A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world’s leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability
Sustainability has emerged as a global priority in the past decade. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals through the United Nations have highlighted the need to address critical challenges such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the United States, partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future.
This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book’s forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. The book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.
Daniel C. Esty is Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School. He served as head of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014 and in several leadership roles at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1989 to 1993.
“The book provides excellent ideas.”—Financial Times, selected as a Best Book of the Year in Economics, 2019
Axiom Award silver medal winner in the Philanthropy/Nonprofit/Sustainability category, sponsored by Axiom Business Book Awards
“Sustainability represents the overarching challenge of our day, which must be met with a commitment to a spirit of progress across the global community. A Better Planet offers an array of ideas for helping to deliver the ecological transition that is now an imperative.”—Emmanuel Macron, President of France
“A Better Planet offers new approaches to the world’s most pressing environmental problems. It’s a timely and urgently needed volume.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
“Pressing the reset button, this book brings together refreshingly new and profoundly compelling approaches to environmental policy and action in the USA and beyond.”—Christiana Figueres, executive secretary, UN Climate Change Convention, 2010–16
“A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future creates 40 opportunities to start accelerating the transition to a better planet today. The direction is clear; now we need to work together, at scale.”—Peter Bakker, president and CEO, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
“No one can criticize Dan Esty and his talented colleagues for not thinking big: there are ideas in this book that will appeal to anyone—and maybe a couple that will raise your hackles. It’s the kind of spirited, discipline-crossing, deep-dive that will help reorient a sometimes-stale environmental debate!”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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