ABSTRACT
It seems as if our social institutions have surrendered any attempt to deal effectively with environmental degradation. Rather, these institutions make marginal, reactive adjustments instead of the significant proactive changes that are required. Absent these significant changes, the future we can anticipate is one in which we must resign ourselves to the inevitability of mass extinctions of numerous species due to human activities and loss of entire ecosystems due to climate change. Thus, the development of an ecologically sustainable society is one of the most sweeping and crucial challenges our social institutions will ever face. So far, however, the efforts undertaken make this imperative seem only a Utopian fantasy, fast receding from our grasp.
