Managers at firms have a long history of seeing their role as more than just making money for their owners. Indeed, many business owners don’t just see business as only a source of profits. One way of discussing the obligations of firms is to discuss Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Today I’m looking at a history…
Category: Sustainability
Roots Of Unsustainability
A major paper in the history of sustainability is Lynn White Jr’s The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. This sought to describe the roots of unsustainability. His conclusion zeroed in on religion — specifically Western Christianity — as the culprit. Start By Putting Off The Reader Academic writing has changed a lot in the…
Measuring Impact On Climate
Mike Berners-Lee just over a decade ago wrote a book measuring the impact on climate of various goods, activities, and spending. (Mike is the brother of Tim Berners-Lee — who invented the World Wide Web. I feel a bit sorry for Mike, it would be really hard not to feel like a failure in that…
The Pope And The Climate Crisis
In October 2023 a new letter was added to the discussion around what we should be doing to protect the environment. The author had spoken on the topic before so in many ways it wasn’t a surprise. Still, the text is very useful and has potential to reach people who don’t always pay attention to…
What If I’m Wrong?
The Population Bomb shared Paul Ehrlich’s predictions about the future. After his doom-laden warnings about mass starvation and the need for population control, by compulsion if necessary, Ehrlich asked, “What if I’m wrong?” What if his Malthusian thinking is a mistake? (See here for Malthus). The author was trying to make the point that it…
Population As A Disaster
Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968. I read a version printed in 1988 which had a 1978 update. It is a gloomy book that makes bold claims of famine and crises. There have certainly been problems in the last 55 years but nothing like Ehrlich predicted. It is an over-the-top book written by…
History Of Sustainability
Jeremy Caradonna wrote a history of sustainability in his book, Sustainability. (I read the revised edition from 2022). This work draws linkages from early ideas of sustainability and looks at where we are now. Things have moved forward, and back, on the sustainability front. There is some interesting history. As someone who lives in Georgia,…
Eliminating The Concept Of Waste
In their book Cradle to Cradle, sustainability writers William (Bill) McDonough and Michael Braungart argued that we should be thinking not in terms of Cradle to Grave — birth to death — for products. Instead, we should be thinking of reuse. Their second book along those lines, Upcycle, goes further. Their basic argument is that…
The Path To 2050
How can the world get to carbon neutral by 2050? This is the date the Paris Agreement specified for getting away from the activities that produce greenhouse gasses (see here). Many would argue that that the Paris agreement was not ambitious enough. Still, we don’t currently have a clear plan to reach carbon neutral by…
Comprehensive Guide To Drawdown Solutions
Drawdown is a New York Times Bestseller and you can see why. The book, by a large team led by Paul Hawken, has a profusion of detail on ways that the impacts of climate change can be alleviated and ultimately reversed. It provides a guide to drawdown solutions. The book gives an optimistic view of…
