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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Environmentalist thought & ideology
This book provides readers with the latest developments in environmental research. Chapter One reviews different toxicological and ecotoxicological tests applied to different types of textile effluent treatments and their efficiency in detecting potential toxicity in treated effluents. Chapter Two illustrates that in properly leveraging green marketing through sustainability strategic initiatives, a firm can simultaneously become more profitable, promote quality environmental issues, and enhance corporate reputation. Chapter Three investigates drinking water recarbonization process based on a combination of experimental and mathematical modelling. Chapter Four discusses improving the management of ecosystem services by means of stakeholder perceptions. Chapter Five examines community involvement in river management for ecosystem services and livelihood. Chapter Six focuses on the effect of some environmental factors on milk production of primiparous Holstein raised in the Souss-Massa region in Morocco. Chapter Seven studies the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence over precipitation in Argentina. The final chapter discusses kinematics of ice-cores near divides and inferences from age/depth data.
"Despite the fact that I have studied environmental justice from a women's-centered perspective for the last twenty years, every page of this book taught me something new. I found it so engaging that I couldn't bear to put it down." --Celene Krauss, professor, women's studies and sociology, Kean University "Keeping to its core of the environmental justice movement, where women shape the leadership of the grassroots, New Perspectives on Environmental Justice captures the historical and contemporary roles of gender and sexuality in environmental justice studies. A truly transformative collection whose leading insights every student, teacher, and scholar of environmental justice must confront." --Robert Figueroa, university studies, program coordinator of environmental studies and Latin American studies, Colgate University Women make up the vast majority of activists and organizers of grassroots movements fighting against environmental ills that threaten poor and people of color communities. New Perspectives on Environmental Justice is the first collection of essays that pays tribute to the enormous contributions women have made in these endeavors. The writers offer varied examples of environmental justice issues such as children's environmental-health campaigns, cancer research, AIDS/HIV activism, the Environmental Genome Project, and popular culture, among many others. Each one focuses on gender and sexuality as crucial factors in women's or gay men's activism and applies environmental justice principles to related struggles for sexual justice. Drawing on a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, the contributors offer multiple vantage points on gender, sexuality, and activism. Feminist/womanist impulses shape and sustain environmental justice movements around the world, making an understanding of gender roles and differences crucial for the success of these efforts. Rachel Stein is professor of English and director of women's and multicultural studies at Siena College in New York. She is the author of Shifting the Ground: American Women Writers' Revisions of Nature, Gender and Race, and is coeditor of The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy.
A lucid and rigorous demonstration that climate change cannot be overcome unless capitalism is overcome. The scourge of humanity is also the scourge of nature. This is a great achievement: putting forth the necessary contours of the direction that must be taken if we are to be equal to the greatest challenge ever faced by humankind. - Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature The climate crisis is at a critical moment while millions despair that no action is being taken. The difficulties our "world leaders" have in taking meaningful action do not spring out of nowhere but from their refusal to understand that this crisis is the consequence of the globalised, neoliberal economic system. This book argues that we cannot simply green our current society, but that we need a more thorough, more fundamental social transformation. - Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales An important contribution to outlining an ecosocialist project able to overcome the contradictions between a critique of capitalism and ecology. Daniel Tanuro demonstrates that climate change cannot be separated from the "normal" functioning of capitalism. He argues that it is therefore necessary to replace the logic of maximising profit with that of maximising common well-being within an environmental framework. The reading of this book should convince ecologists to become anti-capitalists. And vice-versa. - Michel Husson, an economist at the IRES Paris, author and global justice activist
This book's objective is to present a comprehensive, theoretical, practical, and adaptive approach to understanding the issues involved in eco-city planning and green community development. It builds on recent advances in urban theories, environmental science, architectural design, engineering, and geospatial information technologies to provide readers with the scientific foundation needed to understand the major visionary ideas about new urban forms. This book provides a basis of knowledge in planning theory and natural science and a major review of urban forms that have evolved over the past century; its primary emphasis is to describe and explain emerging approaches, methods, and techniques for eco-city. This book also responds to the key questions outlined at the beginning of this introduction: What are the theoretical foundations and historical views of eco-city and green community? What is a green and eco-friendly urban form? How can we find the appropriate approaches to build eco-city and green community? What international experiences and lessons can we learn from?
In the face of the environmental crisis, believers from all the world's faith traditions have come to recognize that religion's relation to ecology is of critical importance. Vital new theologies, profound criticisms of the past, and ecologically oriented visions of God, Enlightenment, and human beings have arisen. Religious morality has expanded to include human relations to other species and ecosystems, and religious practice has come to include rituals that express our grief and remorse as well as celebrate what is left. Religious leaders and institutions have committed themselves to a new green gospel, and in countless places across the globe people engage in environmental activism for religious reasons. This book serves as the definitive scholarly overview of these exciting new developments. Part I explores traditional religious concepts of and attitudes toward nature and how these have been changed by the environmental crisis. Part II analyzes conceptual issues that transcend individual traditions. Part III examines religious participation in environmental politics. With essays by the leading scholars in the field, many of whom have themselves been instrumental in the rise of religious environmentalism, this Handbook will be invaluable to anyone interested in religion, environmentalism, and the future of our planet.
Colony Collapse Disorder, ubiquitous pesticide use, industrial agriculture, habitat reduction-these are just a few of the issues causing unprecedented trauma in honeybee populations worldwide. In this artfully illustrated book, Heather Swan embarks on a narrative voyage to discover solutions to-and understand the sources of-the plight of honeybees. Through a lyrical combination of creative nonfiction and visual imagery, Where Honeybees Thrive tells the stories of the beekeepers, farmers, artists, entomologists, ecologists, and other advocates working to stem the damage and reverse course for this critical pollinator. Using her own quest for understanding as a starting point, Swan highlights the innovative projects and strategies these groups employ. Her mosaic approach to engaging with the environment not only reveals the incredibly complex political ecology in which bees live-which includes human and nonhuman actors alike-but also suggests ways of comprehending and tackling a host of other conflicts between postindustrial society and the natural world. Each chapter closes with an illustrative full-color gallery of bee-related artwork. A luminous journey from the worlds of honey producers, urban farmers, and mead makers of the United States to those of beekeepers of Sichuan, China, and researchers in southern Africa, Where Honeybees Thrive traces the global web of efforts to secure a sustainable future for honeybees-and ourselves.
Explains environmental pragmatism and shows how to apply it to real world issues
The riotous story of a guilty liberal who snaps, swears off
plastic, goes organic, turns off his power, and becomes a bicycle
nut in an effort to make zero environmental impact
"From the Hardcover edition."
French Ecocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus's ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text's many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Ecocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment.
Environmental movements have produced some impressive results, including cleaner air and the preservation of selected species and places. But movements that challenged western prosperity and comfort seldom made much progress, and many radical environmentalists have been unabashed utopianists. In this short guide, Peterson del Mar untangles this paradox by showing how prosperity is essential to environmentalism. Industrialisation made conservation sensible, but also drove people to look for meaning in nature even as they consumed its products more relentlessly. Hence Englandled the way in both manufacturing and preserving its countryside, and the United Statescreated a matchless set of national parks as it became the world's pre-eminent economic and military power. Environmentalismconsiders both the conservation and preservation movements and less organized forms of nature loving (from seaside vacations to ecotourism) to argue that these activities have commonly distracted us from the hard work of creating a sustainable and sensible relationship with the environment.
What we make and buy is a major indicator of society's collective priorities. Among twenty-four key trends, Vital Signs Volume 22 explores significant global patterns in production and consumption. The result is a fascinating snapshot of how we invest our resources and the implications for the world's well-being. The book examines developments in six main areas: energy, environment and climate, transportation, food and agriculture, global economy and resources, and population and society. Readers will learn how aquaculture is making gains on wild fish catches, where high speed rail is accelerating, why plastic production is on the rise, who is escaping chronic hunger, and who is still suffering. Researchers at the Worldwatch Institute not only provide the most up-to-date statistics, but put them in context. The analysis in Vital Signs teaches us both about our current priorities and how they could be shaped to create a better future.
Business-led environmental initiatives have become prominent in recent years. At the same time, governments have shown increasing interest in 'voluntary' programs for environmental protections. While one could argue that such corporate environmentalism is motivated either by cost reduction or as a marketing strategy to appeal to the 'green' consumer, Lyon and Maxwell explore a third and more complex possibility. Drawing heavily on their prior work in corporate environmentalism, they argue that corporate environmentalism is the result of firms attempting to anticipate public policy changes and influence the legislative process in their best interests. Presenting a general framework that illuminates the links between corporate environmentalism and pubic policy, they use the analytical tools of positive political economy and game theory to provide insights into both corporate strategy and the effects of corporate and government polices on overall social welfare. This integrated and comprehensive book will have wide policy and management appeal.
In Ruin and Resilience, Daniel Spoth confronts why the environmental stories told about the U.S. South curve inevitably toward distressing plotlines. Examining more than a dozen works of postbellum literature and cinema, Spoth's analysis winds from John Muir's walking journey across the war-torn South, through the troubling of southern environmentalism's modernity by Faulkner and Hurston, past the accounts of its acceleration in Welty and O'Connor, and finally into the present, uncovering how the tragic econarrative is transformed by contemporary food studies, climate fiction, and speculative tales inspired by the region. Phrased as a reaction to the rising temperatures and swelling sea levels in the South, Ruin and Resilience conceptualizes an environmental, ecocritical ethos for the southern United States that takes account of its fundamentally vulnerable status and navigates the space between its reactionary politics and its ecological failures.
Presenting a novel and needed theoretical model for interpreting shipwrecks and other drowned fragments-the histories they tell, and the futures they presage-as junctures of artefact and ecofact, human remains and emergent ecologies, this book puts the environmental humanities, and particularly multispecies studies, in close conversation with literary studies, history, and aesthetic theory. Earth's oceans hold the remains of as many as three million shipwrecks, some thousands of years old. Instead of approaching shipwrecks as either artefacts or "ecofacts," this book presents a third frame for understanding, one inspired by the material dynamism of sea-floor stuff. As they become encrusted by oceanic matter-some of it living, some inanimate-anthropic fragments participate in a distinctively submarine form of material relation. That relation comprises a wide, and sometimes incalculable, array of things, lives, times, and stories. Drawing from several centuries of literary, philosophical, and scientific encounters with encrustations-as well as from some of the innumerable encrusted "art-forms" that inhabit the sea floor- this book serves anyone in search of better ways to perceive, describe, and imagine submarine matters.
"An absorbing, unflinching, and surprisingly comic account of how one man-a devoted father-withdrew from the world and gradually returned. It's as wise and instructive as it is compelling."-Reynolds PriceIn 1974 Wallace Kaufman, following the romantic vision of a simpler life in harmony with nature he first glimpsed in Thoreau's Walden, moved on to his own land by a small stream in the North Carolina woods. Now, twenty-five years later, he emerges to tell a tale somewhat different from Thoreau's-an entertaining, moving, and distinctly late-twentieth-century story of a life lived in the wild as landowner, environmentally conscious developer, builder, farmer, conservationist, wilderness steward. His love of nature and his commitment to preserving it never waver, even as he tells his sometimes hilarious, sometimes catastrophic stories of how to live with nature even when nature isn't too keen on living with you.
In 1958, Charles David Keeling began measuring the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. His project kicked off a half century of research that has expanded our knowledge of climate change. Despite more than fifty years of research, however, our global society has yet to find real solutions to the problem of global warming. Why? In "Behind the Curve," Joshua Howe attempts to answer this question. He explores the history of global warming from its roots as a scientific curiosity to its place at the center of international environmental politics. The book follows the story of rising CO2--illustrated by the now famous Keeling Curve--through a number of historical contexts, highlighting the relationships among scientists, environmentalists, and politicians as those relationships changed over time. The nature of the problem itself, Howe explains, has privileged scientists as the primary spokespeople for the global climate. But while the "science first" forms of advocacy they developed to fight global warming produced more and better science, the primacy of science in global warming politics has failed to produce meaningful results. In fact, an often exclusive focus on science has left advocates for change vulnerable to political opposition and has limited much of the discussion to debates about the science itself. As a result, while we know much more about global warming than we did fifty years ago, CO2 continues to rise. In 1958, Keeling first measured CO2 at around 315 parts per million; by 2013, global CO2 had soared to 400 ppm. The problem is not getting better - it's getting worse. "Behind the Curve" offers a critical and levelheaded look at how we got here. Joshua P. Howe teaches history and environmental studies at Reed College. "Scientists have proven to be right about the causes of a warming planet, but they have failed to stop the warming. Stopping it involves politics and economics more than science, and in this important book Joshua Howe examines how scientists and environmentalists--although both live in intensely political worlds--have managed to get the science right and the politics wrong. This is not the usual story of heroes and villains. Howe tells a more nuanced story-- a tragedy--in which a somewhat naive faith in science rendered scientists politically impotent in a complicated world. Few books published this year will tell a more important story." - Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Stanford "How shall we deal with climate change? That is not just an important topic but, from the standpoint of future generations, arguably the most important of all topics. Thorough and wide-ranging, this book puts the history of global warming policy in its full political and cultural context." - Spencer Weart, author of "The Discovery of Global Warming" ""Behind the Curve" is a much-needed book on the history of climate science and politics stretching back to the immediate post-World War II period." - Mark Carey, author of "In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers"
THE TIMES, ECONOMIST AND GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 It is accepted wisdom today that human beings have irrevocably damaged the natural world. Yet what if this narrative obscures a more hopeful truth? In Inheritors of the Earth, renowned ecologist and environmentalist Chris D. Thomas overturns the accepted story, revealing how nature is fighting back. Many animals and plants actually benefit from our presence, raising biological diversity in most parts of the world and increasing the rate at which new species are formed, perhaps to the highest level in Earth's history. From Costa Rican tropical forests to the thoroughly transformed British landscape, nature is coping surprisingly well in the human epoch. Chris Thomas takes us on a gripping round-the-world journey to meet the enterprising creatures that are thriving in the Anthropocene, from York's ochre-coloured comma butterfly to hybrid bison in North America, scarlet-beaked pukekos in New Zealand, and Asian palms forming thickets in the European Alps. In so doing, he questions our irrational persecution of so-called 'invasive species', and shows us that we should not treat the Earth as a faded masterpiece that we need to restore. After all, if life can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, might it not be able to survive the onslaughts of a technological ape? Combining a naturalist's eye for wildlife with an ecologist's wide lens, Chris Thomas forces us to re-examine humanity's relationship with nature, and reminds us that the story of life is the story of change.
This book explains the basic concepts of environmental ethics and applies them to global environmental problems. The author concisely introduces basic moral theories, discusses how these theories can be extended to consider the non-human world, and examines how environmental ethics interacts with modern society s economic approach to the environment. Online multiple choice questions encourage the reader s active learning.
When East Germany collapsed in 1989-1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. The communist dictatorship, however, had sought to confront environmental issues since at least the 1960s. Through an analysis of official and oppositional sources, Saving Nature Under Socialism complicates attitudes toward the environment in East Germany by tracing both domestic and transnational engagement with nature and pollution. The communist dictatorship limited opportunities for protest, so officials and activists looked abroad to countries such as Poland and West Germany for inspiration and support. Julia Ault outlines the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and shows how East Germans responded to local degradation as well as to an international moment of environmental reckoning in the 1970s and 1980s. The example of East Germany thus challenges and broadens our understanding of the 'greening' of post-war Europe, and illuminates a larger, central European understanding of connection across the Iron Curtain.
The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch marking humanity's alteration of the Earth: its rock structure, environments, atmosphere. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene offers the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can address the social, cultural, and philosophical questions posed by the Anthropocene. This volume addresses the old and new literary forms - from novels, plays, poetry, and essays to exciting and evolving genres such as 'cli-fi', experimental poetry, interspecies design, gaming, weird, ecotopian and petro-fiction, and 'new' nature writing. Studies range from the United States to India, from Palestine to Scotland, while addressing numerous global signifiers or consequences of the Anthropocene: catastrophe, extinction, 'fossil capital', warming, politics, ethics, interspecies relations, deep time, and Earth. This unique Companion offers a compelling account of how to read literature through the Anthropocene and of how literature might yet help us imagine a better world.
The climate crisis requires that we drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors of society. The Story of CO2 contributes to this vital conversation by highlighting the cutting-edge science and emerging technologies - a number of which are already commercially available - that can transform carbon dioxide into a myriad of products such as feedstock chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and fuels. This approach allows us to reconsider CO2 as a resource, and to add "carbon capture and use" to our other tools in the fight against catastrophic climate change. The Story of CO2 explores all aspects of carbon dioxide, from the atomic to the universal perspective, and takes the reader on an epic journey into our physical world, starting from the moment of the Big Bang, all the way to the present world in which atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to grow. This story seeks to inspire readers with the latest carbon utilization technologies and explain how they fit within the broader context of carbon mitigation strategies in the shift towards a sustainable energy economy.
A new perspective on religions and the environment emerges from this collection. The authors, a diverse group of indigenous and non-native scholars and environmental activists, address compelling and urgent questions facing indigenous communities as they struggle with threats to their own sovereignty, increased market and media globalization, and the conservation of endangered bioregions. Drawing attention to the pressures threatening indigenous peoples and ways of life, this volume describes modes of resistance and regeneration by which communities maintain a spiritual balance with larger cosmological forces while creatively accommodating current environmental, social, economic, and political changes.
Energy Culture is a provocative book about oil’s firm grip on our politics and everyday lives. It brings together essays and artwork produced in a collaborative environment to stimulate new ways of thinking and to achieve a more just and sustainable world.The original work collected in Energy Culture creatively engages energy as a social form through lively arguments and artistic research organized around three vectors of inquiry. The first maps how fossil fuels became, and continue to be, embedded in North American society, from the ideology of tar sands reclamation projects to dreams of fiber optic cables running through the Northwest Passage. The second comprises creative and artistic responses to the dominance of fossil fuels in everyday life and to the challenge of realizing new energy cultures. The final section addresses the conceptual and political challenges posed by energy transition and calls into question established views on energy. Its contributions caution against solar capitalism, explore the politics of sabotage, and imagine an energy efficient transportation system called “the switch.” Imbued with a sense of urgency and hope, Energy Culture exposes the deep imbrications of energy and culture while pointing provocatively to ways of thinking and living otherwise.
Climate change is increasingly recognized as a global threat, and is already contributing to record-breaking hurricanes and heat waves. To prevent the worst impacts, attention is now turning to climate engineering - the intentional large-scale modification of the environment to reduce the impact of climate change. The two principal methods involve removing some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (which could consume huge amounts of land and money, and take a long period of time), and reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface, perhaps by spraying aerosols into the upper atmosphere from airplanes (which could be done quickly but is risky and highly controversial). This is the first book to focus on the legal aspects of these technologies: what government approvals would be needed; how liability would be assessed and compensation provided if something goes wrong; and how a governance system could be structured and agreed internationally. |
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