The most important barrier to achieving a transformation to a more sustainable industrial system is lock-in or path dependency due to (1) the failure to envision, design, and implement policies that achieve co-optimization, or the mutually reinforcing – rather than compromising – of societal goals (increasing economic welfare, environmental quality, and employment/earning capacity) and (2) entrenched economic and political interests that game (and gain from) the present system and advancement of its current trends. System-wide change requires system-wide thinking and action -- and direct confrontation of wrong-headed policies.





Nicholas A. Ashford is Professor of Technology & Policy and Director of the Technology & Law Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics; Law, Technology, and Public Policy; and Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development. Dr. Ashford is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Socio-technical Research in the School of Engineering; the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the Sloan School of Management; and the Environmental Policy Group in the Urban Studies Department. He holds both a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a Law Degree from the University of Chicago, where he also received graduate education in Economics.
Dr. Ashford is the co-author of two important textbooks/readers addressing sustainable development: Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State (2018, Routledge Press) and Environmental Law, Policy and Economics: Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda (2008, MIT Press) He has also published several hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews.