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Synopsis This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful, James Gustava Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiation and agreement of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth’s environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers environmental threats around the world. The author explains why current approaches to critical global environmental problems – climate change, biodiversity loss, deterioration of marine environments, deforestation, water shortages, and others – don’t work now and won’t work in the future. He provides a stinging critique of the failure of U.S. leadership and offers intriguing insights into why the U.S. has been able to address domestic environmental threats with some success while largely failing at the international level. Setting forth eight specific steps to a sustainable future, Speth convincingly argues that governments are now urgent. If ever a book could be described as “essential,” this is it.