Introduction to Sustainability is the first major textbook to review major themes in the cutting-edge field of sustainability.The text includes material on the development of the field of sustainability; environmental sustainability issues like water, food, and energy; social sustainability themes like environmental justice and transportation; and economic sustainability topics like green businesses and economic development.

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• Chapter 1: Roots of the modern sustainability movement
• Meaning of sustainability
• Nineteenth century environmentalism
• Pinchot, Roosevelt, and Muir
• Aldo Leopold and the land ethic
• Better living through chemistry, the Great Smog of 1952, and Rachel Carson
• Environmental activism of the 1960s and 1970s and the development of environmental policy
• The growth of environmental laws in the 1960s and 1970s
• The first Earth Day
• International concerns
• Ozone and the world comes together
• Globalization and the Brundtland Report
• Deep ecology
• Environmental justice
• Measuring sustainability
• The road ahead
• Organization
• Chapter 2: Understanding natural systems
• The Earth, its layers, and the rock cycle
• Biogeochemical cycles
• Organisms and ecosystems
• Understanding the Anthropocene
• Chapter 3: Measuring sustainability
• The United Nations Millennium Goals
• National sustainability planning
• Regional sustainability planning
• Local sustainability measurement
• Specific community plans
• Small towns and sustainability
• Business sustainability
• Personal sustainability
• Chapter 4: Energy
• World energy production and consumption
• Traditional or “dirty” energy resources
• Green energy
• Nuclear energy
• Other innovations
• Living off the grid
• Chapter 5: Global climate change and greenhouse gas management
• The end of nature?
• The science of global climate change
• Sinks of carbon
• The IPCC and evidence for climate change, and the future of our planet
• Ocean acidification
• Phenological changes
• Conducting greenhouse gas inventories
• Greenhouse gas equivalents used in greenhouse gas accounting
• Greenhouse gas emission scopes
• Computing greenhouse gas credits
• Climate action plans
• Religion and climate change
• Art, culture, and climate change
• Chapter 6: Water
• Sources of water
• Consumption trends
• Sources of water pollution
• Water management and conservation
• Water quality
• Understanding drainage basins
• Lakes
• Seas
• Oceans
• Chapter 7: Food and agriculture
• Development of modern agriculture
• World agricultural statistics
• Food deserts and obesity
• Reactions to the high-tech agricultural movement
• Farm to table
• Community sponsored agriculture
• Community gardens
• Farmers markets
• Beekeeping
• The urban chicken movement
• Guerilla gardening, freegans, and other radical approaches to food
• Chapter 8: Green building
• LEED rating systems
• Site selection
• Water use
• Energy and atmospheric health
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Innovation
• Regional priorities
• Expansion of green building technology
• Other green building rating systems
• Green building policy
• Critiques of green building
• The greenest building and historic preservation
• Small house movement
• Further reading
• Chapter 9: Transportation
• Transportation options
• Roads
• Mass transit
• The future
• Chapter 10: Pollution and waste
• Pollution
• Understanding pollution distribution
• The US approach to pollution
• Sewage treatment
• Garbage and recycling
• Chapter 11: Environmental justice
• Social justice
• Civil rights and the modern environmental movement in the United States
• Lead pollution and the growth of the urban environmental justice movement
• Environmental racism in the United States
• Brownfields, community re-development, and environmental justice
• US EPA and environmental justice
• Native Americans and environmental justice
• Exporting environmental problems
• Environmental justice around the world
• Environmental justice in a Globalized World
• Chapter 12: Sustainability planning and governance
• Local governments and their structure
• The role of citizens and stakeholders in local government
• Community stakeholders
• Boundaries and types of local governments
• Leadership
• Efforts to aid local governments on sustainability issues
• Scale and local governments
• Green regional development
• Sustainable development
• Globalization
• War and sustainability
• Further reading
• Chapter 13: Sustainability, economics, and the global commons
• The global commons
• Economic processes that put the Earth out of balance
• Social and economic theories
• Destruction regardless of theory
• Environmental economics: externalities
• Measuring the economy
• Green jobs
• Cost–benefit analysis and its application in environmental economics
• Environmental impact assessment
• Environmental ethics
• Chapter 14: Corporate and organizational sustainability management
• Cognitive dissonance
• Why are businesses concerned with sustainability?
• Total quality management and sustainability
• People, planet, and profits
• Ray Anderson, the father of the green corporation and the growth of green corporate environmentalism
• Greenwashing in the corporate world
• Green consumers
• Global Reporting Initiative
• Sustainability reporting in the S & P 500
• Dow Jones Sustainability Index
• Sustainability reporting
• International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO 14000 and ISO 26000
• Case studies of sustainability at the corporate level
• Can businesses with unsustainable products be sustainable?
• Chapter 15: Sustainability at universities, colleges, and schools
• Curriculum at colleges and universities
• External benchmarking
• Internal initiatives
• Student and faculty activism