Full Description
For the last few thousand years, humanity has struggled to achieve sustainable development. Gillespie sees the problem as multi-faceted: a three legged stool of economic, social, and environmental conundrums have stalled the quest for the long term viability of both our species and the ecosystems in which we reside.
Gillespie moves from the low life expectancy, excessive deforestation, and wetland drainage of the medieval period, through the species loss, coal burning, free trade, and poor waste management of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to the more recent concerns of climate change, unsustainable fisheries, and chemical pollutants. By delivering a comprehensive examination of human survival over the past millennium, Gillespie illustrates that the challenges we face are not new - that we now have the means to counter them, is.
Contents
1: Introduction
2: Prior to the Industrial Revolution
3: The Nineteenth Century
4: The First Half of the Twentieth Century
5: Between the Second World War and 1970
6: From 1970 to 1990
7: Nineteen Nineties
8: The Twenty-First Century: The Economic and Social Context
9: The Twenty-First Century: Environment
10: Conclusion
