Recognizing that climate politics has been an increasingly contentious and heated topic in Australia over the past two decades, this book examines Australian capitalism as a driver of climate change and the nexus between the corporations and Coalition and Australian Labor parties. As a highly developed country, Australia is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions despite rising temperatures, droughts, water shortages and raging bushfires, storm surges and flooding, and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Drawing upon both archival and ethnographic research, Hans Baer examines Australian climate politics at the margins, namely the Greens, the labour union, the environmental NGOs, and the grass-roots climate movement. Adopting a climate justice perspective which calls for "system change, not climate change" as opposed to the conventional approach of seeking to mitigate emissions through market mechanisms and techno-fixes, particularly renewable energy sources, this book posits system-challenging transitional steps to shift Australia toward an eco-socialist vision in keeping with a burgeoning global socio-ecological revolution. Accessibly written and including an interview with renowned comedian and climate activist Rod Quantock OAM, this book is essential reading for academics, students and general readers with an interest in climate change and climate activism.

Recognizing that climate politics has been an increasingly contentious and heated topic in Australia over the past two decades, this book examines Australian capitalism as a driver of climate change and the nexus between the corporations and Coalition and Australian Labor parties. As a highly developed country, Australia is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions despite rising temperatures, droughts, water shortages and raging bushfires, storm surges and flooding, and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Drawing upon both archival and ethnographic research, Hans Baer examines Australian climate politics at the margins, namely the Greens, the labour union, the environmental NGOs, and the grass-roots climate movement. Adopting a climate justice perspective which calls for "system change, not climate change" as opposed to the conventional approach of seeking to mitigate emissions through market mechanisms and techno-fixes, particularly renewable energy sources, this book posits system-challenging transitional steps to shift Australia toward an eco-socialist vision in keeping with a burgeoning global socio-ecological revolution. Accessibly written and including an interview with renowned comedian and climate activist Rod Quantock OAM, this book is essential reading for academics, students and general readers with an interest in climate change and climate activism.

In her detailed retelling of three iconic movements in India, Professor Emerita Krishna Mallick, PhD, gives hope to grassroots activists working toward environmental justice. Each movement deals with a different crisis and affected population: Chipko, famed for tree-hugging women in the Himalayan forest; Narmada, for villagers displaced by a massive dam; and Navdanya, for hundreds of thousands of farmers whose livelihoods were lost to a compact made by the Indian government and neoliberal purveyors of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Relentlessly researched, Environmental Movements of India: Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Navdanya presents these movements in a framework that explores Hindu Vedic wisdom, as well as Development Ethics, Global Environment Ethics, Feminist Care Ethics, and the Capability Approach. At a moment when the climate threatens populations who live closest to nature - and depend upon its fodder for heat, its water for life, and its seeds for food - Mallick shows how nonviolent action can give poor people an effective voice.

Colonialism, globalization and consumerism have devastated large parts of our world. For the past five centuries, the West has nurtured self-worth through the accumulation of worldly goods, serving our own selfish interests and exploiting others. This has been disastrous not only to human beings but to the whole ecology of the planet. Consumerism drives trade, but consumer buying is now like an unchained beast with tooth and claw causing han (unjust suffering) for exploited peoples as well as for other species and even for planet Earth. This book will examine ways of rethinking and reimagining ourselves, helping us to work in more just directions for a safer, sustainable planet. Empowering ourselves to act more justly includes reimagining and renewing our inspiration from God who is the transformative Spirit who gives, sustains and empowers life to all.

The Concept of Milieu in Environmental Ethics discusses how we can come together to address current environmental problems at the planetary level, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, transborder pollution and desertification. The book recognises the embedded individual sociocultural and environmental contexts that impact our everyday choices. It asks, in this pluralism of worldviews, how can we build common ground to tackle environmental issues? What is our individual moral responsibility within the larger collaborative challenge? Through philosophical reasoning, this book pragmatically addresses these questions and builds a framework to support sustainable ways of living. At the core of the book, it draws on the concept of milieu (fudo) inspired by the Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro, which captures how we act within and perceive our surroundings as a web of culturally, historically and geographically situated meanings and values. It argues that the milieu connects us as individuals with community, past and future history, and the natural world, providing us with common ground for global environmental ethics. This book will be an engaging and interesting read for scholars, researchers and students in environmental ethics, philosophy and sustainability.

Democratic Ideals and the Politization of Nature introduces the feral citizen as a response to a perceived need to revitalize the disruptive, critical, and exploratory nature of democratic culture. By learning from the traditions of aimless walking and by embracing a consciously feral method of political engagement, radically-democratic citizens can prompt political moments that create conditions where the primacy of the political can be performed, realized and defended. Ultimately, this book seeks not to solve the problems and paradoxes of democracy but to assist in unleashing and celebrating them. Garside concludes that using the methodology of feral citizenship - inspired by environmentalism and democratic articulation - to reprioritize the political within the green public sphere, citizens can reclaim necessary (and welcome) tensions between representations of nature and political citizenship.

Concepts from justice and ethics can significantly inform energy decision-makers. Benjamin K. Sovacool introduces readers to the injustices and insecurities inherent in the global energy system before presenting an energy justice conceptual framework consisting of availability, affordability, due process, good governance, prudence, intergenerational equity, intragenerational equity, and responsibility. He showcases the application of these principles to eight real-world case studies involving national energy planning in Denmark, the Warm Front program in the United Kingdom, the World Bank's Inspection Panel, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Sao Tome e Principe's Natural Resource Fund, solar energy in Bangladesh, climate change adaptation efforts in least developed countries, and the Yasuni-ITT Initiative in Ecuador.

This book addresses hegemonic ruling class masculinity and emphasized femininity within renewables organisational governance, and critiques Anglo-Celtic male privilege, as a barrier to women's leadership participation. Primarily using the Australian socio-political context, the author considers the patriarchal control of organisations and renewables governance, and argues that women-led emphasized femininity-resistance strategies can challenge the hegemonic status of ruling elites to create a leadership that is less power oriented, more collaborative and open to change. Utilising detailed interviews with Australian women environmentalists, together with feminist, sociological and social movement theory, whilst considering the historic context of Red Vienna and contemporary political challenges (Brexit, Monarchism etc.), it puts forward an innovative policy framework for an Australian Bill of Rights Act and republican constitutional change. Written for academics, activists and policymakers alike, this book offers a unique insight into women's inequity within patriarchal institutionalist governance. It will be engaging and inspiring reading for feminist and environmentalist activists and practitioners, in addition to professional associations focussing on gender, justice and environmental change. Academics and postgraduates in Gender Studies, Ecofeminism, Sociology and Organisational Studies will also find the book of key interest in its interdisciplinary discussions of Sustainable Scientific-Technological Development Initiatives (SSTDI) and feminism in an Australian political context.

Rachel Carson was a marine biologist credited with the founding of the ecology movement and the rise in ecofeminism. One of her most popular works was Silent Spring, which challenged the use of DDT (an insecticide infamous for its negative environmental effects) and questioned the claims of modern industry. Carson also wrote essays, reviews, articles, and more to educate the public about the impacts of chemical pollutants on both the environment and the human body. This literary companion provides readers with Carson's key messages via an A-to-Z index of topics discussed in her works including carcinogens, endangered species, and radioactivity.

Since the 1970s, environmental blockades disrupting the exploitation and destruction of forests, rivers, and other biodiverse places have been one of the most attention-grabbing and contentious forms of political action. This book explores when, where, and why environmental blockading and its associated tactics first arose. The author explores a broad range of questions, including how did tactics and practices first developed and popularised during environmental blockades come to feature regularly in animal rights, peace, refugee, and other campaigns? What are blockaders hoping to achieve? How have such blockades and tactics shaped government policy, the culture of modern politics, and popular understandings of ecology, colonialism, and activism? This book offers the first comprehensive history and analysis of environmental blockading in three key countries: Australia, the United States, and Canada. As the first places to experience sustained protest cycles which fully established, promoted, and developed the environmental blockading repertoire as an ongoing strategic option for movements nationally and internationally, these campaigns were central in creating a new approach to conservation issues. They also played a leading role in making obstructive direct action a regular part of political campaigning, as seen in the form of the Extinction Rebellion (XR), alter-globalisation, climate justice, and other movements. This book draws on rigorous archival research including sources ranging from personal diaries, campaign minutes, and video footage through to police reports and newspaper articles, as well as interviews with more than 30 protest leaders and campaigners. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, political science, history, green criminology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies.

Since the 1970s, environmental blockades disrupting the exploitation and destruction of forests, rivers, and other biodiverse places have been one of the most attention-grabbing and contentious forms of political action. This book explores when, where, and why environmental blockading and its associated tactics first arose. The author explores a broad range of questions, including how did tactics and practices first developed and popularised during environmental blockades come to feature regularly in animal rights, peace, refugee, and other campaigns? What are blockaders hoping to achieve? How have such blockades and tactics shaped government policy, the culture of modern politics, and popular understandings of ecology, colonialism, and activism? This book offers the first comprehensive history and analysis of environmental blockading in three key countries: Australia, the United States, and Canada. As the first places to experience sustained protest cycles which fully established, promoted, and developed the environmental blockading repertoire as an ongoing strategic option for movements nationally and internationally, these campaigns were central in creating a new approach to conservation issues. They also played a leading role in making obstructive direct action a regular part of political campaigning, as seen in the form of the Extinction Rebellion (XR), alter-globalisation, climate justice, and other movements. This book draws on rigorous archival research including sources ranging from personal diaries, campaign minutes, and video footage through to police reports and newspaper articles, as well as interviews with more than 30 protest leaders and campaigners. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, political science, history, green criminology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies.

The elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1995 came during a storm of budget cutting and partisan conflict. Operationally, it left Congress without an institutional arrangement to bring expert scientific and technological advice into the process of legislative decisionmaking. This deficiency has become increasingly critical, as more and more of the decisions faced by Congress and society require judgments based on highly specialized technical information.

Offering perspectives from scholars and scientists with diverse academic backgrounds and extensive experience within the policy process, Science and Technology Advice for Congress breaks from the politics of the OTA and its contentious aftermath. Granger Morgan and Jon Peha begin with an overview of the use of technical information in framing policy issues, crafting legislation, and the overall process of governing. They note how, as nonexperts, legislators must make decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty and competing scientific claims from stakeholders. The contributors continue with a discussion of why OTA was created. They draw lessons from OTA's demise, and compare the use of science and technological information in Europe with the United States.

The second part of the book responds to requests from congressional leaders for practical solutions. Among the options discussed are expanded functions within existing agencies such as the General Accounting or Congressional Budget Offices; an independent, NGO- administrated analysis group; and a dedicated successor to OTA within Congress. The models emphasize flexibility -- and the need to make political feasibility a core component of design.

A pioneering work of ecological philosophy that has been acclaimed since its first publication A highly original and engaging linking of philosophy and science and Spinoza and Einstein, resulting in a new theory of ecological ethics Even more topical and relevant now than its first publication Includes a substantial new Introduction by the author

Earth and its inhabitants face an unprecedented crisis--the human-caused destruction of the planet's life support systems. Deteriorating climate bringing super storms, mass forest fires, melting glaciers, droughts, extreme heat and rising seas, a decline in food production, soil loss, water pollution and declining fisheries all threaten the future of life on earth with a looming extinction event not seen for 60 million years. Beginning in the 17th century, we developed a civilization based on radical materialism, exploitation of natural resources and the myth of endless economic growth. For all its technological wonders, this "hypercivilization" has proven unsustainable. This book explores ways we can create an "ecocivilization" compatible with the laws and limits of nature--a new way of living already developing, with new technologies, new forms of social organization and a new story about ourselves and the Earth.

Beyond Recycling critically explores unasked questions around recycling and its prominent position in contemporary thinking about sustainability. It examines and challenges assumptions about why we appear to have so wholeheartedly committed to recycling as a cultural project. Recycling has become a commonplace notion and widespread practice. Yet its social, cultural and even environmental value has not been considered carefully enough. This book considers recycling as a contemporary cultural idea related to - but not wholly defined by - our response to material waste. It seeks to reclaim recycling from the environmentalists and waste management specialists, to explore the role it plays in wider contemporary discourse. As we become increasingly satiated, and in many cases sickened, by the excesses of modern consumerism, we are rethinking our relationship with the physical stuff that fills our lives. Dissatisfied with empty materialism, we seek new ways to reuse our material culture. Recycling, turning something considered to be waste into something with renewed value, is our primary collective response to the problems arising from consumption; and it is ripe for critical examination. Beyond Recycling is a fascinating read for conscious consumers and students in the creative arts, design, cultural studies, sustainability and environmental studies.

This "eye-opening and essential" book will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems—and explains how we can solve them.

It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.

But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history.

Did you know that:

• Carbon emissions per capita are actually down
• Deforestation peaked back in the 1980s
• The air we breathe now is vastly improved from centuries ago
• And more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago?

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. Hannah cuts through the noise by outlining what works, what doesn’t, and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.

These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let’s turn that opportunity into reality.

Poetics of the Earth is a work of environmental philosophy, based on a synthesis of eastern and western thought on natural and human history. It draws on recent biological research to show how the processes of evolution and history both function according to the same principles. Augustin Berque rejects the separation of nature and culture which he believes lies at the root of the environmental crisis. This book proposes a three stage process of "re-worlding" (moving away from the individualized self to become a part of the common world), "re-concretizing" (understanding the meaning and historical development of words and things) and "re-engaging" (reconsidering the relationship between history and subjectivity at every level of being) in order to bring western thought on nature and culture into sustainable harmony and alignment. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, environmental philosophy, Asian studies and the natural sciences.

Arguing for a renewed view of objects and nature, Ethical Responses to Nature's Call considers how it is possible to understand our ethical duties - in the form of ethical intuitionalism - to nature and the planet by listening to and releasing ourselves over to the call or address of nature. Blending several strands of philosophical thought, such as Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology, W. D. Ross's prima fathics, Alphonso Lingis's phenomenological ethics traceable to The Imperative, and Michael Bonnett's ecophilosophy, this book offers a unique rejoinder to the problems and issues that continue to haunt humans' relationship to nature. The origins of such problems and issues largely remain obscured from view due to the oppressive influence of the "Cultural Framework" which gives form and structure to the ways we understand, discourse on, and comport ourselves in relation to the natural world. Through understanding this "Cultural Framework" we also come to know the responses we continue to offer in answer to nature's call and address, and are then in a position to analyze and assess those responses in terms of their potential ethical weight. Such a phenomenon is made possible through the descriptive-and-interpretive method of eco-phenomenology. This renewed vision of the human-and-nature provides direction for our interaction with and behavior toward nature in such a way that the ethical insight offers a diagnosis and provides a potentially compelling prescriptive for environmental ills.

More than thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the critique of state socialism is still used to deny alternatives to capitalism, irrespective of global capitalist ecological and social devastation. There is seemingly nothing worthwhile salvaging from decades of state socialist experiences. As the climate crisis deepens, Engel-Di Mauro argues that we need to re-evaluate the environmental practices and policies of state socialism, especially as they had more environmentally beneficial than destructive effects. Rather than dismissing state socialism's heritage out of hand, we should reclaim it for contemporary eco-socialist ends. By means of a comparative and multiple-scaled approach, Engel-Di Mauro points to highly diverse and environmentally constructive state socialist experiences. Taking the reader from the USSR to China and Cuba, this is a fiery and contentious look at what worked, what didn't, and how we can move towards an eco-socialist future.

Economic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratise the economy, "now-topias" that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system. A handbook and a manifesto, The Future Is Degrowth is a must-read for all interested in charting a way beyond the current crises.

This book exposes the barriers to inclusive and effective public policy making, which are the current decision making paradigm and commonly held ideas that reduce public policy problems to scientific and technical ones. Through both environmental policy and other decision making examples, readers are shown the commonalities of all decision making. Solution-oriented practitioners and stakeholders will find this book filling a conceptual and methodological gap in existing policy literature and practice. The authors deftly guide readers from post-normal science, wicked problems, and uncertainty concepts to a conceptually-grounded, practical implementation of a new approach, the open solution approach. The Multi-criteria Integrated Resource Assessment (MIRA) is described as the first generation methodology that fulfills the expectations for the inclusive, transparent, and learning-based open solutions approach. MIRA is a holistic package of concepts, methods and analytical tools that is designed to assess Decision Uncertainty, the combined uncertainties that include data, problem formulation, expert judgments, and stakeholder opinions. Introduction of the Requisite Steps, the common steps found in all decision making, provides the yardstick for evaluating a variety of decision making processes, decision tools, and commonly found indices such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Newsweek Green Ranking of corporations. The use of anecdotes, policy stories, and case examples makes this a very readable and practical book for citizens and experts. With this book, readers are prepared to critically evaluate these common indices for their personal use as well as challenge policy processes as a stakeholder. For policy practitioners, this guidebook will become a rubric to ensure an effective public policy making process and to critically evaluate decision support tools.

Climate and Crises: Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse makes a dual intervention in both world literature and ecocriticism by examining magical realism as an international style of writing that has long-standing links with environmental literature. The book argues that, in the era of climate change when humans are facing the prospect of species extinction, new ideas and new forms of expression are required to address what the novelist Amitav Gosh calls a "crisis of imagination." Magical realism enables writers to portray alternative intellectual paradigms, ontologies and epistemologies that typically contest the scientific rationalism derived from the European Enlightenment, and the exploitation of natural resources associated with both capitalism and imperialism. Climate and Crises explores the overlaps between magical realism and environmental literature, including their respective transgressive natures that dismantle binaries (such as human and non-human), a shared biocentric perspective that focuses on the inter-connectedness of all things in the universe, and, frequently, a critique of postcolonial legacies in formerly colonised territories. The book also challenges conventional conceptions of magical realism, arguing they are often influenced by a geographic bias in the construction of the orthodox global canon, and instead examines contemporary fiction from Asia (including China) and Australasia, two regions that have been largely neglected by scholarship of the narrative mode. As a result, the monograph modifies and expands our ideas of what magical realist fiction is.

This book addresses the intersections between the interdisciplinary realms of Ecocriticism and Indigenous and Native American Studies, and between academic theory and pragmatic eco-activism conducted by multiethnic and indigenous communities. It illuminates the multi-layered, polyvocal ways in which artistic expressions render ecological connections, drawing on scholars working in collaboration with Indigenous artists from all walks of life, including film, literature, performance, and other forms of multimedia to expand existing conversations. Both local and global in its focus, the volume includes essays from multiethnic and Indigenous communities across the world, visiting topics such as Navajo opera, Sami film production history, south Indian tribal documentary, Maori art installations, Native American and First Nations science-fiction literature and film, Amazonian poetry, and many others. Highlighting trans-Indigenous sensibilities that speak to worldwide crises of environmental politics and action against marginalization, the collection alerts readers to movements of community resilience and resistance, cosmological thinking about inter- and intra-generational multi-species relations, and understandings of indigenous aesthetics and material ecologies. It engages with emerging environmental concepts such as multispecies ethnography, cosmopolitics, and trans-indigeneity, as well as with new areas of ecocritical research such as material ecocriticism, biosemiotics, and media studies. In its breadth and scope, this book promises new directions for ecocritical thought and environmental humanities practice, providing thought-provoking insight into what it means to be human in a locally situated, globally networked, and cosmologically complex world.

This volume of the "Advances in Ecopolitics" examines the impact of the economic crisis on peripheral European states such as Ireland and Greece. Following an introductory chapter, it is divided into two geographically-focused sections, the first on Ireland, the second section on Greece. Specifically the book focuses on governance, sustainable politics and environmental policies, within the context of accelerated growth and the subsequent economic downturn. It also examines issues of governance and politics within these peripheral states, in addition to the development of policies within an EU/EC context. The book concludes with a discussion of the future for sustainable politics in the peripheral states of Europe, in the aftermath of the global downturn. "Advances in Ecopolitics" is essential reading for all academics, researchers and practitioners who are involved in the areas of environmentalism, providing insight and extending understanding of these issues.