Psychological, Cultural, and Informational Barriers to Sustainability

Discusses the difficulties of overcoming the deeply entrenched barriers to environmental change that arise from deficits in societal consciousness, knowledge and information. Fundamental problems from faulty thinking processes, key premises about the world, and the cultural structures that constitute our belief systems prevent society from viewing environmental change as a driving priority. Society has a psychological investment in status quo, which is threatened by the concept of moving toward a new society. Anti-environmentalism, disguised as other socially desirable goals, also gears political agendas away from environmental reform. It is argued that transforming society to a sustainable state is not a technological matter, but instead will require wide a deep social relearning of thought processes, value structures, behavior patterns, and institutional arrangements.