Sustainability: A History

Today, the word is nearly ubiquitous: seeming to have come out of nowhere to dominate the discussion, from permaculture to renewable energy to the local food movement, the ideas that underlie and define sustainability can be traced back several centuries. In this illuminating and entertaining history, Jeremy L. Caradonna traces its origins to the emergence of planned yield forestry in the late 17th and 18th centuries, through the challenges of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th, the birth of the environmental movement in the 20th, and finally the emergence of a concrete effort to create a society that is stable, prosperous, ecologically minded, and forward looking. While sustainability draws upon ideas of social justice, ecological economics, and environmental conservation, it is more than the sum of its parts. Caradonna's book broadens our understanding of what the term means, showing how it progressed from a relatively marginal concept to an ideal that dominates lifestyle choices, government and corporate strategies, and even national and international policy.--From publisher description.