Sustainable consumption and the problem of resilience

Abstract

The twenty-first century is likely to witness increased levels of weather-related disasters, droughts, epidemics, food shortages, habitat destruction, and resource conflicts. Those environmental and systemic problems will be mediated and exacerbated by potential economic dislocations, including job losses, financial crises, and commodity-price in-creases. As a result, the problem of resilience will increasingly permeate the politics and policies of sustainability transitions. Using a comparative analysis of two American households located at opposite ends of the income pyra-mid, this article explores the issue of how to think about the relationship between sustainable consumption and resi-lience. Although the two goals can be configured as a tradeoff, the discussion suggests how policies might address them in a synergistic way. © 2010 Hess.