Promotional Information

In this compelling book we are shown the destructive folly of humanity's insatiable appetite for bigger and bigger homes, and for second and third homes, a largely unrecognized factor in the human environmental predicament. Regardless of the negative impact on our life-support systems, too many of us view the home not as a comfortable necessity of life but as a symbol of our status and success. On every page of this book, however, we learn the terrible consequences for our future if this symbiosis of individual vanity and short-term, short-sighted government policy is not interrupted. These authors, descendants of Cassandra, are ignored at our peril. -- Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb The Housing Bomb manages to very effectively and efficiently describe, explain, and suggest solutions for the global, massive explosion in independent households which threatens our natural environment, our survival. -- Lisa D. Pearce, University of North Carolina

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Household Dynamics and Their Contribution to the Housing Bomb
2. How Home Ownership Both Emancipates and Enslaves Us
3. "Housaholism" in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
4. Household Dynamics and Giant Panda Conservation
5. Defusing the Housing Bomb with Your House
6. Individual and Local Strategies for Defusing the Housing Bomb
7. Large-Scale Strategies for Defusing the Housing Bomb
Conclusion
Notes
Index

About the Author

M. Nils Peterson is an associate professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. Tarla Rai Peterson is the Boone and Crockett Chair in Wildlife and Conservation Policy at Texas A&M University and a professor of environmental communication at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Jianguo Liu is the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, a University Distinguished Professor, and the director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University.

Reviews

The Housing Bomb: Why Our Addiction to Houses Is Destroying the Environment and Threatening Our Society explores common fallacies in thinking about housing and offers many alternatives, and is a pick for any social issues collection, especially those strong in urban research. Midwest Book Review The Housing Bomb is an eloquent expose of the social and environmental ills associated with western housing trends. -- Martin Brueckner Pacific Conservation Biology Any reader with an interest in economics, sustainable business, and ecology will find this book well worth reading and debating. -- Rick Docksai World Future Society