The human world is currently on
the brink of catastrophic environmental disaster. As President of the USA, Barack Obama, said
in the State of the Union Address, “no challenge poses a greater threat to
future generations than climate change” [Obama 2015]. To quote Tony Juniper, author of How many lightbulbs does it take to change a
planet?, “We must now face the challenge of meeting expanding human needs
while simultaneously maintaining the relatively stable and productive planetary
conditions that have sustained our welfare… [because] if we are to build
sustainable societies we will need to address some urgent and large-scale
interlocking trends, namely, climate change, the impending global mass
extinction of species, and the depletion of resources” [Juniper 2007:
p.6].
