Confronting Consumption
"A Comprehensive analysis of how and why consumer society wreaks havoc on Earth." syracuseculturalworkers.org"...an excellent exploration of what could turn out to be one of the frontrank issues of our time." Norman Myers Nature"Are you willing to confront consumption?...then read this book." Vicki Robin Journal of Positive Futures"... read this book." Vicki Robin Journal of Positive Futures"The authors are to be commended for breaking the code of silence surrounding consumption and engaging the debate." Richard Walthers Green @ Work Magazine"The book certainly succeeds in thinking 'outside the box'..." Global Environmental Politics"The book certainly succeeds in thinking 'outside the box'." Global Environmental Politics"This book is important not just for its brilliance but for its rarity: few environmental scholars have dared to take on this issue in a manner that goes beyond rhetorical posturing and 'limits to growth' type arguments." Lamont C. Hempel, Hedco Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of Environmental Programs, University of Redlands"This book is important not just for its brilliance but for its rarity: few environmental scholars have dared to take on this issue in a manner that goes beyond rhetorical posturing and 'limits to growth' type arguments."--Lamont C. Hempel, Hedco Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of Environmental Programs, University of Redlands"Consumption deserves serious attention. This volume moves the literature beyond the work of a few isolated scholars and consumption activists to a collective enterprise of solid researchers critiquing and building on each other's contributions. Long overdue, but worth waiting for."--Richard B. Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley"Confronting Consumption provides a fresh new look at the systemic problems of consumption in the global economy. It offers a highly readable account of the impacts of consumerism on our vulnerable planetary resources and asks whether a sustainable consumption movement may be emerging. Scholars, teachers, and activists alike will be enriched by the book's analysis and inspired by new possibilities for confronting the complexities of consumption."--Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics, University of California, Berkeley, author of Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World and Earthcare: Women and the EnvironmentPlease note: Endorser gives permission to excerpt from quote."A dynamic, vital book that takes your breath away! Confronting Consumption shows why consumption is the blockbuster problem that our society can no longer ignore. Readers will feel real excitement as they explore this stimulating book and will begin to understand why thousands of people in the Simplicity movement are turning their backs on 'getting and spending' and reclaiming 'the good life' -- building lives of high satisfaction and low environmental impact in a caring and just community."--Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity"This book addresses, to spectacular effect, the great silence about the vast appetite for resources in contemporary North America. These wide-ranging analyses of consumerism successfully bring together the cultural and the ecological, the structural and the symbolic, the local and the global. They join rights to responsibilities and ethics to public policy. In terms of both vision and execution, this is a landmark volume."--Ramachandra Guha, author of Environmentalism: A Global History