Exploring the ways in which culture, systems of value, and ethics impact agriculture, this volume addresses contemporary land questions and conditions for agricultural land management. Throughout, the editors and contributors consider a range of issues, including pressure on farmland, international and global trade relations, moral and ethical questions, and implications for governance. The focus of Finance or Food? is land use in Australia, Canada, and Norway, chosen for their commonalities as well as their differences. With reference to these specific national contexts, the contributors explore political, ecological, and ethical debates concerning food production, alternative energy, and sustainability. The volume argues that recognition of food, finance, energy, and climate crises is driving investments and reframing the strategies of development agencies. At the same time, food producers, small farmers, and pastoralists facing eviction from their land are making their presence felt in this debate, not just locally, but in national policy arenas and international fora as well. This volume investigates the many ways in which this process is occurring and draws out the cultural implications of new developments in global land use. An important intervention into a timely debate, Finance or Food? will be essential reading for both academics and policymakers.

The Anthropocene’s urgent message about imminent disaster invites us to forget about history and to focus on the present as it careens into an unthinkable future. To counter this, Louise Green engages with the theoretical framing of nature in concepts such as the “Anthropocene,” “the great acceleration,” and “rewilding” in order to explore what the philosophy of nature in the era of climate change might look like from postcolonial Africa. Utilizing a practice of reading developed in the Frankfurt school, Green rearranges narrative fragments from the “global nature industry,” which subjugates all aspects of nature to the logic of capitalist production, in order to disrupt preconceived notions and habitual ways of thinking about how we inhabit the Anthropocene. Examining climate change through the details of everyday life, particularly the history of conspicuous consumption and the exploitation of Africa, she surfaces the myths and fantasies that have brought the world to its current ecological crisis and that continue to shape the narratives through which it is understood. Beginning with African rainforest exhibits in New York and Cornwall, Green discusses how these representations of the climate catastrophe fail to acknowledge the unequal pace at which humans consume and continue to replicate imperial narratives about Africa. Examining this history and climate change through the lens of South Africa’s entry into capitalist modernity, Green argues that the Anthropocene redirects attention away from the real problem, which is not human’s relation with nature, but people’s relations with each other. A sophisticated, carefully argued call to rethink how we approach relationships between and among humans and the world in which we live, Fragments from the History of Loss is a challenge to both the current era and the scholarly conversation about the Anthropocene.

"We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of life." In offering praise to sky, earth, water, and animals, she calls us to witness how each living thing is alive in a conscious world with its own integrity, grace, and dignity. In Dwellings, Hogan takes us on a spiritual quest borne out of the deep past and offers a more hopeful future as she seeks new visions and lights ancient fires.

How do we talk about climate grief in the church? And when we have found the words, what do we do with that grief? There is a sudden and dramatic rise in people experiencing a profound sense of anxiety in the face of our dying planet, and a consequent need for churches to be better resourced pastorally and theologically to deal with this threat. Words for a Dying World brings together voices from across the world - from the Pacific islands to the pipelines of Canada, from farming communities in Namibia to activism in the UK. Author royalties from the sale of this book are split evenly between contributors. The majority will be pooled as a donation to ClientEarth. The remainder will directly support the communities represented in this collection. Contributors include Anderson Jeremiah, Azariah France-Williams, David Benjamin Blower, Holly-Anna Petersen, Isabel Mukonyora, Jione Havea, and Maggi Dawn.

In France, the fundamental intellectual debate over ecology might best be summarized by the contrasting views of Michel Serres and Luc Ferry. In The Natural Contract, Serres calls for an end to humans' war on nature: Our world view must turn from anthropocentric to ecocentric, and our relationship to the earth must become symbiotic instead of parasitic. Luc Ferry's response to Serres in The New Ecological Order ridicules the metaphor of a natural contract, by which humans (and humanism) would no longer reign over the earth. Ferry accuses Serres and other ecological thinkers of being "premodern" and "prehumanistic"; valuing nonhuman life as much as human life evokes the ridiculous trials of five centuries ago when beetles and rats were threatened with excommunication if they did not cease their antihuman activities. After analyzing the Serres-Ferry debate, Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics examines environmental themes in novels by Michel Tournier, Stephane Audeguy, and Chantal Chawaf. It then considers the complex and evolving relationship between humans and animals as expressed in novels by Vercors and Olivia Rosenthal, and in philosophical works by Jacques Derrida, Elisabeth de Fontenay, and Peter Singer, among others. Two novels each by the humanist J.-C. Rufin and the humorist Iegor Gran provide a dose of healthy skepticism. Rufin's stories reveal the potential dark side of extreme environmentalism-authoritarianism and terrorism-while Gran's hilarious satires critique some environmentalists' piousness, opportunism, humorlessness, and antihumanism. The book concludes that environmentalism and humanism are not incompatible, if we proceed beyond the traditional humanism of Ferry and other modernists. Essays by philosophers such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Pierre Rabhi, Edgar Morin, and Michel Maffesoli demonstrate that an inclusive, ecological humanism is not only possible but necessary for our survival.

Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet

'Does the earth’s finite carrying capacity mean economic growth has to stop? That momentous question is the subject of Charles Mann’s brilliant book.' Wall Street Journal

In forty years, the population of the Earth will reach ten billion. Can our world support so many people? What kind of world will it be? In this unique, original and important book, Charles C. Mann illuminates the four great challenges we face – food, water, energy, climate change – through an exploration of the crucial work and wide-ranging influence of two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt.

Vogt (the Prophet) was the intellectual forefather of the environmental movement, and believed that in our using more than the planet has to give, our prosperity will bring us to ruin. Borlaug’s research in the 1950s led to the development of modern high-yield crops that have saved millions from starvation. The Wizard of Mann’s title, he believed that science will continue to rise to the challenges we face.

Mann tells the stories of these scientists and their crucial influence on today’s debates as his story ranges from Mexico to India, across continents and oceans and from the past and the present to the future. Brilliantly original in concept, wryly observant and deeply researched, The Wizard and the Prophet is essential reading for readers of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens or Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, for anyone interested in how we got here and in the future of our species.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Climate Change Scepticism is the first ecocritical study to examine the cultures and rhetoric of climate scepticism in the UK, Germany, the USA and France. Collaboratively written by leading scholars from Europe and North America, the book considers climate skeptical-texts as literature, teasing out differences and challenging stereotypes as a way of overcoming partisan political paralysis on the most important cultural debate of our time.

Ecology and economics share a common root: the Greek word oikos, meaning a house. Ecology is the way the natural world manages its house. Economics is the way society manages its house. The contentions of this book are that the natural world is the best guide to our economic activities, that supply and demand are insufficient determinants, that profit and loss are not alternatives, that wealth cannot be created but can be lost. Ecological economics is a term that has been coined to encapsulate these ideas. We can stop throwing away food before and after it gets to the table. We can learn to deal with our pollution. We can stop wasting our resources. We must look again at our priorities. We're in a race against time. Perhaps there's not time enough, but it's in everyone's interest to try. If we keep our activities on a human scale, maybe the passengers can regain control of the runaway train.

Nature and Colonialism: A Reader provides students with a collection of classic texts on environmental thought and invites them to analyze the texts alongside the often contrarian ideas of expansion, development, and human exceptionalism. Readers are encouraged to consider early perspectives on the hierarchical power relationships between political/economic entities and nature/peoples, and whether foundational views of environmentalism supported the proliferation of colonial ideology. The collection begins with a piece by Zitkala-Sa, a Dakota Sioux activist and writer, and highlights a voice of resistance against the redefinition and reimagining of nature via colonialist thought. Students read seminal works related to nature by Charles Darwin, George Perkins Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Gifford Pinchot. They are challenged to engage in sociocultural inquiry to better understand how views of the relationship between humans and nature have developed over time, as well as how they continue to shape modern thought and perspectives regarding environmentalism. Designed to stimulate critical thought and inquiry, Nature and Colonialism is an ideal supplementary textbook for courses in environmental science or philosophy, especially those with emphasis on the relationship between humans and their environment.