ABSTRACT
Debates over climate change now focus on mitigation, adaptation and resilience rather than whether it is happening or what is causing it. The answer to this last question is fairly simple and generally agreed. Human action is the predominant cause of the massive and rapid acceleration of greenhouse gasses, global warming and climate turbulence. Our ways of doing business, of producing goods and services, have used the Earth’s resources as if they were inexhaustible. The Earth itself has been treated simultaneously as a factory, pleasure park, garbage dump, larder, market - place and war zone. It is self-evident that we, as a species, cannot continue as we are doing. Obscene poverty and fabulous wealth live side by side, and the natural world, for many, cannot be accessed at all, although poverty, inequality, injustice, environmental degradation and war are not exactly modern phenomena. We cannot simply continue in the same old way without putting the future at risk of not happening at all. Hence, sustainable development is more important than ever before, although the discussions about what it is and how it can be developed remain lively subjects for debate, negotiation and practical action.
