Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability

For those who equate sustainability with "an LED light bulb, hybrid car or LEED certified green building," Ehrenfeld (Sustainability by Design) gives an earful. Alongside former student Hoffman, he tackles the notion of sustainability in three parts: what's wrong with current assumptions about it, what to do about it, and what the future holds. For Ehrenfeld, neither companies nor governments actually deliver sustainability and he goes so far as to reject the word itself in favor of "flourishing," defined as "not only to grow, but to grow well, to prosper, to thrive, to live to the fullest." He calls for a complete over-throw of how individuals consume and how the system we live in relates to the natural world: small steps like "greening" that pass for sustainability actually create a false sense of doing good when far more radical solutions are required. Brilliant as Ehrenfeld is, his disdain for any ecological baby-steps can leave readers frustrated; corporations must shrink their global footprint in a capitalistic mod-el that encourages them to increase it. Short of full global revolution, the consumer is left with little to hope for and far less to do. (May)