Sustainability

by Norton, Bryan G.

• ISBN13: 9780226595191
• ISBN10: 0226595196
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainabilitythe cornerstone of environmental policyusing philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse.Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.

Author Biography

Bryan G. Norton is professor of philosophy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Linguistic Frameworks and Ontology, Why Preserve Natural Variety? and Toward Unity among Environmentalists, and the editor of The Preservation of Species.

Table of Contents

Preface: Beyond Ideology	ix
A Note to the Busy Reader: Some Shorter Paths	xvii
An Innocent at EPA	1	(46)
The Old EPA Building	1	(16)
Towers of Babel: The Structural Problems at EPA	17	(6)
The Costs of Not Being Able to Get There from Here (Conceptually)	23	(6)
Hijinks and Political Hijackings	29	(18)
PART I: SETTING THE STAGE FOR ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT
Language as Our Environment	47	(41)
Introduction: The Importance of Language	47	(4)
Of Hedgehogs and Foxes	51	(5)
Progressivism, Pragmatism, and the Method of Experience	56	(20)
Environmental Pragmatism and Action-Based Logic	76	(12)
Epistemology and Adaptive Management	88	(42)
Aldo Leopold and Adaptive Management	88	(4)
What Is Adaptive Management?	92	(9)
Uncertainty, Objectivity, and Sustainability	101	(4)
A Pragmatist Epistemology for Adaptive Management	105	(9)
Uncertainty, Pragmatism, and Mission-Oriented Science	114	(7)
How Adaptive Management Is Adaptive	121	(9)
Interlude: Removing Barriers to Integrative Solutions	130	(19)
Avoiding Ideology by Rethinking Environmental Problems	130	(8)
Overcoming the Serial Approach to Environmental Science and Policy	138	(11)
PART II: VALUE PLURALISM AND COOPERATION
Where We Are and Where We Want to Be	149	(44)
The Practical Problem about Theory	149	(5)
Four Problems of Environmental Values	154	(8)
Where We Are: A Beginning-of-the-Century Look at Environmental Ethics	162	(4)
Economism as an Ontological Theory	166	(14)
Breaking the Spell of Economism and IV Theory	180	(10)
Pluralism and Adaptive Management: What the Study of Environmental Values Could Be	190	(3)
Re-modeling Nature as Valued	193	(39)
Radical, but How New?	193	(6)
A Naturalistic Method and a Procedure	199	(11)
Re-modeling Nature: Learning to Think like a Mountain	210	(10)
Hierarchy Theory and Multiscalar Management	220	(12)
Environmental Values as Community Commitments	232	(72)
Public Goods and Communal Goods	232	(10)
The Advantages of Democratic Experimentalism	242	(10)
Environmental Problems as Problems of Cooperative Behavior	252	(25)
Discourse Ethics	277	(13)
Experimental Pluralism: Naturalism and Environmental Values	290	(14)
Sustainability and Our Obligations to Future Generations	304	(52)
Intertemporal Ethics	304	(6)
Strong versus Weak Sustainability	310	(7)
Philosophers and the Grand Simplification	317	(1)
Grandly Oversimplified?	318	(11)
Passmore and Shared Moral Communities	329	(3)
What We Owe the Future	332	(8)
The Logic of Intergenerational Obligation	340	(16)
Environmental Values and Community Goals	356	(47)
A Schematic Definition of Sustainability	365	(1)
A Catalog of Sustainability Values	365	(14)
Beyond the Fact-Value Divide	379	(9)
Choosing Indicators as Community Self-Definition	388	(15)
PART III: INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION
Improving the Decision Process	403	(37)
Decision Analysis and Community-Based Decision Making	403	(6)
What Does Not Work: The Red Book	409	(1)
Heading in the Right Direction: The Changing Field of Decision Science	410	(7)
Getting It Mostly Right: Understanding Risk	417	(10)
The Two Phases Revisited: Putting Multicriteria Analysis to Work	427	(13)
Disciplinary Stew	440	(39)
Beyond Towering	440	(6)
Philosophical Analysis and Policy Choice	446	(8)
Scale and Value: The Key to It All	454	(7)
Disciplinary Stew: The Prospects for an Integrated Environmental Science	461	(11)
Environmental Evaluation: A Fresh Start in the World of What-If	472	(7)
Integrated Environmental Analysis and Action	479	(40)
Conservation: Moral Crusade or Environmental Public Philosophy?	479	(5)
An Alternative: The Dutch System	484	(10)
EPA and Environmental Policy Today: A Report Card	494	(5)
Constitutive Values and Constitutional Environmentalism	499	(4)
Problem-Solving Environmentalism	503	(4)
Seeking Convergence	507	(3)
Ecology and Opportunity	510	(9)
Appendix Justifying the Method	519	(60)
A.1 Philosophy's Abdication	519	(7)
A.2 The Rise of Linguistic Philosophy: Its Inevitability and Meaning	526	(8)
A.3 The Rise and Transformation of Logical Empiricism, aka Positivism	534	(20)
A.4 Pragmatism: The New Way Forward	554	(15)
A.5 Pragmatism and Environmental Policy	569	(6)
A.6 Philosophy's Role: An Epilogue	575	(4)
Notes	579	(22)
Index	601