ABSTRACT
Reflecting on the themes of the book from a US perspective, it is worthwhile to realize differences in the cultural and political landscapes of the United States and Europe. No one would expect a swift and radical transformative change toward a sustainable society in the current Trumpian political climate in the US. Rather, the political switch toward a right-wing populist government signals trouble for the sustainability agenda. However, the US is not a monolith but a historically and culturally diverse country with many contrasting regional cultures (Woodard 2011). In addition, the constitution which created the US in 1798 was in essence a compromise balancing regional with federal interests (Larson 2014). The ensuing nineteenth-century wave of industrialization, infrastructure development and rapid economic growth paved the way for what is now known as consumer society. Consumer society has been intentionally constructed after WWII in order to redirect war production capacity toward peaceful products, to create jobs for military veterans, and to create a cultural counterweight to Soviet communism (Brown and Vergragt 2016).
