Future generations, wildlife, and natural resources - collectively referred to as 'the voiceless' in this work - are the most vulnerable and least equipped populations to protect themselves from the impacts of global climate change. While domestic and international law protections are beginning to recognize rights and responsibilities that apply to the voiceless community, these legal developments have yet to be pursued in a collective manner and have not been considered together in the context of climate change and climate justice. In Climate Change and the Voiceless, Randall S. Abate identifies the common vulnerabilities of the voiceless in the Anthropocene era and demonstrates how the law, by incorporating principles of sustainable development, can evolve to protect their interests more effectively. This work should be read by anyone interested in how the law can be employed to mitigate the effects of climate change on those who stand to lose the most.

In this book, Sander Van der Leeuw examines how the modern world has been caught in a socio-economic dynamic that has generated the conundrum of sustainability. Combining the methods of social science and complex systems science, he explores how western, developed nations have globalized their world view and how that view has led to the sustainability challenges we are now facing. Its central theme is the co-evolution of cognition, demography, social organization, technology and environmental impact. Beginning with the earliest human societies, Van der Leeuw links the distant past with the present in order to demonstrate how the information and communications technology revolution is undermining many of the institutional pillars on which contemporary societies have been constructed. An original view of social evolution as the history of human information-processing, his book shows how the past offers insight into the present, and can help us deal with the future. This title is also available as Open Access.

Exploring the rich range of meanings that Shakespeare finds in the natural world, this book fuses ecocritical approaches to Renaissance literature with recent thinking about the significance of religion in Shakespeare's plays. MacFaul offers a clear introduction to some of the key problems in Renaissance natural philosophy and their relationship to Reformation theology, with individual chapters focusing on the role of animals in Shakespeare's universe, the representation of rural life, and the way in which humans' consumption of natural materials transforms their destinies. These discussions enable powerful new readings of Shakespeare's plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and the history plays. Proposing that Shakespeare's representation of the relationship between man and nature anticipated that of the Romantics, this volume will interest scholars of Shakespeare studies, Renaissance drama and literature, and ecocritical studies of Shakespeare.

Climate change and the destruction of the earth is the most urgent issue of our time. We are hurtling towards the end of civilisation as we know it. With an unflinching honest approach, Rupert Read asks us to face up to the fate of the planet. This is a book for anyone who wants their philosophy to deal with reality and their climate concern to be more than a displacement activity. As people come together to mourn the loss of the planet, we have the opportunity to create a grounded, hopeful response. This meaningful hopefulness looks to the new communities created around climate activism. Together, our collective mourning enables us to become human in ways previously unknown. Why Climate Breakdown Matters is a practical guide on how to be a radical, responsible climate activist.

The urban condition is today being radically transformed. Urban restructuring is accelerating, new urban spaces are being consolidated, and new forms of urbanization are crystallizing. In New Urban Spaces, Neil Brenner argues that understanding these mutations of urban life requires not only concrete research, but new theories of urbanization. To this end, Brenner proposes an approach that breaks with inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded settlement unit-the city or the metropolis-and explores the multiscalar constitution and periodic rescaling of the capitalist urban fabric. Drawing on critical geopolitical economy and spatialized approaches to state theory, Brenner offers a paradigmatic account of how rescaling processes are transforming inherited formations of urban space and their variegated consequences for emergent patterns and pathways of urbanization. The book also advances an understanding of critical urban theory as radically revisable: key urban concepts must be continually reinvented in relation to the relentlessly mutating worlds of urbanization they aspire to illuminate.

We only have one planet, and its climate and ecosystem are essential to our survival. A veritable tsunami of studies and assessment reports outlines a stark picture of humanity's detrimental impacts on our planet's life and environmental health. Climate change is at the heart of many of these impacts. We cannot continue to live in the same way; we're facing relentless population growth, paired with ever-expanding energy and resource consumption. Every day we dither exacerbates the issues we have to repair. What are our options, though? We can still avert the doomsday scenario and choose more sustainable behavior. Decisive action can still make a significant difference to our environment. In Rebalancing Our Climate, Eelco J. Rohling documents a wealth of ways to adjust the trajectory of climate change. He outlines measures to drive massive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, remove these gases from our atmosphere, and reflect part of the incoming energy from the Sun back into space. The book evaluates both advantages and disadvantages of changing our behaviour. Rohling thus addresses the issues that affect the pathways to our survival in an understandable way. He also showcases the need to protect ourselves from impacts that have become inevitable already and presents ways to drive society to get these jobs done. The resulting book provides powerful facts and arguments to support informed choices about how we manage our dear planet.

A far-reaching, urgent, and thoroughly engaging exploration of our relationship with animals - from the acclaimed Financial Times journalist. This might be the worst time in history to be an animal. But is there a happier way? Factory farms, climate change, deforestation and pandemics have made our relationship with the other species unsustainable. In response, Henry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to live alongside the animals we love. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a farm to investigate the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas around over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos and owning pets, and he meets the chefs, activists, scientists and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. A Times Book of the Year

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh contain one-fifth of humanity, are home to many biodiversity hotspots, and are among the nations most subject to climatic stresses. By surveying their environmental history, we can gain major insights into the causes and implications of the Indian subcontinent's current conditions. This accessible new survey begins roughly 100 million years ago, when continental drift moved India from the South Pole and across the Indian Ocean, forming the Himalayan Mountains and creating monsoons. Coverage continues to the twenty-first century, taking readers beyond independence from colonial rule. The new nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have produced rising populations and have stretched natural resources, even as they have become increasingly engaged with climate change. To understand the region's current and future pressing issues, Michael H. Fisher argues that we must engage with the long and complex history of interactions among its people, land, climate, flora, and fauna.

We live during a crucial period of human history on Earth. Anthropogenic environmental changes are occurring on global scales at unprecedented rates. Despite a long history of environmental intervention, never before has the collective impact of human behaviors threatened all of the major bio-systems on the planet. Decisions we make today will have significant consequences for the basic conditions of all life into the indefinite future. What should we do? How should we behave? In what ways ought we organize and respond? The future of the world as we know it depends on our actions today. A cutting-edge introduction to environmental ethics in a time of dramatic global environmental change, this collection contains forty-five newly commissioned articles, with contributions from well-established experts and emerging voices in the field. Chapters are arranged in topical sections: social contexts (history, science, economics, law, and the Anthropocene), who or what is of value (humanity, conscious animals, living individuals, and wild nature), the nature of value (truth and goodness, practical reasons, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and aesthetics), how things ought to matter (consequences, duty and obligation, character traits, caring for others, and the sacred), essential concepts (responsibility, justice, gender, rights, ecological space, risk and precaution, citizenship, future generations, and sustainability), key issues (pollution, population, energy, food, water, mass extinction, technology, and ecosystem management), climate change (mitigation, adaptation, diplomacy, and geoengineering), and social change (conflict, pragmatism, sacrifice, and action). Each chapter explains the role played by central theories, ideas, issues, and concepts in contemporary environmental ethics, and their relevance for the challenges of the future.

Societal transformations are needed across the globe in light of pressing environmental issues. This need to transform is increasingly acknowledged in policy, planning, academic debate, and media, whether it is to achieve decarbonization, resilience, national development plans, or sustainability objectives. This volume provides the first comprehensive comparison of how sustainability transformations are understood across societies. It contains historical analogies and concrete examples from around the world to show how societal transformations could achieve the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through governance, innovations, lifestyle changes, education and new narratives. It examines how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand the agents and drivers of societal change towards sustainability, using data from the academic literature, international news media, lay people's focus groups across five continents, and international politics. This is a valuable resource for academics and policymakers working in environmental governance and sustainability. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

Essays investigating the idea of natural heritage and the ways in which it has changed over time. The concepts of nature, culture and heritage are deeply entwined; their threads run together in some of our finest museums, in accounts of exploration and discovery, in the work of artists, poets and writers, and in areas that arecherished and protected because of their landscapes and wildlife. The conservation ethic - placing a value on the natural environment - lies at the heart of the notion of "natural heritage", but we need to question how those values originated, were consolidated and ultimately moulded and changed over time. In a contemporary context the connections between nature and culture have sometimes become lost, fragmented, dislocated or misunderstood; where did "natural heritage" begin and how do we engage with the idea of "nature" today? The essays collected here re-evaluate the role of culture in developing the concept of natural heritage, reflecting on the shifts in its interpretation over the last 300 years. Contributors: Martin Holdgate, Marie Addyman, E. Charles Nelson, Darrell Smith, Andrew Ramsey, Viktor Kouloumpis, Richard Milner, Gina Douglas, Penny Bradshaw, Arthur MacGregor, Chiara Nepi, Hannah Paddon, Stephen Hewitt, Gordon McGregor Reid, Ghillean T Prance, Peter Davis, Christopher Donaldson, Lucy McRobert, Sophie Darlington, Keith Scholey, Paul A. Roncken, Angus Lunn, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Tim Sands, Robert A. Lambert, James Champion, Erwin van Maanen, Heather Prince, Chris Loynes, Julie Taylor, Sarah Elmeligi, Samantha Finn, Owen Nevin, Jared Bowers, Kate Hennessy, Natasha Lyons, Mike Jeffries.

No one sets out to intentionally cause environmental problems. All things being equal, we are happy to protect environmental resources; in fact, we tend to prefer our air cleaner and our species protected. But despite not wanting to create environmental problems, we all do so regularly in the course of living our everyday lives. Why do we behave in ways that cause environmental harm? It is often easy and inexpensive to behave in ways with bad environmental consequences, but more difficult and costly to take environmentally friendly actions. The incentives we face, some created by the nature of environmental resources, some by social and political structures, often do not make environmentally beneficial behavior the most likely choice. Furthermore, our behavior is conditioned by habits and social norms that fail to take environmental protection into consideration. In this book, Elizabeth R. DeSombre integrates research from political science, sociology, psychology, and economics to understand why bad environmental behavior makes perfect sense. As she notes, there is little evidence that having more information about environmental problems or the way an individual's actions contribute to them changes behavior in meaningful ways, and lack of information is rarely the underlying cause that connects behavior to harm. In some cases such knowledge may even backfire, as people come to see themselves as powerless to address huge global problems and respond by pushing these issues out of their minds. The fact that causing environmental problems is never anyone's primary goal means that people are happy to stop causing them if the alternative behavior still accomplishes their underlying goals. If we can figure out why those problems are caused, when no one intends to cause them, we can develop strategies that work to shift behavior in a positive direction. Over the course of this book, DeSombre considers the role of structure, incentives, information, habit, and norms on behavior in order to formulate lessons about how these factors lead to environmentally problematic behavior, and what understanding their effects can tell us about ways to change behavior. To prevent or address environmental problems, we have to understand why even good people do bad environmental things.

Drawing on five detailed case studies from the American West, the authors explore and clarify how to expedite a transition toward adaptive governance and break the gridlock in natural resource policymaking. Unlike scientific management, which relies on science as the foundation for policies made through a central bureaucratic authority, adaptive governance integrates various types of knowledge and organizations. Adaptive governance relies on open decision-making processes recognizing multiple interests, community-based initiatives, and an integrative science in addition to traditional science.

Case studies discussed include a program to protect endangered fish in the Colorado River with the active participation of water developers and environmentalists; a district ranger's innovative plan to manage national forestland in northern New Mexico; and how community-based forestry groups are affecting legislative change in Washington, D.C.

In November 2015, the world powers came together in Paris with the hope of reaching an agreement on the most urgent issue of our time: climate change. While it was an historic moment that brought solutions within the realm of possibility, the obstacles to enacting real revolution were still many. Now, confronting these controversies head-on, two scholars use a series of ground-breaking arguments to frame the problem in human terms, showing us how vested interests have been able to control the conversation, tracing a line of reasoning that will break through the seemingly impenetrable barriers of political obfuscation. This watershed book evokes the battle cries of Naomi Klein and the exigency of Rachel Carson, laying the groundwork for a path to environmental salvation.

Environmental disasters, from wildfires and vanishing species to flooding and drought, have increased dramatically in recent years and debates about the environment are rarely far from the headlines. There is growing awareness that these disasters are connected – indeed, that in the fabric of nature everything is interconnected. However, until the publication of Freya Mathews' The Ecological Self, there had been remarkably few attempts to provide a conceptual foundation for such interconnectedness that brought together philosophy and science.

In this acclaimed book, Mathews skilfully weaves together a thought-provoking metaphysics of the environment. She connects the ideas of the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza with twentieth-century systems theory and Einstein’s physics to argue that the atomistic cosmology inherited from Newton gave credence to a picture of the universe as fragmented, rather than as whole. Furthermore, it is such faulty thinking that presents human beings as similarly disconnected and individualistic, with the dire consequence that they regard nature as of purely instrumental rather than intrinsic value. She concludes by arguing for an ethics of ecological interdependence and for a basic egalitarianism among living species.

A compelling and fascinating account of how we must change our thinking about the environment, The Ecological Self is a classic of ecological and environmental thinking.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a substantial new Introduction by the author.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition

1. Atomism and its Ideological Implications

2. Geometrodynamics: A Monistic Metaphysic

3. System and Substance: Alternative Principles of Individuation

4. Value in Nature and Meaning in Life.

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Virtue ethics is now widely recognized as an alternative to Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories. However, moral philosophers have been slow to bring virtue ethics to bear on topics in applied ethics. Moreover, environmental virtue ethics is an underdeveloped area of environmental ethics. Although environmental ethicists often employ virtue-oriented evaluation (such as respect, care, and love for nature) and appeal to role models (such as Henry Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson) for guidance, environmental ethics has not been well informed by contemporary work on virtue ethics.

With "Character and Environment," Ronald Sandler remedies each of these deficiencies by bringing together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that any ethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. He also develops a pluralistic virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and provides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues.

These projects have implications not only for environmental ethics and virtue ethics but also for moral philosophy more broadly. Ethical theories must be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy with respect to all aspects of the human ethical situation: personal, interpersonal, and environmental. To the extent that virtue-oriented ethical theory in general, and Sandler's version of it in particular, provides a superior environmental ethic to other ethical theories, it is to be preferred not just as an environmental ethic but also as an ethical theory. "Character and Environment" will engage any reader with an interest in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, or moral philosophy.

Howard T. Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet.

This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing his approach and insight to a whole new generation of students and scholars. For this edition Odum refines his original theories and introduces two new measures: emergy and transformity. These concepts can be used to evaluate and compare systems and their transformation and use of resources by accounting for all the energies and materials that flow in and out and expressing them in equivalent ability to do work. Natural energies such as solar radiation and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are diagrammed in terms of energy and emergy flow. Through this method Odum reveals the similarities between human economic and social systems and the ecosystems of the natural world. In the process, we discover that our survival and prosperity are regulated as much by the laws of energetics as are systems of the physical and chemical world.

Singled out as "one of the country's leading environmental thinkers" by Bill McKibben in the New York Review of Books, David W. Orr offers an exacting analysis of where we are in terms of climate change, how we got here, and what we must now do. Orr shows how political negligence, an economy based on the insatiable consumption of trivial goods, and a disdain for the well-being of future generations have brought us to the tipping point. We now face a long emergency of rising temperatures, rising sea-levels, and a host of other related problems that will increasingly undermine human civilization. Down to the Wire is a major wake-up call. But this is not a doomsday book. Orr offers a wide range of pragmatic, far-reaching proposals-some of which have already been adopted by the Obama administration-for how we might reconnect public policy with rigorous science, bring our economy into alignment with ecological realities, and begin to regard ourselves as planetary trustees for future generations.

The definitive history of the modern climate change era, from an award-winning writer who has been at the centre of the fight for more than thirty years In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was presented with the findings of scientists who had been investigating whether human activities might change the climate in harmful ways. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," their report said. They were right -- but no one was listening. Four decades later, we are haunted by the consequences of this inattention, and the years of complacency, obfuscation and denialism that followed. Today, the staggering scale and scope of what we have done to the planet is impossible to ignore: the seasons of fire and flood have crossed into plain view. Fire and Flood is a comprehensive, compulsively readable history of climate change from veteran environmental journalist Eugene Linden. Linden retells the story of the modern climate change era decade by decade, tracking the progress of four ticking clocks: first, the reality of climate change itself; second, advances in scientific understanding; third, the spread of public awareness; and fourth, the business and finance response. Like no previous writer, Linden has drawn together the elements of the biggest story in the world, in a book that it is gripping as history, as economic investigation, and as scientific thriller.

The captivating inside story of the man who helmed National Geographic over the course of six decades is a front-row seat to iconic feats of exploration, from the successful hunt for the Titanic to Jane Goodall's field studies, offering a rare portrait of one of the most iconic media empires in history and making an impassioned argument for our enduring need to know and care for our world. Though his career path had been paved by four generations of his family before him, Gilbert M. Grosvenor left his own mark on the National Geographic Society, founded in 1888 and recognised the world over by its ubiquitous yellow border. In an unflinchingly honest memoir as big as the world and all that is in it, Grosvenor shows us what it was like to "grow up Geographic" in a family home where explorers like Robert Peary, Louis Leakey, and Jane Goodall regularly crossed the threshold. As staff photographer, editor in chief and then president of the organisation, Grosvenor oversaw the diversification into television, film, books, as well as its flagship magazine, which under his tenure reached a peak circulation of nearly 11 million. He also narrates the shift from a nonprofit, family-focused enterprise to the more corporate, bottom-line focused world of publishing today. For Grosvenor, running National Geographic wasn't just a job. It was a legacy, motivated by a passion not just to leave the world a better place, but to motivate others to do so, too. Filled with world travel, charismatic explorers, and the complexities of running a publishing empire, A MAN OF THE WORLD is the story of one man, a singular family business, and the changing face of American media.

Our attitudes to our environment are widely and often acrimoniously discussed, commonly misunderstood, and will shape our future. We cannot assume that we behave as newly minted beings in a pristine garden nor as pre-programmed automata incapable of rational responsibility. Professor Berry has studied nature-nurture interactions for many years, and also been involved with many national and international decision making bodies which have influenced our environmental attitudes. He is therefore well-placed to describe what has moulded our present attitudes towards the environment. This book presents data and concepts from a range of disciplines - genetic, anthropological, social, historical and theological - to help us understand how we have responded in the past and how this influences our future. Beginning with a historical review and moving forwards to current conditions, readers will reach the end of this volume more capable and better prepared to make decisions which affect our communities and posterity.

Eco-Deconstruction marks a new approach to the degradation of the natural environment, including habitat loss, species extinction, and climate change. While the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), with its relentless interrogation of the anthropocentric metaphysics of presence, has already proven highly influential in posthumanism and animal studies, the present volume, drawing on published and unpublished work by Derrida and others, builds on these insights to address the most pressing environmental issues of our time. The volume brings together fifteen prominent scholars, from a wide variety of related fields, including eco-phenomenology, eco-hermeneutics, new materialism, posthumanism, animal studies, vegetal philosophy, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, eco-criticism, earth art and aesthetics, and analytic environmental ethics. Overall, eco-deconstruction offers an account of differential relationality explored in a non-totalizable ecological context that addresses our times in both an ontological and a normative register. The book is divided into four sections. "Diagnosing the Present" suggests that our times are marked by a facile, flattened-out understanding of time and thus in need of deconstructive dispositions. "Ecologies" mobilizes the spectral ontology of deconstruction to argue for an originary environmentality, the constitutive ecological embeddedness of mortal life. "Nuclear and Other Biodegradabilities," examines remains, including such by-products and disintegrations of human culture as nuclear waste, environmental destruction, and species extinctions. "Environmental Ethics" seeks to uncover a demand for justice, including human responsibility for suffering beings, that emerges precisely as a response to original differentiation and the mortality and unmasterable alterity it installs in living beings. As such, the book will resonate with readers not only of philosophy, but across the humanities and the social and natural sciences.

A source book for American culture in the 1960s and 1970s: "suggested reading" from the Last Whole Earth Catalog, from Thoreau to James Baldwin. The Whole Earth Catalog was a cultural touchstone of the 1960s and 1970s. The iconic cover image of the Earth viewed from space made it one of the most recognizable books on bookstore shelves. Between 1968 and 1971, almost two million copies of its various editions were sold, and not just to commune-dwellers and hippies. Millions of mainstream readers turned to the Whole Earth Catalog for practical advice and intellectual stimulation, finding everything from a review of Buckminster Fuller to recommendations for juicers. This book offers selections from eighty texts from the nearly 1,000 items of "suggested reading" in the Last Whole Earth Catalog. After an introduction that provides background information on the catalog and its founder, Stewart Brand (interesting fact: Brand got his organizational skills from a stint in the Army), the book presents the texts arranged in nine sections that echo the sections of the Whole Earth Catalog itself. Enlightening juxtapositions abound. For example, "Understanding Whole Systems" maps the holistic terrain with writings by authors from Aldo Leopold to Herbert Simon; "Land Use" features selections from Thoreau's Walden and a report from the United Nations on new energy sources; "Craft" offers excerpts from The Book of Tea and The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book; "Community" includes Margaret Mead and James Baldwin's odd-couple collaboration, A Rap on Race. Together, these texts offer a sourcebook for the Whole Earth culture of the 1960s and 1970s in all its infinite variety.

While everyone has heard of the 'Humboldt Current', few know anything of the man after whom it was named. Yet Alexander von Humboldt was a towering figure of his time - scientist, explorer, and polymath, imbued with Enlightenment ideas - and he left a profound impact on the intellectual life of 19th century America. Aaron Sachs' colourful intellectual history rescues Humboldt from obscurity, and reveals the impact of a single European on both American thought and the environmental movement. Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt's legacy by focusing not only on the man himself but on the lives of other remarkable individuals who took their lead from him - explorers of the American mid-West, alienated Romantics, seminal American writers and artists, who together laid the groundwork for the great ecological tradition in 19th century America.

Climate change is becoming a major theme in the contemporary novel, as authors reflect concerns in wider society. Given the urgency and enormity of the problem, can literature (and the emotional response it provokes) play a role in answering the complex ethical issues that arise because of climate change? This book shows that conventional fictional techniques should not be disregarded as inadequate to the demands of climate change; rather, fiction has the potential to challenge us, emotionally and ethically, to reconsider our relationship to the future. Adeline Johns-Putra focuses on the dominant theme of intergenerational ethics in the contemporary novel: that is, the idea of our obligation to future generations as a basis for environmental action. Rather than simply framing parenthood and posterity in sentimental terms, the climate change novel uses their emotional appeal to critique their anthropocentricism and identity politics, offering radical alternatives instead.