Resetting the Compass: Australia's Journey Towards Sustainability Updated Edition sets out Australia's environmental problems in their global context and explains what is now needed to fix them. It also illustrates how ecological sustainability can be achieved together with economic, social and cultural sustainability.
The book examines the pressures on our environment from population growth, consumption patterns and technological change. The specific actions needed to deal with each of the problems identified are described in detail.
This Edition includes:
*Assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
*Figures related to Australia's emissions from the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
*Assessments of conditions and trends from the National Land and Water Audit.
*Estimates of the volume of vegetation clearing and new information on wind farms.
This book is essential reading for politicians and public servants; business leaders and managers; environmentalists; academics and students in environmental courses; and all those interested in environmental issues.
- Page 13Abstract
It is intuitively obvious that our well-being and our economy depend entirely upon the physical world around us. We rely upon it for the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe. Our economies depend upon it for all their resources, the energy they use, the minerals, fibres and materials needed for natural and synthetic products and the myriad of services that are now provided to us. We also rely upon it for the absorption and recycling of our wastes and emissions. Not quite so obvious is the way that our dependence on energy and material cycles has changed in the last 150 years, the disturbances that these changes have brought about and the way the industrial economy of the world is now related to the physical world.
- Page 343Abstract
Ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability are the four pillars of wisdom for the 21st century. In this final chapter we examine the relationship between ecological sustainability and social and cultural sustainability. We conclude the book with a summary of its main messages and a review of millennium writing in Australia and the place of the environment within it.
