Public Policy

Juliet Schor, a Professor of Sociology at Boston College, writes and lectures on the connections between consumerism, work life, and environmental sustainability. She is a founding board member of the Center for a New American Dream and author of the best-seller The Overworked American: the Unexpected Decline of Leisure, of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need, and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture.

We spoke with Schor about her new book Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (published as True Wealth in paperback), in which she questions the conventional wisdom that maximizing income and growth is the path to well-being. 

Many members of the Capital Institute community believe that the emerging markets for ecosystem services hold considerable promise as tools for redirecting the flow of capital toward economic activities that honor ecosystem constraints.   However, a paper that recently circulated among us entitled "The Environmentality of 'Earth Incorporated'"  raised some questions that challenge that belief.   The author, Sian Sullivan, argues that the  “intrinsic fallacy at the heart” of ecosystem services market initiatives is that they attempt to incentivize environmentally ethical behavior.  She maintains that the market does not produce “virtuous behavior” and that it is essentially naïve to take the view that if only we design them correctly we can halt or reverse ecosystem degradation.   She further states that the danger of these market initiatives is that they promote the  “valuing of nature as money,” and do not acknowledge “nature's immanence or sentience,” or the reality that humans are merely one of many “companions” in nature’s community.  Sullivan’s argument might lead one to conclude that efforts to save our fragile ecosystems should be focused more on shifting humanity’s view of its place in the natural order rather than harnessing the financial markets to restore that natural order.

“To repair the fabric of cities, towns and communities while preserving the land around them” is the stated mission of Jonathan Rose Companies. It may sound like an unusually lofty, exceedingly idealistic goal for a real estate company. But Jonathan Rose Companies is more than about developing real estate.

Founded in 1989 by a third-generation developer who sought to mix his passion for real estate with his passion for making a difference in urban communities, every project of Jonathan Rose Companies is guided by five principles: First, to increase the diversity of the places where people live and work--mixing public spaces with residences, workplaces, marketplaces, and education and spiritual centers. Second, to build with environmental sensitivity using a combination of high-tech modeling techniques and practical, often low-tech solutions. Third, to support the integration of work life and personal life--as expressed by “livelihood.” Fourth, to be mindful of the linkages between projects, users and their surroundings. And fifth, to consider that change is a given for real property as it is for all things, and thus to recognize that development projects must be conceived to adapt to often unanticipated future needs.