Routledge Sustainable Action and Motivation: Pathways for Individuals, Institutions and Humanity (Routledge Environmental Ethics)

Sustainable Action and Motivation proposes individual competencies and institutional policies that can help overcome the motivational hurdles that hamper sustainable action. Following the Paris Agreement of 2015 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the political momentum urgently to begin the drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has increased significantly. Affluent, high-income OECD countries are expected to take the lead in the global transition to a low carbon society. Given this, we need a better understanding of the motivational problems that people in affluent countries face with acting sustainably. This book investigates the above questions by analysing three fundamentally different perspectives: individuals and their motivation to act sustainably; institutions who take responsibility for issuing policies that steer us towards taking sustainable action; and humanity, each individual member of which ought to understand his or her non-sustainable behaviour in relation to the continued existence of the collective of human beings. Using theories from empirical psychology and a phenomenological approach to the research, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of practical philosophy, psychology of motivation and environmental psychology, as well as policymakers looking for ways to implement effective policies that encourage pro-environmental behaviour. Review "This book is more up to date than ever. It identifies the main problem of meeting the challenges of sustainability in the psychology of motivation and argues that the essential remedy for the perils of climate change is a change in the mind-set of the peoples in the industrialised world. Written by a banker, it specifically deals with the ethical responsibility of bankers and other professions dealing with long-term investments." Professor Dieter Birnbacher, University of Düsseldorf, Germany About the Author Roland Mees studied fundamental mathematics at Utrecht University, business administration at the Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University), and philosophy in business at Utrecht University. Alongside his full-time job at ING, he obtained his PhD in 2017 at the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University, where he is an affiliated researcher. Mees is a director of Sustainable Finance at ING, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.