Cover: Sustainability, 2nd Edition by Christian R. Weisser

Sustainability

A Bedford Spotlight ReaderSecond Edition ©2019 Christian R. Weisser

Sustainability explores questions around the central concept of sustainability: What are its foundations and politics? How do crises challenge sustainability? How is sustainability connected to local and transnational environments? How is sustainability connected to tourism and recreatio...

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Institutional Prices

ISBN:9781319056612

Cover: Sustainability, 2nd Edition by Christian R. Weisser

A brief and versatile reader about sustainability at an affordable price

Sustainability explores questions around the central concept of sustainability: What are its foundations and politics? How do crises challenge sustainability? How is sustainability connected to local and transnational environments? How is sustainability connected to tourism and recreation? Readings by a range of ecologists, urban planners, philosophers, geographers, reporters, artists, and ordinary citizens take up these questions and more. Questions and assignments for each selection provide a range of activities for students. The website for the Spotlight Series offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting line of single-theme readers, each reflecting Bedford’s trademark care and quality. An editorial board of a dozen compositionists at schools with courses focusing on specific themes assists in the development of the series. Each reader collects thoughtfully chosen selections sufficient for an entire writing course—about 35 pieces—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students from all majors make sustained inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as money, food, border crossings, music, humor, subcultures, happiness, monsters, sustainability, and gender to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, with each chapter focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic. The website for the Spotlight Series offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

Features

Bedford care and quality in every volume.  Each volume in the Bedford Spotlight series is developed with attention to design, pedagogy, and compelling readings that work in the classroom. 

Affordable, and an ideal package option. Each Spotlight Reader offers plenty of material for a composition course while keeping the price low. Package any Spotlight Reader with Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Bedford Spotlight Rhetoric, by Jeff Ousborne, for free, or combine a Spotlight Reader with a Bedford/St. Martins rhetoric or handbook for a significant discount.

Multiple perspectives on sustainability and its effects on individuals and society.  In order to foster student engagement, six chapters, built around central questions on the subject of sustainability, offer numerous entry points for inquiry and discussion. A mix of genres as well as accessible and challenging selections allow instructors to tailor their approach to each classroom. For instance

  • Patricia Kameri-Mbote discusses the “Challenges to Sustainability in Africa” and a way forward to more positive change.
  • Scott Carlson looks to increase environmental activism on campus in “Whatever Happened to the Drive for Campus Sustainability?”
  • Mark Buchanan stresses the importance of bipartisan cooperation on sustainability in “How to Sell Conservatives on Climate Change.” 

Thoughtful support for writers and instructors. A general introduction, chapter introductions, and headnotes provide context, and prompts and assignments offer suggestions for discussion, informal writing, research; ways to connect selections; and assignments for writing.  A website for the series offers support for teaching the themes in each volume.

New to This Edition

22 new reading selections that include more disciplines and flexibility for teaching about sustainability in your course. For example

  • Jack Hanna discusses conservation, education, and animal welfare in “What Zoo Critics Don’t Understand.”
  • JR Thorp explores the relationship between environmental damage and the oppression of women around the world in “What Exactly is Ecofeminism?”
  • Prince Charles of Wales, a longtime advocate for the environment, speaks “On the Future of Food” and the challenges we face.

A greater variety of topics. Based on feedback from instructors, Sustainability now features more topics to engage your students, including selections on fracking and oil pipelines, technology and sustainability, and ecofeminism. New alternative tables of contents by discipline and theme highlight ways readings can be arranged.

An appendix, "Sentence Guides for Academic Writers." This section helps with an essential skill: working with and responding to others’ ideas. This practical module helps students develop an academic writing voice by giving them sentence guides, or templates, to follow in a variety of composing situations.

 "This book combines learning about one of the most important things in our lives, sustainability, with ways of writing about it and thinking about it."
—Arlene Plevin, Olympic College

"This book contains a wide variety of articles on a range of topics to get students thinking about the complexities of sustainability."
—Darrel Elmore, Florida International University

Digital Options

Table of Contents

Introduction for Students

Chapter 1: What are the Foundations of Sustainability?

*Jeremy Caradonna, Sustainability: A History

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

John Muir, The American Forests

Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure

Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain

David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

Chapter 2: How is Sustainability a Political Issue?

World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report)

Al Gore, Climate of Denial

*JR Thorpe, What Exactly is Ecofeminism?

*Jim Manzi and Peter Wehner, Conservatives and Climate Change

*Roger Scruton, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: a Case for an Environmental Conservativism

*Mark Buchanan, How to Sell Conservatives on Climate Change

Chapter 3: How Do Crises and Disasters Create Challenges for Sustainability?

*Lindsay Abrams, Hurricane Katrina’s Unheeded Lesson: The Climate Refugee Crisis We Still Won’t Address

David Biello, How Did the BP Oil Spill Affect Gulf Coast Wildlife?

*Alison Singer, Fracking: The Solution? Or the Problem?

*Heather Brady, 4 Key Impacts of The Keystone Xl and Dakota Access Pipelines

*Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction

Jared Diamond, The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization

Chapter 4: How is Sustainability Connected to Local and Urban Environment?

Jeffrey Kaplan, The Gospel of Consumption

*Michael Bloomberg and Patricia de Lille, Green Cities: Why Invest in Sustainable Cities?

*Kendra L. Smith, The Cities of the Future Will Be Smart, Sustainable, and Efficient

Amy Westervelt, Can Recycling Be Bad for the Environment?

*Prince Charles of Wales, On the Future of Food

Fritjof Capra, Ecology and Community

*Peter Poschen and Michael Renner, Green Jobs

*Scott Carlson, Whatever Happened to the Drive for Campus Sustainability?

*Jeff Sutton, Why Social Media and Sustainability Should Go Hand in Hand

Chapter 5: How is Sustainability a Transnational Issue?

The United Nations Panel on Global Sustainability, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing

*Bill McKibben, A Moral Atmosphere

*Nanette Galloway, Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Future

Brendan Smith, The Coming Green Wave: Ocean Farming to Fight Climate Change

*Kyle Frischkorn, A Blueprint for Genetically Engineering a Super Coral

*Christine Evans-Pughe, Cleaning Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

*Mark Hay, Five Years After Fukushima, Japan’s Nuclear Debate Is Heating Up

*Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Challenges to Sustainability in Africa

Michael Moyer and Carina Storrs, How Much Is Left? The Limits of Earths Resources

Chapter 6: How are Tourism and Recreation Connected to Sustainability?

*Amanda Williams, Why Sustainable Tourism Should Matter to You

*Wouter Geerts, Overtourism and the Struggle for Sustainable Tourism Development

Bob OBrien, Our National Parks and the Search for Sustainability

*Jack Hannah, What Zoo Critics Don’t Understand

*Robyn Migliorini, Is Hunting Sustainable?

Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing

Sentence Guides for Academic Writers

Acknowledgments

Index of Authors and Titles

Headshot of Christian R. Weisser

Christian R. Weisser

Christian Weisser is an Associate Professor of English at Penn State Berks, where he coordinates both the Professional Writing Program and the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. 　Christian is the Editor of Composition Forum, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal in rhetoric and composition. Much of his research focuses upon the ecology of writing and environmental rhetoric, and he is the author or editor of half a dozen books and numerous articles on this subject, including Moving Beyond Academic Discourse, Natural Discourse (with Sid Dobrin), and The Locations of Composition (with Christopher Keller). Christian enjoys teaching courses in technical writing, environmental rhetoric, and the discourse of sustainability.

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