Sustainability Sutra: An Ecological Investigation (Sustainability Now) - Softcover

Morrison, Roy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590793870 ISBN 13: 9781590793879

Publisher: SelectBooks, 2017

Synopsis

Sustainability Sutra addresses the pursuit of sustainability as crucial in the transformation from an industrial to an ecological civilization, exploring in succinct detail how sustainability can be accomplished through an ecological global growth strategy that makes economic growth mean ecological improvement. It is a meditative journey of self-discovery. It is a path and record of a writer's and reader's heart way.  The book includes an Introduction that considers the dynamics of building an ecological future in market economies and examines how the price system can send clear signals for sustainability. Combining ecological consumption taxation, new market rules, fiscal, monetary and investment  can catalyze the trillions of dollars of productive investment in a sustainable future.

About this title

About the Author

Roy Morrison is a writer and energy consultant with over 30 years of diverse experience. He has extensive experience in energy efficiency work, performing energy audits and technical assistance analysis for business, institutional, and government clients. He was the author of the first law in the nation for municipal aggregation for retail electric competition. He also founded the New Hampshire Consumers Utility Cooperative that was the first seller of competitive electricity in New Hampshire. He was a founding staff member of the University of New Hampshire Energy Office.

He is currently working on building solar farms in several states with a focus on using roof tops and marginal and contaminated land to be restored for productive energy use. He pursues a variety of sustainability initiatives, including  zero carbon planning and greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation planning for New England towns and cities.

He delivered a plenary address at the 2013 World Social Forum in Hangzhou which issued the Hangzhou declaration calling for global development of an ecological civilization. Chinese colleagues report he was the first globally to discuss an ecological civilization in his book Ecological Investigations. He recently edited Xinhua's 2014 China Ecological Report, and written an Op-Ed for the Beijing’s People’s Daily assessing China's ecological progress.

He was Founding Director of the Office for Sustainability at Southern New Hampshire University. He has worked on the development of renewable energy hedges; Advanced Energy Performance Contracting for market based mass retrofits of efficiency and renewables;  and  Super Grid development.  He was an organizer and safe energy activist with the Clamshell Alliance in the 1970s and 1980s, co-founder of the American Peace Test, and staff for the Nuclear Freeze Campaign in the 1980s. He helped organize and participated in many large and small non-violent direct actions and risked arrest many times in support of safe energy and nuclear disarmament, and in opposition to nuclear power and nuclear weapons testing.

He is the author of numerous books including Mondragon: A Cooperative Social System; Ecological Democracy, Ecological Investigations; Ecological Civilization 2140; and the poetry book The Loggers of Warner.

Review

Sustainability is perhaps the greatest challenge we face today as a planetary species, and meditation is one of the rediscovered ways we can achieve the mindset we need to face the challenge. Sustainability Sutra opens this way with eloquent examples and impeccable logic, combining the force of our left hemispheric reason with our right-hemispheric intuition. This book deserves widespread attention by all inhabitants of this unsustainability-threatened planet.”
Ervin Laszlo, Philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and advocate of quantum consciousness; the author of many books and the founder of the Club of Budapest, the General Evolutionary Research Group,
and the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research

Morrison tackles the great challenge of our times: how to transition to what the Chinese call a new era of Ecological Civilization.’ His engaging inquiry could not be more significant: how to change our dominant economic systems and tackle climate change, poverty, oppression, and more. Whatever your stance on economics and finance, this is a valuable view on one of today’s most significant debates. Morrison lucidly points to a wide range of low-hanging fruit that would bring quick and crucial win-wins for both ecology and justice such as reforms in taxes, subsidies, and incentives, a basic income grant, and basic energy entitlement. This sustainability sutra
offers much hope and possibility!”
Jennifer Well, Associate Professor, Advance California Institute of Integral Studies

Roy Morrison’s astute observations and broad vision for value-added global transformation will one day become the reigning ideology of the future and to my mind is the only prospect that will secure human and planetary survival.”
Steve Hershman, Greater Boston Capital Partners

Roy Morrison’s book is a fine example of work that is at the same time both scientific and popular literature. It raises very relevant issues of ecology and sustainable future that is currently so much concern for all humanity. The topical subject matter and clear presentation of complex issues will surely attract to this book the attention of many readers around the world.”
Alexander Chumakov, PhD, Professor in Department of Global Processes at Moscow State University First Vice-President of the Russian Philosophical Society, Chair of Philosophy Department at the Finance University under the Government of the Russian Federation

Human activity has brought the world to the brink of catastrophe. Climate change caused by industry and agriculture is already showing up as rising global temperatures, killer heat waves, extraordinary drought, melting permafrost, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, and mass extinction. The symptoms of anthropogenic climate change in turn worsen poverty, water shortages, famine, disease, and other factors that have already lead to wars and revolutions. Scientists are calling this new geological era, in which our actions are a primary driver of the planetary climate, the Anthropocene. Yet in the face of this self-inflicted disaster, some elites, particularly in the United States, continue to either deny its reality, or behave as if it’s a minor problem. Massive protests by ordinary people such as the 2014
global climate mobilization that brought more than 400,000 protesters into the streets of New York City are ignored or ridiculed by powerful economic interests and their hired politicians. But business as usual is a recipe for the end of our civilization, and, quite possibly, our species.

We can’t be complacent. We can’t allow the elites to lead us further over the cliff. It’s time for a new paradigm. Roy Morrison’s Sustainability Sutra is an important addition to the conversation about a better way, possibly the only way, for human beings to have a viable future beyond the 21st Century. This is the imperative of ecological civilization.”
Dr. Sam Miller, Associate Professor of Meteorology, Plymouth State University

This book lays out a thoughtful and practical approach to economic development an approach that could actually work. Roy Morrison’s writing is well-researched, clearly written, and provocative. Those who think economic development and care for the environment are incompatible need to read this book.”
Professor Michael Swack, Director, Center for Impact Finance Carsey School of Public Policy University of New Hampshire

To me, Roy Morrison is like a prophet. Some 20 years ago, he predicted the coming of an ecological civilization era and the changing process becomes more and more obvious. Many of his predictions, which are stated in this book, are now becoming true in China. His observation and thinking always amaze me!”
Ying Xue, Chief Correspondent of Xinhua News Agency Los Angeles Bureau

Morrison has created a masterful work at a moment unprecedented in the history of previously collapsed civilizations. Our democracy demands nothing less than this humbling effort on our parts: to join forces with Morrison in working towards the rational solutions he so evocatively sets before us.”
Michael Tobias, PhD, Ecologist, author and filmmaker

This is a very valuable book for each of us who cares for our beautiful planet. It shows that the green can be gold. Sustainable development can benefit both the present and the future. This book is particularly relevant to China who is attempting to walk out a new road by avoid the mistakes the Western modernization made and to pursue a sustainable ecological Civilization for the common good of both humanity and nature.”
Zhihe Wang, PhD, Director of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China

Sustainability Sutra delivers a road-map towards a sustainable future for our civilisation; it is a manual for policy makers grappling with the competing’ demands of business and the environment. Whatever your political stance, it is a must-read for anyone who has an interest in the future of the human race and who wants to get involved in the debate. Sustainability is a multi-dimensional and complex concept that can be difficult to pin down in debate and that is over-used in throwaway remarks and sound bites.

Sustainability Sutra is one those rare works that creates the necessary context and back drop for an informed debate, in this case, on the future of our planet and hence, our civilisation.”
Joe Corbett, Director, Aryton Engineering Dublin


Roy Morrison’s Sustainability Sutra: An Ecological Investigation should be regarded as a valuable effort to creating an ecological civilization. It is also an expression of humanity’s desire to live in the face of unfolding global self-destruction. This book is full of insights and several very important observations. It is a timely must-read for anyone seeking a prosperous, sustainable future of our planet. Zhihe Wang, PhD. Director of Institute for Postmodern Development of China

About this edition

• Publisher: SelectBooks
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1590793870
• ISBN 13: 9781590793879
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304