an outcome, rather than a goal or a process. The aim of all designers is to reduce the ecological footprints and to improve the quality of life. The energy sustainability and the use of natural resources must be an integral part of a sustainable development. Nowadays, there are softwares that are developed in order to carry out environmental assessment tools and standards, in order to draw conclusions about internal thermal comfort; uncomfortable times in the building during the entire year; the need for shading devices and their dimensions; energy use, energy cost, etc. Simulations are essential in the design process. Examples chosen as case studies participate to have a better insight into the overall approach of the bioclimatic design. Applying the principles of bioclimatic design remains still a challenge in redefining the perfect bioclimatic house. (shrink)

One of the essential parts within the transition towards sustainable economies, is the way how higher education prepares its students for their future role in business. In order for them to contribute to corporate social responsibility within the enterprise context, they need specific skills and competences related to sustainable development. Derived from the societal role of business schools in preparing the future business leaders and entrepreneurs, the focus of this paper is the participation in, and the contribution of business schools (...) to the issues of efficiency measures for sustainability. This topic could be wider situated within the context of higher education for sustainable development, which aims at integrating competences for sustainable development into the curriculum, and integrating sustainability measures within campus operations, research and societal role. The paper furthermore looks at a business school context as a case for institutional efficiency measures. The paper describes how business schools could implement efficiency measures and apply instruments within their own context, looking at the campus as a ‘living laboratory’ for sustainability innovation. The paper describes how tools and instruments to foster sustainability integration are applied on campus, its benefits and possible problems. The paper focuses on the application of three instruments: Assessment Instrument for Sustainability in Higher Education; Ecological Footprint Analysis; and Principles for Responsible Management Education. It builds upon the data and results from several action research projects within two Belgian business schools. As a conclusion, the paper will reflect upon the essential characteristics of these initiatives, as a way to enhance efficiency measures for sustainability both within the business school itself, as within a wider business context. (shrink)

Commitments of “getting to zero” or becoming a regenerative company are raising investor, customer, and employee expectations at a time when businesses are struggling just to reduce negative impacts. Executives are increasingly caught between wanting to build a better world and the reality of managing value‐add activities that continue to harm people and the environment.Businesses need to distinguish between three types of innovation impacts to maintain their credibility and legitimacy. The first is doing less harm, where the goal is to (...) minimize social wrongs and reduce ecological footprints. The second is incremental positive impact, where the goal is to increase prosperity, regenerate nature, and improve wellbeing through initiatives that are typically of limited scope. The third is system‐wide positive impact, where scalable business innovations have a discernible capacity to “move the needle” on social and global challenges such as climate change and social equity.This conceptual paper provides a framework for assessing business innovations by type of impact and the high‐leverage points needed to create desired change at the scale of the whole. (shrink)

Although the capability approach has had a tremendous impact on the development debate, it has had little to say about sustainable development. As several Human Development Reports have maintained, the last twenty years' gains in human development are not sustainable. The failure to include an integrate sustainability into the Human Development Index would thus give the wrong policy message. Drawing on the works of Amartya Sen and Thomas Scanlon, this article argues that sustainable development can be seen as a process (...) of increasing legitimate freedoms, the freedoms that others cannot reasonably reject. Thus, Sen's vision of development as freedom is amended to suggest limits to freedoms. Forms of development which are not sustainable can be reasonably rejected due, at least, to the harm and blighting entailed. Based on this, it is argued that at country level of comparison the Human Development Index should be combined with the Ecological Footprint to reflect sustainability, and that the Human Development Reports should give way to Sustainable Development Reports. (shrink)

The main bioclimatic passive strategies include optimization of the use of natural light, reducing the need for artificial light, maximizing the solar gain using thermal traps and promotion of natural ventilation in order to avoid the need for air conditioning for cooling. The usage of cool air passing through the underground tunnels located in the selected neighborhood in Tirana in order to enhance the cooling process is of huge importance. On the other hand, the building must benefit from the passive (...) solar systems and thermal energy conservation strategies implementing thermal insulation materials. These strategies improve both the indoor comfort and economic aspect. The aim is to be aware of the community for the big benefits of such strategies, increasing the number of passive bioclimatic implementations not only in Albania but also in the region. Through the use of such systems the building can obtain indoor thermal comfort without a traditional cooling system. The passive systems discourage the use of mechanical systems for lighting, cooling, and heating, supporting the natural phenomena such as power of the sun, underground constant temperature, wind direction, and other climate parameters. The selection of the proper thermal insulation materials is complex and sometimes determinant in order to reduce heat gain. The thermal accumulation capacity depends on material width, material type, density, and porosity of the material. The top insulating materials are mostly used in the Tirana. Albania is the expanded polystyrene (EPS). The energy needed for its production is relatively low compared to the other insulating materials. Passive design encourages the application of such kind of materials, reducing the ecological footprint of the buildings. Water recycling is another aspect that bioclimatic design takes into consideration, promoting it. The use of specific materials in order to recycle the rain water through drainage is an important task. The building is faced with significant thermal losses due to the windows. The sizing of the glass area, the orientation, as well as the choice of glass determine the penetration of solar radiation in the building. The selection of the correct type of window is also a complex task. The designer should consider the climate type, the area of the openings, the typology of the window, and the characteristics of the window materials and its thermal performance before implementing it. The usage of the high thermal capacity materials (stone, water) is getting noticed nowadays in bioclimatic and passive building designs. These materials are efficient when having large surfaces and face a strong solar radiation. PCM (phase change materials) are innovative materials that undergo a physical transformation stabilizing the temperature fluctuations in the indoor area of the building archiving and improving thermal comfort parameters inside the building. The typology of such materials and their field of implementation is a very large one. Such materials have resulted to be an added value when implemented and are part of passive systems such as Trombe wall, enhancing its performance. The piezo-electric materials are another group of innovative materials used to gain energy. Their role in energy gaining nowadays is very small but the future belongs to them. The use of such materials is promoted by bioclimatic design benefiting by their mechanical properties, producing electricity. The Empathic house is one of the examples of the future generations. The implementation of some other materials such as ETFE in the building envelope in contrast to glass allows the long-wave penetration inside the building increasing the solar gain capacity. The visibility of such materials is still under examination. (shrink)

Our planet contains 194 independent states and much more nations. They share membership of the United Nations and in consequence they subscribed the Universal Declaration of Rights. These are rooted in the modern universal conception of states and human rights formulated by philosophers of the Enlighten Age like Locke, Kant., Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Concepts like democracy are mirrored to the organization of the political life as it was developed in North America and Europe at the end of the 18th (...) and the 19th century. Universality was deeply rooted in the Western intellectual, moral and religious tradition of that part of the world. Even globalization of the economic and social life is governed by the same Western standards and worldwide consumed basic goods like prime matter,. food and energy is expressed in terms of Western currency like dollar, pound sterling or euro. Despite this economic globalization there were two contradictory political evolution to discern: At the one hand more than 70 new states where created and on the other hand 28 European states started to integrate to a political European Union. The latter trend was based on a deep economic integration and since the creation of the euro also a financial integration. Basic idea was the creation of a free economic market as bases for a political unified Europe. Euro criticism is not only identified with conservatism, nationalism, narrow mind and even racism, euro criticism is deprived from any intellectual significance. However other trends put some shadow on the European project. First the Soviet experience around Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism unified more different nations than the European Union but ended in a complete political and economic chaos. Secondly the financial euro crisis involves only the tacit undermining of the national political independence of the member states, but does not make room for a deep analysis what the fundamentals are of this crisis such as lack of confidence of the citizen in the created unified political and financial market and its main instruments like banks that we consider as the fundamental boundary conditions of the worldwide globalization of goods, power and all aspects of human life. Furthermore we claim that this market in al its aspects is the worst answer to the inconvenient yet unavoidable truth that Western way of life of consumption includes a ecological footprint that exceeds since many years the sustainability of our planet. -/- . (shrink)

Public streets are central to the built environment, where individuals seek a fair share of the roadway’s benefits and harms. But the American street, an asphalt landscape typically defined and designed for cars, can be inaccessible, unhealthy, and dangerous for the non-motorized, whose transportation choices have the smallest ecological footprint. Concern for social equity and sustainability requires rethinking the street geographically and ethically, and asking: “In what sense is the street a space of justice? How do traditional street (...) regulation and design manifest ethical priorities? And what might a more just street look like, in theory and practice?” Such questions prompt one to engage both the spatial and moral, thus drawing from critical geography and ethics to analyze roadways in terms of fairness and relational wholeness, and argue for what might be called a shalom street. Engaging such ethical concepts with the technical vocabularies of street regulation and design requires analyzing how national model standards and their interpretation enforce and materialize justice on the street.The promise of more just alternatives such as more sustainable and fair “Complete Streets” to live in needs to be explored. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the impossibility of considering food as ‘a thing.’ It addresses the legal profiles of food from an interdisciplinary perspective by treating the production, signification and consumption of food as semio-spatial categories. The argument starts from the foundational premise that the dynamics of food, as a magmatic flow, comprehensively connect and transform all human activities and ecological aspects of life. Like a stream of radial projections in a mass of fluid, food functions as a semiotic membrane, (...) embodying the fundamental relationality of each human body to the whole globe. The main implication subsequently drawn from this view of ‘food’ is that to eat is always and everywhere to incorporate the entire world. Since food is the epitome of the space and time proactively and enactively involved in its production, in terms of both human activities and natural resources, by the mere fact of eating no human being can avoid recognizing themselves as a space–time cannibal. The consequences of this conclusion for food justice and its spatial dynamics are enormous, and even more so in light of the current ecological crisis. The essay thus critiques many categories related to the food politics of the ecological footprint, including sustainability, bio-diversity, food systems, and the circularity of food and resources. One proposed alternative offered is a chorological reading of human rights and their possible use as semantic-spatial transducers of the activities and phenomena inherent in the ‘food-as-omnilateral-relationship.’ The dynamic and transformative relationship between space, human rights and ecological change emerges clearly. Human action, and thus law are, then, constitutive ‘ingredients’ of food, which comes to the fore as a ubiquitous icon of the interpenetrative relationship between humanity and the becoming of the Earth; being and becoming blur. In the same vein, spaces and actions, facts and values are transformed into moving elements of an overall evolving situation that makes each a means of the other and thereby a generative factor of its significance. (shrink)

The free choice of the number of offspring is a fundamental right, emphasised for instance by the eighth principle of the 1994 UN Cairo Conference. The idea of a population policy advocated „with coercion“ is frowned upon by churches and many NGOs. But does this policy have to be implemented with „coercion“ or are incentives enough? And where are the boundaries between constraints and incentives? The following article addresses these philosophical questions. We are recklessly ignoring the adjusting screw of population (...) policy, should also fight politically for international incentives against an increase in population and must think about population policy in our own country, where the ecological footprints are large. (shrink)

This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy is dedicated to topics in clinical ethics with essays addressing clinician participation in state sponsored execution, duties to decrease ecological footprints in medicine, the concept of caring and its relationship to conscientious refusal, the dilemmas involved in dual use research, a philosophical and practical critique of principlism, conundrums that arise when applying surrogate decision-making models to patients with moderate intellectual disabilities, the phenomenology of chronic disease, and ethical concerns surrounding the (...) use of artificial intelligence in medicine. Throughout the issue, the themes of conceptual and moral boundaries in bioethics, critiques of current clinical ethics paradigms, and the importance of transparency are prominent. (shrink)

PhD thesis published with Amsterdam University Press. -/- ***Back cover: -/- In this time of mass communication, rich people like us know very well the horrible conditions in which many poor people must live. Therefore, the question of what should we do about poverty, which is the central question of this study, readily arises. This book also asks more specific questions such as: How much money should wealthy individuals like us spend on fighting poverty? and, What restrictions should we place (...) on the extent and orientation of our expenditure in the light of poverty? The question of what rich individuals like us should do morally about poverty, first of all requires clarity about some relatively general issues: Must we always do whatever does the most good, or should we only do the most good possible while avoiding great cost to ourselves? Or, do we only need to do our fair share in a cooperative scheme which would eradicate poverty if everyone else also does their share? A large part of this study focuses on such issues. The book argues that if we can do great good at little cost to ourselves, we ought to do so – and perhaps we ought to do great good even if the cost to ourselves of doing so, is not small. Also, it is argued that rich individuals like us can often, at little cost to ourselves, undertake a number of concrete actions which help to fight poverty, and that we are morally obligated to undertake acs such as giving tithes, living within our ecological footprint, and frequently buying fair trade products. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 23-42 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming the Grip of Consumerism Stephanie KazaUniversity of VermontFor fifteen years the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D. C. has been publishing a review of the declining condition of the global environment (Brown et al. 1998). For the most part, the picture is not good. Much of the deterioration can be traced directly to human activities--urban expansion equates to species loss, (...) industrial manufacturing to air pollution, factory farming to water pollution, chemical agriculture to poisoned soil. Accelerating these environmental impacts are rapidly rising population numbers, increasingly efficient technologies, and consumption rates beyond the planet's capacity. These three have been linked by the equation I=PAT, or environmental impact=population size multiplied by affluence (or degree of consumption) multiplied by technology. Reduce any one of these and the impact drops; increase one or all three, and the impact rises, in some cases dramatically.Much of the conversation among scientists and technologists has focused on the P (population) and T (technology) parts of the equation, with grave concerns that rising population numbers are swamping earth systems, yet often with buoyant optimism that technological breakthroughs will solve everything. These two perspectives dominated political discussion for much of the 1960s and 1970s (Ehrlich et al. 1977 and Lovins 1977, among others). But by the 1980s the facts were incontrovertible: high rates of consumption were driving environmental destruction just as fast if not faster than rising population. At the 1992 Rio Summit in Brazil, representatives of southern countries demanded that high-consuming northern countries examine their own contribution to the environmental crisis rather than placing blame elsewhere. It is our obligation in the North to respond to these serious requests.How much do people in northern industrialized countries consume? Here are some indicator figures: Americans consume their average body weight (120 pounds) every day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, range lands, and forests (Ryan and Durning 1997, 5). In the United States, the number of shopping malls (close to 35,000) eclipsed the number of high schools in 1987 (Dunning 1992, 130). Since 1950 the per capita consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled, use of plastic has increased five times, use of aluminum seven times, and average airplane miles per person has soared 33-fold (Durning 1992, 29). As products have proliferated, we see the swelling ecological footprint behind each new thing: clear-cut forests replacing paper plantations in Thailand, toxic oil polluting native lands of Ecuador, women earning poverty wages assembling computer chips in [End Page 23] Malaysia--the stories are not as pretty as the products. Materials extraction, production, distribution, use, and waste disposal--all of these have ecological costs, many of which are life threatening.Why should Buddhists and Christians address consumption? For starters, it is a nonsectarian issue; responsibility cuts across denominations and religious belief systems. Collaboration of all kinds is needed to take apart this juggernaut of complex causes and conditions. I believe the Buddhist tradition has powerful analytical tools and spiritual practices which may be helpful in this undertaking. These may aid or inspire similar efforts explored through the Christian heritage. A survey of the landscape and the literature shows it is shockingly clear: the challenge here is enormous. It will require all the spiritual insight, dedication, and sheer stamina we can bring to it. This work cannot be done alone; we need each other's help to keep going through the many obstacles.To date, Buddhist initiatives in this conversation have been modest. Several popular books have brought Buddhist perspectives to bear on consumption issues, most notably E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1975) and Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild (1990). Both works popularize practices of simplicity and restraint, flavored by the exotic Western fascination with Eastern thought. Several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. have taken up particular sub-themes addressing over-consumption. Philip Kapleau has sounded an ethical call for vegetarianism based on the first precept, "no killing" (1982). Robert Aitken has taken a stand for reducing wants and needs to simplify... (shrink)

In May of 2009, the Stockholm Convention added nine chemicals to its list of banned or restricted chemicals. While some businesses may be tempted to see further limitations on chemical production of persistent organic pollutants as an inconvenient hindrance, I argue that business ought to see strengthened rules as an opportunity to improve efficiency and to become more competitive in the global market place both financially and ethically. By re-examining not only product design but also products purchased, every company can (...) reduce their ecological footprint at a molecular level. And as more companies demand a greener supply chain, consumers also benefit from greater availability of greener products. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore one way to bring bioethics and environmental ethics closer together. I focus on a question at the interface of health, sustainability, and justice: How well does a society promote health with the use of no more than a just share of environmental capacity? To address this question, I propose and discuss a mode of assessment that combines a measurement of population health, an estimate of environmental sustainability, and an assumption about what constitutes a fair or (...) just share. This mode of assessment provides an estimate of the just and sustainable life expectancy of a population. It could be used to monitor how well a particular society promotes health within just environmental limits. It could also serve as a source of information that stakeholders use when they deliberate about programs, policies, and technologies. The purpose of this work is to focus attention on an ethical task: the need to fashion institutions and forms of life that promote health in ways that recognize the claims of sustainability and justice. (shrink)