[HUME 112] Mulligan's Introduction to Sustainability (Important People)

Martin Mulligan

Author of An Introduction to Sustainability. He is the Director of RMIT University's Globalism Research Centre. He teaches and writes introductory courses on sustainability. Has a PhD in development studies, focusing on environment and development in Latin America. His research has focused on challenges facing local communities in Australia and Sri Lanka.

Jean Hillier

Head of the Sustainability and Urban Planning teaching team at RMIT University. She invited Martin Mulligan to assume responsibility for an introductory course on sustainability.

Gro Harlem Brundtland

Norwegian Prime Minister (1981, 1986-89, and 1990-96). Headed the United Nations Commission that produced the Brundtland Report.

Rachel Carson

(1907-1964) US marine biologist, conservationist and science writer. Author of Silent Spring (1962), which highlighted the dangers of pesticides and is credited with sparking the modern environmental movement.

Kenneth Boulding

Economist, educator and peace activist. Famous for his concept of "Spaceship Earth" that came out in his book Spaceship Earth (1966).

Henry David Thoreau

US essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. Leading transcendentalist. Created an enduring body of work on the joys of reconnecting with nature.

Thomas Malthus

English cleric and scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Famously wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798), arguing that population growth would inevitably outstrip food supply, leading to famine and misery.

Aurelio Peccei

Italian industrialist and philanthropist, founder of the Club of Rome.

Donella Meadows

One of the lead authors of The Limits to Growth (1972), a report commissioned by the Club of Rome.

Herman Daly

American ecological economist. Known for his work on steady-state economics and his critiques of mainstream economics.

Paul Hawken

Environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. known for his work in the footprints of the conservative Jon Muir, promoting that environmental awareness can bring about a positive change in how we conceive and practice economic activities.

Adlai Stephenson

Original person who popularized the term, “Space Earth”; inspired Kenneth Boulding

Club of Rome

Commissioned a study on the implications of recognizing that we live on a finite and ultimately vulnerable planet.

Agenda 21

308-page action plan

Local Agenda 21

Aimed at devolving responsibilities for ESD to local governments.

Rio +20

Future We Want

Montreal Protocol

Established to help developing nations introduce substitute technologies for CFCs; reduce the use of ozone-depleting aerosols

UN Earth Summit

Rio de janeiro

Kyoto Protocol

Global gathering on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 1997

Copenhagen Summit

2009 summit on reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Herman Daly

Established 4 sustainability principles.

1. Limit human scale within Earth’s capacity

2. Technological progress is efficiency increasing and not throughput increasing.

3. Harvest rates should be slower than regeneration rates, waste emissions should not exceed assimilative capabilities of receiving environments.

4. Non-renewable resources should be explored no faster than the rate of creation of renewable resources.

Millennium Development Goals

8 goals that were adopted at a special UN Millennium Summit held in New York in 2000.

Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin

Who came up with the tragedy of the commons?

Elinor Ostrom

Who came up with the communal management of common pool resources?

the communal management of common pool resources

Elinor Ostrom, a political economist, challenged the traditional view that common-pool resources (CPRs) – like fisheries, forests, grazing lands, and irrigation systems – are doomed to overuse and depletion (the "Tragedy of the Commons"). Instead, she argued that communities can successfully manage these resources through communal management, without needing strict government control or full privatization.

Profligacy Ceiling

Overconsumption; living beyond nature’s capacity

Dignity Floors

Minimum resource use to ensure quality of life

1. What are trying to sustain now

2. What are the ecosystem's capabilities to do this?

3. What can we sustain?

4. What do we need to sustain?

5. What ought we sustain?

6. What would we like to sustain? (or what is 'living well' - Aristotle's the Good Life"

Sustainability questions

Discourse, politics, policy, people's movement

How did the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development evolved through time?

Anthropogenic, incremental and abrupt changes, surprise and uncertainty

What are the drivers of change that affect sustainability and sustainable development?

Integration, convergence, diversity, multiple scales and levels

What are the issues and challenges in promoting sustainability?

Global and local initiatives, top down and bottom up

What are current initiatives at different scales and levels for sustainability?

Marsh

Modern environmental movement: Responsible environmental stewardship’ transformative effects of human action

Bergson

Industrial Revolution will define a new age

Vernadsky

The biosphere is being sharply changed by man, consciously and unconsciously.

Leroy & Chardin

Human intelligence, creativity and ingenuity are powerful shapers of the environment.

1955 Princeton Conference

Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth Ecology Conference

egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric

What are the 3 environmental value orientations of Schwartz?

Egoistic

Value that means we tend to protect aspects of the environment that affect us personally or to oppose protection of the environment if personal costs are high.

Social-altruistic

Value that means judging phenomena based on costs or benefits for a human group, such as a community, ethnic group, nation-state, or all humanity.

Biospheric

Judging phenomena based on costs or benefits to ecosystems.