The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation

The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation shows that we have unwittingly fallen into an existential crisis of our own making. We have allowed large corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture governments and influence public opinion excessively. We have created a god called ‘the market’ and allowed our most important decisions to be made by this imaginary entity, which is in fact a human system controlled by vested interests. The result has been the exploitation of our life support system, our planet, and most of its inhabitants, to the point of collapse.

This book argues that the way out of our black hole is to build social movements to apply overwhelming pressure on government and big business, weaken the power of vested interests and strengthen democratic decision-making. This must be done simultaneously with action on the specific issues of climate, energy, natural resources and social justice, in order to transition to a truly sustainable civilisation.

Dr Mark Diesendorf is Honorary Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney. Previously he was Professor of Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at University of Technology Sydney. His books include Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change, Climate Action: A campaign manual for greenhouse solutions, and Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy.

Rod Taylor is a science writer and broadcaster. His science columns have been running in Fairfax and ACM papers for over 14 years. He is co-editor of the 2022 book Sustainability and the New Economics and author of Ten Journeys on a Fragile Planet.