Horton, P. orcid.org/0000-0002-6095-1460 and Horton, B.P. (2019) Re-defining sustainability : living in harmony with life on Earth. One Earth, 1 (1). pp. 86-94. ISSN 2590-3322
Abstract
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, urban air pollution, and contamination of oceans by plastic waste have dramatically increased awareness that human civilization faces an existential environmental crisis. Here, we argue that the way humankind views its place on planet Earth is the cause of this crisis and of the reluctance to take meaningful and urgent action. This view gives humans the right to exploit everything on Earth for their own benefit and a belief that sustainability can be delivered through exploiting nature in a smarter way and controlling it better. We propose that humankind rejects this view and instead learns to live in harmony with life on Earth by respecting the land, the oceans, and the atmosphere from which everything derives. We show how knowledge, creativity, and innovation can drive transformation in all sectors of society to enable this new relationship to develop, re-defining sustainability in terms of all life on Earth.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Elsevier. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | environment; sustainability; human supremacy; climate change; biodiversity; planetary barriers |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Oct 2019 09:07 |
Last Modified: | 04 Oct 2019 08:20 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.oneear.2019.08.019 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:151695 |