At a time of increasingly rapid environmental deterioration, sustainability is one of the most important issues facing the world. Can we create a sustainable society? What would that mean? How should we set about doing it? How can we bring about such a profound change in the way things are organized? This text tackles these questions directly. It goes beyond rhetoric to explain the deeper issues of sustainable development in a way that seeks to be accessible and interesting to the non-specialist reader. It covers: historical development of the concept of sustainability; contemporary debates about how to achieve it; and obstacles and the prospects for overcoming them. The work should be useful to students, academics and activists concerned with sustainable development. It assumes no previous knowledge of the subject.