The coming transformation : values to sustain human and natural communities

This book emerged from a conference sponsored by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies with the ambitious title, “Toward a New Consciousness: Creating a Society in Harmony with Nature” (held in Aspen, late 2007). The event convened an extraordinary group of some 100 leaders in science, business, policy, the arts, philosophy, religion, and other walks of life to explore the necessity of a fundamental transformation in human values toward the natural world as a necessary and neglected component of arresting the linked environmental and social crises of our time. Based on Gus Speth’s more than thirty years of policy work and Steve Kellert’s equivalent period of scholarly and conservation activity, we had concluded that no degree of legal or regulatory requirement, technological advance, scientific insight, or shift in economic thinking could by itself achieve the needed remedial response to our environmental and social challenge. What was needed as well was a basic alteration in the perception of our place in the natural world.