I finished The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices by Sarah James and Torbjorn Lahti today. Amid all the doom and gloom about global warming and unsustainable ecological footprints, it's a hugely inspirational guide to changing how we plan and build our towns and cities.
Many of the case studies are taken from Sweden, where all levels of government -- municipal, regional and national -- appear to be light years ahead of what we are doing here in Canada.
The Natural Step proposes four simple guiding objectives (p. 9):
1. Eliminate our community's contribution to fossil fuel dependency and to wasteful use of scarce metals and minerals.2. Eliminate our community's contribution to dependence upon persistent chemicals and wasteful use of synthetic substances.
3. Eliminate our community's contribution to encroachment upon nature (e.g., land, water, wildlife, forests, soil, ecosystems).
4. Meet human needs fairly and efficiently.
The Natural Step should be required reading for politicians and bureaucrats everywhere, and should also be incorporated into school curricula.
The book also contains many examples of businesses that have used sustainability principles to become more profitable. "Billions of people around the world have problems with unsustainable development. What a market for those who have solutions!" (p. 221).
Posted by Paul at January 25, 2008 07:47 PM