Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture

"Sustainability by Design" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Ehrenfeld's book interview ran here as cover feature on February 3, 2009.

Bought this book for my Energy and Society class. It is the last of four books we read this semester, and was an excellent conclusion to the course. The author addresses the root causes of energy scarcity and provides a basic framework for sustainability in which the human race can ultimately thrive. 5/5 Stars

Mr. Ehrenfeld offers a broadly appealing and immediately accessible definition of sustainability: "sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever." Now isn't that what we really want? And to address this higher view of things, don't you necessarily need to think more deeply about the issue than simply neutralizing a negative situation--which is what virtually every other book in this genre attempts to do? That's what I like about this book, that Ehrenfeld takes a systems look at a systemic issue. He looks at mindset -- the subtitle is "A Subversive Strategy for transforming Our Consumer Culture" -- and that's what is so attractive. Ehrenfeld, formerly of MIT (a noted breeding ground for systems thinkers), is executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology and senior research scholar at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and you can tell he's been thinking about this for a long tim. It shows in how he approaches the challenge of sustainability. For example, he uses words and phrases that resonate will resonate with anyone who is interested in a more mindful approach to a complex issue. "Reflection" is the first threshold to cross, he says. And he talks about "structures," which appeals to my sense of the importance in properly framing problems. And he talks about "nurturing possibility." You see, we too often incorrectly ask the question "What are the alternatives" before we ask "What is possible?" If you're a fan of Peter Senge (who writes the Foreword) and The Fifth Discipline like I am, you'll enjoy the author's foray into single and double loop thinking. From there, he looks at root cause, that being an addiction to resources (a phrase I often use!) linked to the cultures of consumption in the modern, industrialized world. And then he offers his definition of sustainability, and the whole construct hangs together quite nicely. Woven throughout the book is a subtext of respect, of simply caring about others and the world we live in enough to wrap our designs around that thought in a very purposeful way. If only we could hold that core value tightly enough, hold on to the tension created between where we are and where we need to be, our designs -- our innovation processes and innovative outcomes -- would go far in moving the planet toward a sustainable vision of the future. And that future, the author says, does not have "a revolution waiting in the wings," because he does not believe "that such a revolution would necessarily be the best change mechanism."