University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Necessary Revolution
Book

The Necessary Revolution

How Individuals And Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World

Nina Kruschwitz, Peter Senge, Joe Laur, Sara Schley and Bryan Smith
Broadway Books, 2008
Buy book or audiobook

Read offline

Amazon Kindle

Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Visionary

Recommendation

The Earth faces grave sustainability problems, including global warming. In this new book, experts Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur and Sara Schley discuss how people, organizations and nations are coming together to bring about positive change. The authors demonstrate that sustainability issues are part of an interconnected global dilemma that affects everyone. They urge united action to solve major ecological problems before solutions become impossible. They even note that businesses can save and earn money through environmentally sound products and policies. getAbstract recommends this enlightened book’s informed focus on exactly how to improve the sustainability of life on the planet.

Summary

Looming Disaster

The world is in horrible, dangerous shape. The existence of life depends on “clean water, breathable air, fertile soil, pollination and a stable climate.” These essentials are under severe attack. Wetlands, grasslands and forests are vanishing. Half of the world’s major rivers are polluted or depleted. Each year, environmental degradation forces 50 million poor people to leave their villages and migrate to cities. As a result, half a billion people live in horrific slums or squatter camps. Such people live bereft of social harmony, a situation sure to result in upheaval.

But the worst of the story is that the world is getting notably hotter. Global climate change, caused by the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other greenhouse gases, is a hugely disturbing fact, not a theory. A dangerous side effect of the Industrial Age, global climate change is the most serious looming planetary catastrophe, an insidious nightmare. As fossil fuels deposit excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the gas causes widespread, continuous heating and damage. For instance, as the oceans absorb CO2, the water’s acidity increases, destroying coral reefs...

About the Authors

Peter Senge lectures at MIT. Bryan Smith is a faculty member at York University’s Sustainable Enterprise Academy. Nina Kruschwitz is manager of the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook Project. Senge, Joe Laur and Sara Schley co-founderd the SoL Sustainability Consortium, which fosters economic, ecological and social sustainability.

Comment on this summary