Our current world is unsustainable. Pollution and global warming are threatening to disrupt the natural cycles of our planet. We seek not to live sustainably, in sync with the environment, but instead to grow without stop. But how did we get to this point? That is what these pages will teach you.  Using concept maps, I depicted two case studies which show how we got to such an unsustainable world. The first of these, Colonial New England, comes from William Cronon’s book, Changes in the Past. It shows the transition of New England from the pre-colonial times, when Native Americans lived sustainably, to the colonial period, when European settlers introduced unsustainable values and practices. The second of these is The Rise of Automobiles, from Peter Dauvergne’s book, The Shadows of Consumption. This case shows how cars have become so pervasive in modern society and led to an unsustainable world. By looking at these cases in conjunction with economic, ecological, and political scholarship, it is possible to understand how we have come to live in such an unsustainable world.

 

Sources

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, 2003.

Dauvergne, Peter. The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment. MIT Press, 2010.