Bringing Sustainability to the Ground Level

CHAPTER 6

Progress of Sustainability and Sustainability as Progress

Introduction

Only 50 years ago, United States elected officials enacted sweeping laws to protect endangered species (1969), water (1972), and air quality (1975–1990), and established the U.S. EPA (1970). To support the emerging rules, technical training in environmental fields grew, accelerating the advancement of science. During this same era, new academic disciplines, such as earth systems science and ecology, rapidly developed (Worster 1994). Later, academic fields began to integrate studies of the environment with societal and economic concerns. As examples, political ecology gained traction in the 1980s (Robbins 2004), while ecological economics (Røpke 2004) and industrial ...