Herman Daly died

Inter-generational matters are relevant in many societal issues, many of which require consideration from an equity or justice perspective. For instance, climate change requires current generations to invest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lessening the financial burden on future generations, and minimizing adverse impacts of climate change that are likely to affect the latter. The financial debt of countries today to cover governmental expenditures also affects the financial conditions of future generations. Nevertheless, democratic governance as seen in many countries today suffers from political “short-termism” as a structural problem of electoral democracy, because voters tend to vote for those who contribute to maximizing the well-being of the “generation of today,” ignoring that also the “decisions of today” will greatly impact the future (read more at this link).

A Research Agenda for Food Systems
Elgar Research Agendas
Colin L. Sage

The volume attempts to be interdisciplinary and accessible in its approach to reviewing many of the pressing contemporary problems facing food systems, including the growing concentration and power of large agri-food corporations, the contribution of food production to climate breakdown, the exploitation of agricultural labour, food poverty, and the reconfiguration of animal bodies. Reviewing possible ‘solutions’, chapters then examine the potential for a digital agricultural revolution, the contribution of alternative proteins in dietary change, and the emergence of regionalized and regenerative food systems. The book concludes with a look towards hybrid foodscapes, exploring how design can help us to re-imagine our stake in food systems of the future.

Towards Sustainable Wellbeing: Moving beyond GDP in Canada and the World
University of Toronto Press
Hayden, Anders, Céofride Gaudet and Jeffrey Wilson

Energy Conservation Behaviors, Climate Change Attitudes, Income, and Behavioral Plasticity

Human Ecology
Kaplowitz, S. A. and Boucher, J. L.

Co-developing sustainability – a consumer-inclusive approach to wooden housing business in Finland
Housing Studies
Eliisa Kylkilahti, Minna Autio, Viktor Harvio

The housing construction industry can address sustainability issues by developing its business practices. This requires a shift from a firm-driven business logic to a consumer-inclusive approach where consumers and businesses together enhance sustainable development. By analyzing data from focus group discussions with both industry experts in the wooden multi-storey construction business and consumers residing in novel wooden buildings, this study examines how businesses can engage consumers in the development of sustainable housing. The results are presented as an iterative dialogue process that acknowledges consumers as important actors to whom innovative housing solutions should be appropriately introduced and whose lived experiences need to be understood. The findings indicate that consumer experiences can feed the creation and uptake of innovations that enhance sustainability in the construction sector. The study fosters the material aspect of sustainable housing and, by highlighting consumer participation and communication, proposes tools for its consumer-inclusive co-development.

Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks at Japan
Water Street Press
Morris Berman

Neurotic Beauty is a remarkable reevaluation of Japan s role in the modern world. It includes a new assessment of the events leading up to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, and of the potential role of Japanese philosophy in creating a dynamic approach to human nature and our understanding of reality. The book also shows the interrelatedness of various facets of Japanese history and society, including psychological orientation, pop culture, and Japan s vibrant craft tradition. Finally, it concludes with a possible prediction, that whereas the United States will not be able to escape from its neoliberal economic categories and its commitment to a self-defeating philosophy of growth, Japan might surprise us, and turn out to be the frontrunner in the development of post-capitalist alternatives in the 21st century. Written in a personal and accessible style, the book is likely to provide a focus for debate about issues of economy, ecology, and sustainability for years to come.

Everyday People Save the Planet and So Can You: A Qualitative Examination of Green Lifestyles in Lowcountry South Carolina
Lexington Books
Deborah McCarthy Auriffeille

Everyday People Save the Planet and So Can You: A Qualitative Examination of Green Lifestyles in Lowcountry South Carolina examines three interview studies, conducted over the last two decades, with green parents, choice utility bike commuters, and necessity utility bike commuters. This book draws on qualitative analyses of the data and literature (social practice, social innovation, embodiment, and attention economy research/theory) to ask and answer the question of how advocates and policy makers can enable pro-environmental behavior in people’s everyday lives.

Why do we consume so much?
Consumption and Society
Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier

In the context of the calls for sufficiency held by climate experts, consumption is a major lever of ecological transition. Numerous international reports, non-governmental organisations (NGO) advocates and media articles highlight the need for consumers to change their consumption behaviour to achieve sustainable development. For their part, governments in many countries have implemented sustainable consumption policies to guide consumers towards behaviours that reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Welch and Southerton, 2019). This centrality of consumption is also found among climate change deniers and opponents of environmentalist discourses, as they often defend a way of life (Lamb et al, 2020). This vision of consumption as the result of individual choices has been widely criticised by social science scholars who have shown that it is far removed from the reality of consumption practices, which are rather driven by collective dynamics (Shove, 2010). Consumption practices are embedded in collective frameworks and permeate our lifestyles, not only giving rhythm to our daily lives but also structuring our social moments (Boström, 2020). Practice theory is the field of research most concerned with the analysis of the collective embeddedness of consumption practices (Warde, 2005). Research has highlighted the role played by meanings, material structures and skills in the performance of consumption practices (Shove and Pantzar, 2005). The strength of these different studies is that they opposed very behavioural and individualistic approaches to consumption and utilised a social and structural vision that is much closer to reality. Scholars have shown strong inertia in consumption practices, owing to the collective frameworks that link the temporal coordination of activities within the household (Plessz and Wahlen, 2020) to the social norms or values that guide these social practices (Sahakian et al, 2020). However, this approach provides little clarity concerning why individuals adopt certain practices, or to put it in terms used by practice theorists, why a practice recruits practitioners. In this article, I address the following questions: How did affluent consumption come to impose itself on our societies as a way of life? How have individuals been transformed into affluent and insatiable consumers? How does the affluent consumption governance regime work and what are its main lock-ins? To answer this question, I present an agenda paper that reflects on economic sociology and Foucault’s reading of power. I show the existence of government of consumption that relies on different power devices: public policy instruments, corporate economic models, managerial tools and market technologies underpinning the value regimes of consumption based on accumulation and affluence. Among the power devices, market technologies contribute to building and activating consumer dispositions for this form of consumption, shaping consumer conduct accordingly with business models, founding the norms of affluent consumption.

Consumer Activism

Eleftheria J. Lekakis

Consumption and resistance are entwined. From buying fair-trade, to celebrity advocates for social causes, to subvertising and anti-consumerist grassroots movements, consumer activism is now a key part of our fight for social and environmental justice. This book is a comprehensive exploration of the complexities and dilemmas of using the marketplace as an arena for politics. It goes beyond simply buying or boycotting to critically explore how individuals, collectives, corporations and governments do politics with and through consumption.

 The wellbeing economy: Possibilities and limits in bringing sufficiency from the margins into the mainstream

                                                              Anders Hayden and Clay Dasilva

The idea of sufficiency faces great obstacles in contemporary political economies in which production and consumption growth has long been considered imperative. Despite evidence supporting calls for a sufficiency-oriented, post-growth approach to environmental challenges, only pro-growth environmental perspectives have found significant mainstream political support until now. However, one recent formulation that has a strong affinity with a sufficiency approach – a wellbeing economy – has found growing support among mainstream political actors including governments and international organizations. Does the growing support for a wellbeing economy represent the long-sought breakthrough for a sufficiency-oriented, post-growth environmental approach? To help answer this question, we conduct case studies of New Zealand, Scotland, and Iceland – the three founders of the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo). These nations have (to varying degrees) taken steps to downplay the centrality of economic growth and instead highlight wellbeing as the ultimate goal. They have also moved “beyond GDP” by introducing new wellbeing measurements and using them in policymaking. However, movement in a post-growth direction is limited by continuing dependence on economic growth to achieve intermediate goals, such as employment creation and provision of welfare state services, that are closely associated with the goal of wellbeing. We therefore characterize the emerging practice of the wellbeing economy as a “weak post-growth” approach. To become a “strong post-growth” perspective, it needs to be linked to a much more challenging project of disentangling contemporary societies’ dependence on economic growth. The article includes a discussion of ways that WEGo nations could contribute to addressing that considerable challenge and build on the sufficiency-oriented elements evident in the wellbeing economy.

Connecting disciplines and decades

Thank you to the recent “Climate Endgame” perspective (1) for the apt call for more investigation into“bad-to-worst-case scenarios”of human-caused climate change, including possibilities for“worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction.”As researchers, we understandably always promote more research while retaining, as a high priority, new science taken up by policy and practice agendas. As researchers, we also have a duty to ensure that we fully draw on previous work—even before the 1988 date given in the perspective’s (1) second sentence.

Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States
Environmental Science & Technology
Weber, C. L., & Matthews, H. S.

Despite significant recent public concern and media attention to the environmental impacts of food, few studies in the United States have systematically compared the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with food production against long-distance distribution, aka “food-miles.” We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO₂e/yr footprint for food consumption. We suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

The climate crisis and the global green new deal: The political economy of saving the planet

Trakya Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi E-Dergi
Özden, O.

Climate change is a hot topic spreading to almost every discipline like physics, biology, anthropology, climatology, economics, and politics. Although the origins of climate change studies date back to the 19th century, studies on climate change have increased drastically in the first two decades of the 21st century. It is an economic and political issue as well as an issue discussed in natural sciences. So, in the political area, green new deal projects have been discussed nowadays.

Higher Education Needs a New Mission: How about Climate Justice?

                                                         Boston Globe
                                                         Boyle, A. D. and J. C. Stephens

In Boston, we’re proud of our “eds and meds”-driven innovation. Metro Boston has more universities per capita than any other region in the world. Given that colleges and universities claim to advance innovation for the public good, one might assume their density here would place us among the most healthy, equitable, socially just urban areas. Instead, Boston consistently ranks as one of the most unequal, segregated cities in the country, with extreme disparities in health, wealth, and climate vulnerability.

Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO₂

                                          Nature

                                        Kevin Rennert et al.

The social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) measures the monetized value of the damages to society caused by an incremental metric tonne of CO₂ emissions and is a key metric informing climate policy. Used by governments and other decision-makers in benefit–cost analysis for over a decade, SC-CO₂ estimates draw on climate science, economics, demography and other disciplines. However, a 2017 report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) highlighted that current SC-CO₂ estimates no longer reflect the latest research. The report provided a series of recommendations for improving the scientific basis, transparency and uncertainty characterization of SC-CO₂ estimates.

A Conceptual Framework of    Climate Action Needs of the Least Developed Party Countries of the Paris Agreement

                                 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

                                                           Usman Sattar

This article provides a framework for conceptualizing climate action needs grounded in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of the least developed party countries (LDPCs) of the Paris Agreement (PA). It examines the NDCs of 35 LDPCs recorded in the NDC public registry of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). A grounded theory approach is adopted to assess what these countries need to materialize their NDCs under the PA. A conceptual framework of needs is figured out through an iterative process of data collection and analysis in three cycles: (1) open and in vivo coding; (2) axial coding; and (3) theoretical or selective coding. The data are analyzed with the help of NVIVO software. The results provide a verifiable framework of needs for climate action, which includes 55 saturated need factors extracted from the writing excerpts of NDCs, 17 sub-categories (axial codes) with climate finance and technology transfer as the most prominent, and 7 theoretical or selective categories with mobilize, educate, governmental, synergic, levels, equity, and public health. It provides a baseline for policy, research, and action from the developed party countries to uphold their PA obligations.

Sharing economy rebound: The case of peer-to-peer sharing of food waste
Subtainable Production and Consumption
EstitxuVillamor,OrtziAkizu-Gardoki,Jukka TaneliHeinonen,GorkaBueno