Nature's Revenge: Reclaiming Sustainability in an Age of
Corporate Globalization, Josée Johnston, Michael Gismondi, and
James Goodman, eds., Peterborough: Broadview Press and Garamond Press,
2006, pp. 330.
In the 20 years since the Bruntland Commission popularized the notion
of “sustainable development,” many have questioned whether
this ambitious idea has any serious potential for realization or if it
stands as a rhetorical mask for a policy of meagre reform. Such concerns
are understandable, given how the ongoing challenges of global ecological
change and the continuing imperatives of development leave us no
justifiable alternative. Nobody would propose “unsustainable”
development, whatever the ecological and human effects. But sustainability
remains difficult to foresee, as it represents a journey into an unknown,
with little in the way of a map to guide those who seek this path.