A Sustainable Philosophy

The author outlines the major ideas and issues that have emerged in the growing movement of green architecture and sustainable design over the last thirty years. The book asks individuals to understand how the philosophy of sustainable design can affect their own work.

This book provides a richly interdisciplinary assessment of the thought and work of Bryan Norton, one of most innovative and influential environmental philosophers of the past thirty years. In landmark works such as Toward Unity Among Environmentalists and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Norton charted a new and highly productive course for an applied environmental philosophy, one fully engaged with the natural and social sciences as well as the management professions. A Sustainable Philosophy gathers together a distinguished group of scholars and professionals from a wide array of fields (including environmental philosophy, natural resource management, environmental economics, law, and public policy) to engage Norton’s work and its legacy for our shared environmental future. A study in the power of intellectual legacy and the real-world influence of philosophy, the book will be of great interest scholars and students in environmental philosophy, public policy and management, and environmental and sustainability studies. By considering the value and impact of Norton’s body of work it will also chart a course for the next generation of pragmatic environmental philosophers and sustainability scholars grappling with questions of environmental value, knowledge, and practice in a rapidly changing world.

Using an interdisciplinary focus, this book combines the research disciplines of philosophy, business management and sustainability to aid and advance scholar and practitioner understanding of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability—the cornerstone of environmental policy—using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse. Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.

For science to remain a legitimate and trustworthy source of knowledge, society will have to engage in the collective processes of knowledge co-production, which not only includes science, but also other types of knowledge. This process of change has to include a new commitment to knowledge creation and transmission and its role in a plural society. This book proposes to consider new ways in which science can be used to sustain our planet and enrich our lives. It helps to release and reactivate social responsibility within contemporary science and technology. It reviews critically relevant cases of contemporary scientific practice within the Cartesian paradigm, relabelled as 'innovation research', promoted as essential for the progress and well-being of humanity, and characterised by high capital investment, centralised control of funding and quality, exclusive expertise, and a reductionism that is philosophical as well as methodological. This is an accessible and relevant book for scholars in Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Engineering and Technology Ethics. Providing an array of concrete examples, it supports scientists, engineers and technical experts, as well as policy-makers and other non-technical professionals working with science and technology to re-direct their approach to global problems, in a more integrative, self-reflective and humble direction.

Responsibility for future generations is easily postulated in the abstract but it is much more difficult to set it to work in the concrete. It requires some changes in individual and institutional attitudes that are in opposition to what has been called the "systems variables" of industrial society: individual freedom, consumerism, and equality. The Politics of Sustainability from Philosophical Perspectives seeks to examine the motivational and institutional obstacles standing in the way of a consistent politics of sustainability and to look for strategies to overcome them. It argues that though there have been significant changes in individual and especially collective attitudes to growth, intergenerational solidarity and nature preservation, it is far from certain whether these will be sufficient to encourage politicians into giving sustainable policies priority over other legitimate concerns. Having a philosophical approach as its main focus, the volume is at the same time interdisciplinary in combining political, psychological, ecological and economic analyses. This book will be a contribution to the joint effort to meet the theoretical and practical challenges posed by climate change and other impending global perils and will be of interest to students of environmental studies, applied ethics and environmental psychology.

Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-to-Z Guide covers the moral relationship between humans and their natural environment, specifically targeting the contemporary green movement. Since the 1960s, green ethics and philosophies have helped give birth to the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements, as well as contemporary environmentalism. With a primary focus on green environmental ethics, this reference work, available in both print and electronic formats, presents approximately 150 signed entries organized A-to-Z, traversing a wide range of curricular disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, business, economics, religion, and political science. A rich blend of topics, from the Hannover Principle to green eco-feminism, responsible eco-tourism, corporate values and sustainability, and more, are explained by university professors and scholars, all contributing to an outstanding reference mainly for academic and public libraries. Vivid photographs, searchable hyperlinks, numerous cross references, an extensive resource guide, and a clear, accessible writing style make the Green Society volumes ideal for classroom use as well as for research.

This book examines from a multidisciplinary viewpoint the question of what we mean - what we should mean - by setting sustainability as a goal for environmental management. The author, trained as a philosopher of science and language, explores ways to break down the disciplinary barriers to communication and deliberation about environment policy, and to integrate science and evaluations into a more comprehensive environmental policy. Choosing sustainability as the keystone concept of environmental policy, the author explores what we can learn about sustainable living from the philosophy of pragmatism, from ecology, from economics, from planning, from conservation biology and from related disciplines. The idea of adaptive, or experimental, management provides the context, while insights from various disciplines are integrated into a comprehensive philosophy of environmental management. The book will appeal to students and professionals in the fields of environmental policy and ethics, conservation biology, and philosophy of science.