ABSTRACT
The more commercially minded reader would say that this book was writ ten purely because the publisher and I considered there was a market out there. The fact that there is such an audience and because I feel I have some thing important to tell them, both stem from the same source: a widespread concern for the quality of world we live in, an urgent need for its mainten ance and where necessary, repair. The phrase ‘quality of world’ is left inten tionally broad, even ambiguous. It encompasses:
• our natural environment - climate, soils, oceans, biological life (plants, animals, bacteria) - that can both nurture us and be hazards to us;
• the built environment that we have created to protect and house ourselves and to provide a modified infrastructure within which we can prosper;
• the economic environment that sustains our built environment and allows the organisation of the means of production;
• the social, cultural and legal environments within which we conduct ourselves and our interactions with others.
