Consumption Corridors: Living A Good Life Within Sustainable Limits

Description

Consumption Corridors: Living a Good Life within Sustainable Limits explores how to enhance peoples’ chances to live a good life in a world of ecological and social limits. Rejecting familiar recitations of problems of ecological decline and planetary boundaries, this compact book instead offers a spirited explication of what everyone desires: a good life. Fundamental concepts of the good life are explained and explored, as are forces that threaten the good life for all. The remedy, says the book’s seven international authors, lies with the concept of consumption corridors, enabled by mechanisms of citizen engagement and deliberative democracy. Across five concise chapters, readers are invited into conversation about how wellbeing can be enriched by social change that joins "needs satisfaction" with consumerist restraint, social justice, and environmental sustainability. In this endeavour, lower limits of consumption that ensure minimal needs satisfaction for all are important, and enjoy ample precedent. But upper limits to consumption, argue the authors, are equally essential, and attainable, especially in those domains where limits enhance rather than undermine essential freedoms. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and humanities, and environmental and sustainability studies, as well as to community activists and the general public. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Series Page......Page 7 Title Page......Page 8 Copyright Page......Page 9 Table of Contents......Page 10 List of figures......Page 12 List of boxes......Page 14 Acknowledgments......Page 16 1 Living well within limits......Page 18 2 Our vision: the good life......Page 23 But what is a good life?......Page 25 Focusing on needs......Page 29 Slipping through our fingers......Page 34 Can we be responsible for a good life for others?......Page 39 The idea......Page 50 Limits are already out there......Page 55 What kind of processes are needed?......Page 62 Getting started and building momentum......Page 69 Limits to the salvation potential of technological innovation......Page 72 Limits to efficiency and markets as solutions......Page 76 Limits to consumer sovereignty and responsibility......Page 78 No limits to freedom in democratic societies?......Page 84 Shedding myths in pursuit of social change......Page 86 5 Visionary change: corridors as a pathway to the good life......Page 88 Annex 2: Indicators of quality of life......Page 94 Annex 3: Estimates of upper and lower sustainable limits in floor space......Page 101 References......Page 102 Index......Page 108