Daniel C. Esty - A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future

MORE PRAISE FOR A BETTER PLANET

No one can criticize Dan Esty and his talented colleagues for not thinking big: there are ideas in this book that will appeal to anyoneand maybe a couple that will raise your hackles. Its 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?

This thoughtful and challenging book sets out how we can close the talk and action gap, making it essential reading for anyone that cares about the future of our planet and humanity.

Paul Polman, former CEO and Chairman, Unilever

A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future creates forty 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

Comprehensive, balanced, thought-provoking, thorough and, above all, readable! This book will become a must-have for anyone who wants to understand what has happened, and is happening, to our environment, why we should care, and what we can do about it.

Christine Todd Whitman, Governor of New Jersey, 19942001, and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, 20012003

A Better Planet offers insightful and practical solutions to the complex, multifaceted climate change challengeand ones with potential bipartisan appeal! This book deserves consideration by anyone who cares about moving us toward a clean-energy future.

Ryan Costello, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 20152019

A masterful summation of and reflection on past environmental effortsand a valuable outline of principles to guide and inspire a new era of progress.

William K. Reilly, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, 19891993

A Better Planet will leave readers inspired to reimagine the balance between responsible development today and preservation of resources for tomorrow.

Monika U. Ehrman, University of Oklahoma College of Law

A Better Planet offers lucid, honest, wide-ranging, and diverse perspectives that strive to move us beyond political divides toward renewed actions to secure private-sector innovation, public engagement, and better policies for a better planet. Bravo!

Lynn Scarlett, Global Vice President of Policy, The Nature Conservancy

At the state levelwhere much of the action takes placefresh approaches and new voices are needed to address complex environmental and public health challenges. Written by some of the best minds in their fields, A Better Planet draws upon science, experience, and innovation to offer a way forward.

Janet Coit, Director, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management

An important contribution to the effort to advance sustainability as a global goal.

Angel Gurra, Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Let the debates begin! This volume launches a critical and timely dialogue on reform of environmental governance.

Maria Ivanova, Associate Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability, University of Massachusetts Boston

Here is practical hope for specific actions to support sustainability and to mitigate climate disruption. Comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative, this book makes possible a brighter planetary future.

James Engell, Harvard University, co-editor of Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology

A BETTER PLANET

Copyright 2019 by Yale University.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941070

ISBN 978-0-300-24624-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)

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To the generations of Yale graduates who have contributed to building a sustainable futureand to all those who inspired them

Ingrid C. Burke

Perhaps the most important challenge of this century centers on whether humans can obtain the necessary resources to flourish in a manner that is sustainable for future generations without causing irreversible damage to the planet. How do we obtain the requisite food, clean and sufficient water, energy, clean air, and access to green and wild places for our own health? How do we steward the biological diversity of the planet? As far as we know, we are the only species with capabilities to answer these questions: imagining the future, identifying problems, generating complex knowledge and tools, creating technological solutions and incentives, having empathy for others of our species who may have much worse challenges, governing our societies, and more. There are many worrisome trends in the environment at this time. But because of our human capacity for thought and action, we have enormous opportunities to generate knowledge and then deliver processes and policies for sustainable natural resource use with support for social equity and environmental justice.

Human health and the environment are inextricably linked, and much of the linkage occurs through the use of natural resources, the consequences of extracting those resources, and the impacts on air, water, land, and ecosystem quality and integrity. Individuals who are in positions to develop and implement policies or business practices to protect the environment for human health tend to be in a minority that is distant from the key challenges that arise from those linkages, generally living in conditions that are among the best in the world. This phenomenon of distant threats creates potential for lack of will in governance for environmental protection, as has been evident in the inertia associated with climate change policy for the United States. But the distant threats are becoming closer for everyone. We are experiencing rapidly increasing rates of environmental disasters that endanger human life, from hurricanes and forest fires to heat waves, drought, and flooding. In a more and more urbanized world, pressure mounts on rural lands for food, energy, and fiber resources to support cities. Waste accumulates on land and in the sea at remarkable rates. And environmental pollutiona very near threatdisproportionately affects the lower-income populations across the globe.

Why a book about environmental protection, and why right now? Why dialogue, collaboration, and leadership by experts?

It is an ideal time for new ideas to guide environmental protection, ideas that rely on science and rigorous analysis, prioritize environmental protection for those either currently near or far from the threats of irreversible environmental damage, generate opportunities for economic investment and welfare, and are tractable. This book presents such big ideas from different perspectives and areas of expertise.

The authors are scholars and practitioners working in business, government, and the nonprofit world, as well as a few graduate students. The concepts, frameworks, and solutions advanced here offer great promise for moving society toward a sustainable future. Of course, it might seem odd to put forward a book based on this belief in our current political moment, marked by substantial public distrust of experts, and indeed, of elite institutions such as my own. Experts are perceived by some to be out of touch, far from the real problems that face everyday citizens, and even biased toward one or another political perspective. But this lack of trust is inconsistent in its forms. Public appreciation for what science and technology can bring us remains strong when it comes to curing illness, engineering solutions that result in enhanced communication over smartphones and the internet, and delivering new and exciting modes of transportation. But resistance rises with regard to solutions that seem to address distant threats or that carry some short-term hardship in return for a longer-term benefit. To some extent, we experts may have brought some of this distrust on ourselves, through developing tremendous depth in knowledge and tools, but perhaps not as much skill in communicating that knowledge or its relevance to the invested citizens.