This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth's environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with environmental threats around the world. The author explains why current approaches to critical global environmental problems -- climate change, biodiversity loss, deterioration of marine environments, deforestation, water shortages, and others -- don't work now and won't work in the future. He provides a stinging critique of the failure of U.S. leadership and offers intriguing insights into why we have been able to address domestic environmental threats with some success while largely failing at the international level. Setting forth eight specific steps to a sustainable future, Speth convincingly argues that dramatically different and far-reaching actions by citizens and governments are now urgent. If ever a book could be described as "essential," this is it.

Preface
Prologue: 1980 }

Part 1 Environmental Challenges Go Global...

1 A World of Wounds
2 Lost in Eden
3 Pollution and Climate Change in a Full World

Part 2 ...And the World Responds

4 First Attempt at Global Environmental Governance
5 Anatomy of Failure

Part 3 Facing Up to Underlying Causes

6 Ten Drivers of Environmental Deterioration
7 Globalization and the Environment

Part 4 The Transition to Sustainability

8 Attacking the Root Causes
9 Taking "Good Governance" Seriously
10 The Most Fundamental Transition of All

Resources for Citizens
List of Abbreviations
Notes
For Further Reading: A Bookshelf
Index