Environmental Innovation - by Jack Buffington (Hardcover)

About the Book

Environmental sustainability policy has failed due to focusing on symptoms rather than the root cause problems. Through significant research and a detailed roadmap for how to achieve sustainability by 2050, Buffington provides a realistic, game changing path forward that is bo...

Book Synopsis

Environmental sustainability policy has failed due to focusing on symptoms rather than the root cause problems. Through significant research and a detailed roadmap for how to achieve sustainability by 2050, Buffington provides a realistic, game changing path forwardthat is both good for the environment and the economy.

Review Quotes

Buffington, who directs the supply chain management program at the University of Denver, has written extensively about the impact of climate change on our economy. Here, citing works from scientific sources as well as government programs, he focuses on how climate change must be addressed through collaborative strategies that will empower communities and individuals to take action. Buffington describes the challenges wrought by climate change on the supply chain. He outlines solutions to eliminate carbon emissions and enhance natural carbon sinks, using a multi-sector approach that includes scientists, corporations, policymakers, and the media. We must transition from twentieth-century practices that have engendered public distrust and resistance, he writes, and focus on collaboration--and the economy must be included among our concerns. At the intersection of environmental economics, public policy, and climate change, this is a practical and compelling deep dive into high-level solutions to address climate change, its impact on the economy, and our very survival.

Buffington's new work on environmental innovation is nothing less than a tour de force that succinctly criticizes the post-World War II supply chain economy that delivered profits but also threatens the world with ecological collapse and severe socio-economic dislocation. By adopting 21st century principles of glocalization--focusing on community institutions within the West and Global South--the balance sought by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand over a free and balanced market can deliver an ample life for the Earth's eight billion people. Buffington lays out the specific technologies and innovations needed for this great transformation. His chapters detail how precision agriculture, decentralized solar fusion energy, 3D printing and blockchain marketing technologies supported by de-finance, de-growth, and de-materialization policies can make us producers of food, energy, and products. Localism permits communities to successfully compete economically with present day monopolies without impending privation and political chaos. The challenge is whether or not we have the courage and political will to follow these trailblazing humanitarian ideals to achieve local self-reliance in a cooperative world setting.

Jack Buffington, with deep experience working in corporate supply chains, lays out an inspired plan to solve the biggest challenges in the world. When the next generations read this book, they'll realize that one of the places where they'll be able to make the biggest difference is working inside of these antiquated supply chains. Buffington makes a clear case for how radically changing our entrenched systems is the only way to the other side of Earth's man-made crisis. We need the world's best and brightest willing to go into the belly of the industrial beast--to fix the climate and plastics crisis' from the inside out.

This is an interesting book that captures global environmental sustainability challenges and the growing negative impacts in the Global South as well as the failure of global institutions to address most of these challenges. Buffington touches on fragmented strategies aimed at solving too many problems at a time among multi-lateral institutions such as the United Nations. He underscores a new approach and the importance of science and technology through cooperation at the community level rather than global competition, while engaging local stakeholders to implement this new approach. This is an important contribution to discourse on environmental innovation!

About the Author

Jack Buffington is the director of the supply chain and sustainability practices for First Key Consulting, a global consulting firm, and director of the supply chain program at the University of Denver. In his research and practice, Buffington has advocated for a balance of policy, science and supply chain to achieve global sustainability and economic growth. Buffington has published over twenty peer-reviewed journal articles and eight nonfiction business books, winning various awards, including Reinventing Supply Chain: A 21st Century Covenant for America, Peak Plastic, and The Recycling Myth. He lives in Colorado.