angelique ramsingh toni richardson rees, w. (2010). what's blocking sustainability? human...
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Humans seek instant gratification and are at competition with other humans and other species. Technology and the economy enable humans to continuously expand with no regard of ecological restrictions. Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2),TRANSCRIPT
What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and
denial.William Rees
Angelique RamsinghToni Richardson
Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2), 13-25.
Humans are unsustainable by nature
Humans are K-strategists and possess evolutionary traits that are biased against sustainability.
Humans expand to all available resources.
Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2), 13-25.
Humans seek instant gratification and are at competition with other humans and other species.
Technology and the economy enable humans to continuously expand with no regard of ecological restrictions.
Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2), 13-25.
Human well-being and development is socially constructed to be constituted by perpetual income growth.
Humans have trouble acting against biologically driven unsustainable behaviors.
A solution would have to be the rearrangement of human priorities. Humans need to be diverted from materialism and consumerism.
Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2), 13-25.
Solutions Equalize the distribution of wealth in
order to change the economy’s influence on our behavior.
Peer Pressure Ultimately, our goal should be to
restructure the biological cultural memes that contribute to unsustainable behaviors.Rees, W. (2010). What's blocking
sustainability? Human nature, cognition, and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 6(2), 13-25.
Critical ReviewPoints that were argued well: Culture reinforces behaviors and tendencies toward material gain and
competition. Humanity is an evolutionary work in progress; we are incapable of effectively
tackling the unsustainability conundrum, because we are not able to address it with reason alone.
The way to achieve an overall culture of pro environmental behavior is to re-program the culture of society.
Points that need further explanation: On an individual level, how does a person consciously reframe their personal
beliefs and values when culture is so dominant?