{"id":2496,"date":"2011-05-26T22:42:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T02:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=2496"},"modified":"2011-05-26T22:47:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T02:47:00","slug":"skillset-needed-for-living-sustainably","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2011\/05\/skillset-needed-for-living-sustainably\/","title":{"rendered":"Skillset needed for living sustainably"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up a fascinating book today &#8211; &#8220;<a title=\"Website for the book\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sustainability-literacy.org\/thepaperback.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy<\/a>&#8221; edited by Arran Stibbe. It&#8217;s a set of short essays on each of a long list of skills needed for thinking about and achieving sustainability. The contents listing makes worthwhile reading on it&#8217;s own, covering many of the things I&#8217;ve been reading up on for the last few months. I wonder if it&#8217;s possible to design an education program that fosters all these skills:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ECOCRITICISM &#8211;\u00a0the ability to investigate cultural artefacts from an ecological perspective.<\/li>\n<li>OPTIMISATION &#8211;\u00a0the art of personal sufficiency.<\/li>\n<li>GROUNDED ECONOMIC AWARENESS &#8211;\u00a0economic awareness grounded in ecological and ethical values.<\/li>\n<li>ADVERTISING AWARENESS &#8211;\u00a0the ability to expose advertising discourses that undermine sustainability, and resist them.<\/li>\n<li>TRANSITION SKILLS &#8211;\u00a0skills for transition to a post fossil-fuel age.<\/li>\n<li>COMMONS THINKING &#8211;\u00a0the ability to envisage and enable a viable future through connected action.<\/li>\n<li>EFFORTLESS ACTION &#8211;\u00a0the ability to fulfil human needs effortlessly through working with nature.<\/li>\n<li>PERMACULTURE DESIGN &#8211;\u00a0designing our lives with nature as the model.<\/li>\n<li>COMMUNITY GARDENING &#8211;\u00a0skills for building community and working within environmental limits.<\/li>\n<li>ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE &#8211;\u00a0viewing the world relationally.<\/li>\n<li>SYSTEMS THINKING &#8211;\u00a0the ability to recognize and analyse the inter-connections within and between systems.<\/li>\n<li>GAIA AWARENESS &#8211;\u00a0awareness of the animate qualities of the Earth.<\/li>\n<li>FUTURES THINKING &#8211;\u00a0the ability to envision scenarios for the future and work towards bringing desirable ones into being.<\/li>\n<li>VALUES REFLECTION AND THE EARTH CHARTER &#8211;\u00a0the ability to critique the values of an unsustainable society and consider alternatives.<\/li>\n<li>SOCIAL CONSCIENCE &#8211;\u00a0the ability to reflect on deeply-held opinions about social justice and sustainability.<\/li>\n<li>NEW MEDIA LITERACY &#8211;\u00a0communication skills for sustainability.<\/li>\n<li>CULTURAL LITERACY &#8211;\u00a0understanding and skills for culturally appropriate communication.<\/li>\n<li>CARBON CAPABILITY &#8211;\u00a0understanding, ability and motivation for reducing carbon emissions.<\/li>\n<li>GREENING BUSINESS &#8211;\u00a0the ability to drive environmental and sustainability improvements in the workplace.<\/li>\n<li>MATERIALS AWARENESS &#8211;\u00a0the ability to expose the hidden impact of materials on sustainability.<\/li>\n<li>APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY AND APPROPRIATE DESIGN &#8211;\u00a0the ability to design systems, technologies and equipment in an appropriate way.<\/li>\n<li>TECHNOLOGY APPRAISAL &#8211;\u00a0the ability to evaluate technological innovations.<\/li>\n<li>COMPLEXITY, SYSTEMS THINKING AND PRACTICE &#8211;\u00a0skills for managing complexity.<\/li>\n<li>COPING WITH COMPLEXITY &#8211;\u00a0the ability to manage complex sustainability problems.<\/li>\n<li>EMOTIONAL WELLBEING &#8211;\u00a0the ability to research and reflect on the roots of emotional wellbeing.<\/li>\n<li>FINDING MEANING WITHOUT CONSUMING &#8211;\u00a0the ability to experience meaning, purpose and satisfaction through non-material wealth.<\/li>\n<li>BEING-IN-THE-WORLD &#8211;\u00a0the ability to think about the self in interconnection and interdependence with the surrounding world.<\/li>\n<li>BEAUTY AS A WAY OF KNOWING &#8211;\u00a0the redemption of knowing through the experience of beauty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a few things I&#8217;m might add (social networking and social justice spring to mind), and I see they&#8217;ve added <a title=\"additional chapters for &quot;The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/arts.brighton.ac.uk\/stibbe-handbook-of-sustainability\/additional-chapters\" target=\"_blank\">some additional chapters<\/a> on the website. But phew, this looks like an extremely valuable book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up a fascinating book today &#8211; &#8220;The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy&#8221; edited by Arran Stibbe. It&#8217;s a set of short essays on each of a long list of skills needed for thinking about and achieving sustainability. The contents listing makes worthwhile reading on it&#8217;s own, covering many of the things I&#8217;ve been reading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,19],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2496"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2496\/revisions\/2499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}