As an international management consultant for 30 years since graduating from Wharton and joining a renowned management consulting firm, the author has helped oil & gas, power, mining, and industrial companies around the world build plants and improve efficiency to offer low-cost goods to consumers who always want more for less. He has seen first-hand the impact of hundreds of industrial mega-projects on natural resources, native landscapes, and working conditions. His first book, The Guide to Supply Chain Management (Bloomberg and The Economist, 2009), formulated a recipe for global supply chain optimization based on industry “best practices.” His second book, Optimal Supply Chain Management in Oil, Gas & Power Generation (PennWell, 2011) fine-tuned the techniques of optimal supply chain management for oil, gas, and power companies. In this (his third) book, he pivots to explain how these “optimized” supply chains have created a dilemma of global proportions. He reveals the dark secrets of international supply chains for familiar products such as coffee, bottled water, gasoline, and smartphones, and explains how government policies and business norms around the world have evolved to allow fracking, pollution, toxic waste, human exploitation and other unsustainable practices. Jacoby proposes a bold and promising new policy framework that is ground-breaking and achievable.
Keywords
carbon tax, clean power, climate change, compliance, consumerism, emissions, environmentalism, fracking, globalization, industrialization, progress, regulation, sustainability, urban sprawl, workers rights