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Wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, was thinking of phasing out the shoes that made them famous. But then something strange happened.” (Gladwell, 3) All of the sudden, Hush Puppies exploded. “In 1995, the company sold 430,000 pairs of the classic Hush Puppies, and the next year it sold four times that, and the year after still more, until Hush Puppies were once again a staple of the wardrobe of the young American male.” (Gladwell, 4) How did it happen? Some of it had to do with luck, but a handful of kids in the East Village and Soho were wearing them simply because no one else did, the word spread to a couple designers, and they spread the word to others. Thus, it reached a tipping point and spread like wildfire.
Granted, it takes a little stretching of the imagination to compare sustainable development to Hush Puppies, but the point is that if sustainable development reaches a certain point, it too could tip.
And there’s reason to believe that it might. In Fortune Magazine, an article titled
The Next Big Thing quotes John McClure, corporate vice president of Applied Materials, saying, “The next major development will be alternative energy…At our company …show more content…
Yes, this would increase energy prices, but it would more importantly encourage the conservation of energy and technological innovation. As World Bank’s Andrew Steer points out, “one of the main things that destroyed the economy of the Soviet Union was low energy prices, which prevented technological innovation.” (Dresner, 96)
Although obstacles do exist – “there is every possibility for free riding and the tragedy of the commons” (Dresner, 139) – a sociocultural change in attitude toward sustainability could lead the way for technology to replace certain natural capital, but not so much that there is too much dependence on technology, in case of a failure. After defining the sustainability spectrum – weak, strong, and environmental sustainability
(although he uses very strong instead of environmental) – Dresner examines two areas in between strong and weak; moderate ‘strong sustainability’ and moderate ‘weak sustainability.’ Both provide more specific renditions of the overly indistinct
Granted, it takes a little stretching of the imagination to compare sustainable development to Hush Puppies, but the point is that if sustainable development reaches a certain point, it too could tip.
And there’s reason to believe that it might. In Fortune Magazine, an article titled
The Next Big Thing quotes John McClure, corporate vice president of Applied Materials, saying, “The next major development will be alternative energy…At our company …show more content…
Yes, this would increase energy prices, but it would more importantly encourage the conservation of energy and technological innovation. As World Bank’s Andrew Steer points out, “one of the main things that destroyed the economy of the Soviet Union was low energy prices, which prevented technological innovation.” (Dresner, 96)
Although obstacles do exist – “there is every possibility for free riding and the tragedy of the commons” (Dresner, 139) – a sociocultural change in attitude toward sustainability could lead the way for technology to replace certain natural capital, but not so much that there is too much dependence on technology, in case of a failure. After defining the sustainability spectrum – weak, strong, and environmental sustainability
(although he uses very strong instead of environmental) – Dresner examines two areas in between strong and weak; moderate ‘strong sustainability’ and moderate ‘weak sustainability.’ Both provide more specific renditions of the overly indistinct