1st Edition

Unsustainable World Are We Losing the Battle to Save Our Planet?

By Peter N. Nemetz Copyright 2022
418 Pages 86 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

418 Pages 86 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

418 Pages 86 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Using a cross-disciplinary, science- and economics-based approach, this book provides a sobering and comprehensive assessment of the multifaceted barriers to achieving sustainability at a global level. Organized into three parts, the book defines sustainability in part I and sets the context of the historical and current difficulties facing the world today. In parts II and III, it outlines... Read more
PART I: Introduction and Critical Concepts

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Nature of the Challenge

Chapter 2: The Economics-Ecology Nexus

PART II: Greenhouse-Gas-Intensive Sectors

Chapter 3: Unsustainable Industry

Chapter 4: Unsustainable Automobility

Chapter 5: Unsustainable Agriculture

Chapter 6: Agriculture and the Existential Threat of Climate Change

PART III: Quid Nunc? Solutions, Conditional Solutions and Non-Solutions

Chapter 7: Hi-Tech Transportation

Chapter 8: Nuclear Power

Chapter 9: Renewable Energy: Prospects and Challenges

Chapter 10: Conclusion: The Narrowing Path to Sustainability

Chapter 11: Pandemics and Sustainability

Biography

Peter N. Nemetz received a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and is Professor Emeritus of Strategy and Business Economics in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, Canada. For twenty-nine years he held a visiting research position in the Department of Health Sciences Research at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He has published more than one hundred books, academic articles, and consulting reports in the areas of natural disaster economics, natural resource and environmental economics and policy, international business, sustainability, and epidemiology.

"A book with cutting-edge industry and sector data and observations, informing existing and future scholarly work, practitioners and organizations on key issues and challenges in sustainability. Thought-provoking, with highly intellectual material to generate fundamental questions and critiques around sustainability matters, practices and conceptualizations."

Iva Bimpli, Lecturer, University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment, United Kingdom

"When one is guided by science, the way forward for humankind is not a rosy path—it is a path marred by unnecessary ecological degradation and irresponsible resource draw-down. Peter Nemetz’s new work removes some of the varnish that otherwise obscures the precarious vista that humanity now faces. It gives us cause for far deeper reflection regarding our common fate on this planet."

Scott Valentine, Professor of Regenerative Planning and Circular Economy, Director of Research Promotions Office, Kyushu University, Japan

"Using an economic-business-based approach, this book presents the unvarnished scientific facts that describe the dimensions of global ecological change conveying a critical message to humankind: unless drastic action is undertaken to change how economic systems relate to nature, the survival of our way of life in this planet is in serious jeopardy."

Miguel A. Altieri, Professor Emeritus of Agroecology, University of California, Berkeley, USA