Inspired Sustainability: Planting Seeds for Action

By: Erin Lothes Biviano

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Synopsis: In Inspired Sustainability, Lothes, a professor at the College of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey, analyzes the insights of activists and scholars who are deeply committed to environmental sustainability. Their insights illuminate the positive experiences and effective processes that empower community leaders to engage others and move past these conflicts. She combines empirically-based focus group data with interdisciplinary research and theological analysis. Inspired Sustainability's most important accomplishment is a unique analysis of the barriers to sustainable decision-making, including the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional conflicts inherent in confronting climate change. Lothes' focus groups show that scientific literacy, a commitment to social justice, awareness of global interdependencies, and the support of working in small communities foster new interpretations of traditional worldviews. These new interpretations are powered by an awareness of their complicity in a morally globalized world, and the possibility of consciously choosing to live in just and sustainable ways.