An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives

With great clarity, this book lays out the challenges facing all of us if we are to avoid a future defined by increasing economic inequity, ecological demolition and social disarray. Yet, unlike many books on this subject, this plain-speaking textbook is infused with compassion and hope. The result is vitalising. Readers will come away not only informed on a wide variety of topics, from climate change to collaborative consumption, but empowered to turn difficult questions into powerful tools of inquiry, creativity and transformation. Casting aside polarising and simplistic answers, Mulligan recasts talk of sustainability as the essential personal and collective human quest to truly ennoble the world. -Aidan Davison, University of Tasmania, Australia

At a time when problems like global warming and the negative impacts of economic globalization are becoming intense and urgent, Martin Mulligan has re-energised the idea of sustainable development in a book that is accessible, informative, and full of hopeful alternatives. -Peter Christoff, University of Melbourne, Australia

This book excels in crossing boundaries. Mulligan links action at the global and local levels, combines social and ecological sustainability perspectives with the personal, and tells many stories without losing analytical rigor. He approaches sustainability with a solution-oriented perspective, without adhering to the bias of a single discipline or framework. An Introduction to Sustainability ventures deeply and effectively into treacherous academic terrain, ultimately providing hope without sugarcoating the reality of our current unsustainable path. -Mike Shriberg, University of Michigan, USA

I would happily recommend this as a core introductory text for a 1^st year undergraduate module on environmental issues as it covers so many of the most important challenges with critical appreciation while retaining a sense of optimism too. -Sam Randalls, University College London, UK

Discussions of systems thinking, agency and cultural vitality suggest a positive outlook that is particularly stimulating and empowering for students. -Phoebe Crisman, University of Virginia, USA

This is a timely and much-needed book, written by experienced university educators who know how to engage with students and spark and sustain their interest. This involves being engaging and hopeful - and having the skill to explain quite complex ideas in a lucid, meaningful way. -Allan Johnstone, Murdoch University, Australia

Mulligan's book puts together the social, political, ecological and the personal in a seamless integration of thinking that students will find refreshing and accessible. The focus in this book is on change - and especially on encouraging a hopeful sense in all its readers that everyone can be an agent for transformative change toward global sustainability. To embark on a sustainability journey with this book in hand is truly to do as Mulligan insists and `travel hopefully'. -Libby Porter, RMIT University, Australia

This book provides an excellent introduction to different perspectives of sustainability, covering a wide range of topics from key concepts and classic case studies to the emerging challenges to sustainability that we face, but ultimately with its emphasis on personal perspectives it encourages us all, as the title of the first essay says, 'to travel hopefully' -Zoe Robinson, Keele University, UK

Sustainability, like a fad diet, often provokes an oscillation between complacency and despair; Mulligan avoids both. He revitalizes key concepts that have veered toward sacred-cow status, but also (and equally importantly) is explicit that we must travel hopefully toward deep systemic change. His RMIT Principles are among the clearest I've seen as a guide toward personal, professional, and civic action. -Kim Sorvig, University of New Mexico, USA

Building upon seminal documents from the sustainability literature, and his own experiences, Martin Mulligan succeeds in presenting us with a personal, yet compelling, journey into the meaning and implications of sustainability, and invites us to seek for ourselves its meaning in our daily lives. The book complements the many sustainability-oriented textbooks that emphasize complex interactions within the ecosphere, juxtaposing these with the equally complex nature of human thought. -Thomas L. Theis, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA