The Power of Sustainable Thinking

Quick fix or permanent, local or imported, synthetic or natural? Everyday we are faced with a myriad of complex, often contradictory choices that have a bearing on the climate and sustainability. Yet whether at home or in business, without a method for understanding our thought processes we often default to behaviour that is destroying the climate, natural environment and social wellbeing. How can we change our thinking and behaviours to protect the climate and move towards sustainability? In this new book, renowned sustainability and business and organizational change specialist Bob Doppelt provides both an easy to understand explanation and practical methods for transforming our climate-damaging, unsustainable ways into sustainable thinking and behaviours. Doppelt makes the case that global warming and today's other ecological and socioeconomic problems are not technical in nature, rather they represent a crisis of thought. Every society has a shared 'mental frame' - core beliefs and assumptions - that shape the way people make decisions and behave. Effective solutions will emerge only when new, sustainable forms of thinking emerge. Sustainable thinking requires a clear understanding of the systems humans are part of, the use of proven strategies for facilitating personal, team, and organizational change, ethical rules to guide behaviour, and a creative rather than problem-solving orientation. The first part of the book makes the case that new ways of thinking are needed to resolve climate change and other sustainability issues. Part two starts by explaining how the human mind works and how people change. It then provides proven 'staged-based' methods for transforming thinking and behaviour, beginning first with the reader's own cognitive patterns , then moving to how individuals can motivate other people to change, and finally to how teams and organizations can be motivated to change.To bring the ideas alive, Doppelt offers numerous examples from his own experiences and those of business and government leaders from different places and contexts. The end result is a practical, inspiring read for all those who want to change their own thinking and behaviour and contribute to a cascade effect that produces widespread social change for climate protection and sustainability.