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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Environmentalist thought & ideology
James Lovelock's Gaia theory revolutionized the understanding of our place and role in the global environment. It is now accepted that our activities over the past two hundred years have contributed to and accelerated the extreme weather events associated with climate change. The fact that those activities materialized, for the most part, from within Western Christian communities makes it imperative to assess and to change their theological climate: one characterized by routine use of violent, imperialist images of God. The basis for change explored here is that of gift events, particularly as evidenced in Jesus's life and sayings. Its legacy of love of enemies and forgiveness offers a basis for nonviolent theological and practical approaches to our situatedness within the community of life. These are also Gaian responses, as they include foregoing a perception of ourselves as belonging to an elect group given power by God over earth's life-support systems and over all those dependent on them, whether human or more-than-human. The degree to which we change this self-perception will determine how we affect, for good or ill, not only the givenness of the climate in future but the givenness of all future life on earth.
James Lovelock's Gaia theory revolutionized the understanding of our place and role in the global environment. It is now accepted that our activities over the past two hundred years have contributed to and accelerated the extreme weather events associated with climate change. The fact that those activities materialized, for the most part, from within Western Christian communities makes it imperative to assess and to change their theological climate: one characterized by routine use of violent, imperialist images of God. The basis for change explored here is that of gift events, particularly as evidenced in Jesus's life and sayings. Its legacy of love of enemies and forgiveness offers a basis for nonviolent theological and practical approaches to our situatedness within the community of life. These are also Gaian responses, as they include foregoing a perception of ourselves as belonging to an elect group given power by God over earth's life-support systems and over all those dependent on them, whether human or more-than-human. The degree to which we change this self-perception will determine how we affect, for good or ill, not only the givenness of the climate in future but the givenness of all future life on earth.
Game Theory has become one of the main analytical tools for addressing strategic issues in the field of economics and is increasing its influence in other fields of social sciences. With the increased level of extraction of natural resources and pollution of environments, game theory gains its place in the literature and it is more and more seen as a tool for policy makers and not only for theoreticians. The book is structured into four parts dealing with the management of natural resources, the negotiation aspects of water management, water allocation through pricing and markets, and how conflicts and regulation shape the management of the environment. The first part explores game theory concepts applied to fisheries and grazing lands, which are two important natural resources. In the next two parts, several game theory methodologies are considered in the negotiation approach to water management and approaches to water pricing and markets. The last section looks at environmental protection as the end process of the interplay between conflict and regulation. This book includes chapters by experts from developing and developed countries that apply game theory to actual issues in natural resources and the environment. As such the book is extremely useful for graduate students and technical experts interested in the sustainable management of natural resource and the environment. It is also relevant to all Game Theory and Environmental Economics students.
Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die," contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What's really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.
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.
David Ehrenfeld is a highly esteemed writer on ecology and conservation biology. The founding editor of The Journal of Conservation Biology and author of The Arrogance of Humanism and Beginning Again, his new book is an elegant study of the cost to human dignity and potential, of the shrinking wilderness and the ongoing degredation of the environment. He ruminates on the impacts of short-sighted governmental and economic policies, and of new technologies on human values and communities, tracing the human impacts upon the urban, agricultural and wilderness environments. Ehrenfeld has a unique, unmistakable voice as a major spokesperson for the conservation ethic and the human values implicit in environmentalism and conservation biology. This book should appeal strongly to readers of Ehrenfeld's earlier books and essays, and reach and satisfy a broad constituency on the green end of the political spectrum.
When first published, Capitalism as if the World Matters, by one of the leading 'eco-warriors' of our time, shocked a generation of both environmentalists and business people. Jonathon Porritt brushed aside their artificial battle lines with a powerful argument that the only way to save the world from environmental catastrophe is to embrace a new type of capitalism, and to do it quickly. In this substantially revised and updated edition, Porritt extends his powerful and controversial argument by providing fresh evidence and suggesting new actions. New content includes in-depth coverage of the USA, with case studies examining the role of huge American corporations such as Wal-Mart and General Electric, plus a close look at China and the global impact this economic giant may have in the twenty-first century. This is a must-read for everyone who has a stake in the future of the world, from business executives to environmental activists, from community leaders to the politicians with their hands on the levers of power. Published with Forum for the Future
This edited collection analyzes the appropriate balance between conservation and development and the place for participation and popular protest in environmental assessment. Examining the relationship between law, environmental governance and the regulation of decision-making, this volume takes a reflective and contextual approach, using wide range of theories, to explore the key features of modern environmental assessment. This collection of work from experts in the area in the US and Europe provides a detailed treatment of key issues in environmental assessment, encouraging an appreciation of where environmental assessment has come from and how it could develop in the future. A 'stocktaking' exercise, this volume encompasses a broad range of concerns, timescales and legal and policy contexts. Individual chapters include discussions on:
Looking at the rots and current state of environmental assessment in the US and Europe and giving the reader a good sense of the political, scientific and technological settings in which environmental assessment has developed, this book critically examines the dilemmas the law has found itself in since the regulation of environmental assessment.
Transnational Identity Politics and the Environment attempts to transcend current social science paradigms for interpreting the relations between globalization and environmental activism, and to develop an alternative perspective that recognizes the effects of economic globalization, accelerating migration, and the retreat of the state on environmental social movements and politics. The book is a study in global sociology, and makes use of both quantitative analysis and qualitative case studies. By addressing cutting-edge theories of globalization from several disciplines, using multiple methods and multiple sources of data, and illustrating its major arguments with case studies of Turkey and Lithuania, Transnational Identity Politics and the Environment represents a theoretically daring and empirically compelling approach to environmental politics. Specifically, the book argues that trends in the direction of economic liberalization, media globalization, migration, and supranational political organization have weakened environmental movements and coalitions that relied on the nation-state and "big science." While such groups have lost popularity and influence, since the 1980s, newer groups linking environmental issues with ethnic and religious activism have flourished. An analyses of global data on the establishment of nonprofit environmental organizations, and case studies of hybrid, transnational ethnic/environmental and religious/environmental groups in Turkey and Lithuania, support the books main arguments on globalization, the state, and contemporary environmental activism.
The battle is an old one: man versus nature. And in modern society, man includes the military. Machines. Chemicals. Who wins the battle and at what cost? This practical analysis of the conflict between national security requirements and environmental responsibility looks at just that. William Wilcox examines the most common environmental issues that the military faces during wartime and peacetime and provides an introduction to the legal authorities, including statutes, regulations, and executive orders, governing the application of environmental law to military activities. It also illuminates the tension between environmentalists and regulators concerned with the damages that military development, testing, and training operations inflict on the environment and military leaders dedicated to using actual field conditions to prepare soldiers for war. In addition, this book addresses environmentalists' desire for greater accountability from the military, which has a history of dumping, spilling, stockpiling, and launching harmful chemicals. Although some exemptions from environmental compliance have been granted to the military, federal agencies are sometimes held to higher standards than private sector companies. Wilcox, an experienced environmental attorney and former military attorney, focuses on the legal framework in which environmental issues are addressed and examines how policy translates into legal application. He also examines the changing relationship between the military and the environment by exploring environmental law as it applies to the military domestically and the impact of international environmental law on combat operations. In addition to addressing such environmental laws as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the author provides an overview of the laws governing access to information concerning the military's impact on the environment. Other topics covered include civil penalties and sovereign immunity, water rights,
In Complexity Economics for Environmental Governance, Jean-Francois Mercure reframes environmental policy and provides a rigorous methodology necessary to tackle the complexity of environmental policy and the transition to sustainability. The book offers a detailed account of the deficiencies of environmental economics and then develops a theory of innovation and macroeconomics based on complexity theory. It also develops a new foundation for evidence-based policy-making using a Risk-Opportunity Analysis applied to the sustainability transition. This multidisciplinary work was developed in partnership with prominent natural scientists and economists as well as active policy-makers with the aim to revolutionize thinking in the face of the full complexity of the sustainability transition, and to show how it can best be governed to minimize its distributional impacts. The book should be read by academics and policy-makers seeking new ways to think about environmental policy-making.
Drawing on an unusually rich empirical base, this timely and compelling book examines how environmental values are constructed and legitimized within the policy process. It trains the spotlight on four environmentally significant countries - China, Japan, India, and the United States - representing a wide diversity of cultural, social, economic, illegible] political characteristics. Through a combination of case studies and comparative analysis, the contributors illuminate cultural assumptions, standards, and analytic techniques that shape environmental actions and policies around the world. Forging Environmentalism provides valuable direction regarding what can be done to secure public support for and illegible] in environmental policies. Incorporating expert legal, economic, philosophical, sociological, and political perspective points the way toward the possibilities for a convergence of environmental norms and values across diverse cultures.
Drawing on an unusually rich empirical base, this timely and compelling book examines how environmental values are constructed and legitimized within the policy process. It trains the spotlight on four environmentally significant countries - China, Japan, India, and the United States - representing a wide diversity of cultural, social, economic, and political characteristics. Through a combination of case studies and comparative analysis, the contributors illuminate the cultural assumptions, standards, and analytic techniques that shape environmental actions and policies around the world. Forging Environmentalism provides valuable direction regarding what can be done to secure public support for and trust in environmental policies. Incorporating expert legal, economic, philosophical, sociological, and political perspectives, it points the way towards the possibilities for a convergence of environmental norms and values across diverse cultures.
Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. The term environmental sound art is generally applied to the work of sound artists who incorporate processes in which the artist actively engages with the environment. While the field of environmental sound art is diverse and includes a variety of approaches, the art form diverges from traditional contemporary music by the conscious and strategic integration of environmental impulses and natural processes. This book presents a current perspective on the environmental sound art movement through a collection of personal writings by important environmental sound artists. Dismayed by the limitations and gradual breakdown of contemporary compositional strategies, environmental sound artists have sought alternate venues, genres, technologies, and delivery methods for their creative expression. Environmental sound art is especially relevant because it addresses political, social, economic, scientific, and aesthetic issues. As a result, it has attracted the participation of artists internationally. Awareness and concern for the environment has connected and unified artists across the globe and has achieved a solidarity and clarity of purpose that is singularly unique and optimistic. The environmental sound art movement is borderless and thriving.
In Ecocinema in the City, Murray and Heumann argue that urban ecocinema both reveals and critiques visions of urban environmentalism. The book emphasizes the increasingly transformative power of nature in urban settings, explored in both documentaries and fictional films such as Children Underground, White Dog, Hatari! and Lives Worth Living. The first two sections-"Evolutionary Myths Under the City" and "Urban Eco-trauma"-take more traditional ecocinema approaches and emphasize the city as a dangerous constructed space. The last two sections-"Urban Nature and Interdependence" and "The Sustainable City"-however, bring to life the vibrant relationships between human and nonhuman nature. Ecocinema in the City provides a space to explore these relationships, revealing how ecocinema shows that both human and nonhuman nature can interact sustainably and thrive.
'War is a man's game,' or so goes the saying. Whether this is true or not, patriarchal capitalism is certainly one of the driving forces behind war in the modern era. So can we end war with feminism? This book argues that this is possible, and is in fact already happening. Each chapter provides a solution to war using innovative examples of how feminist and queer theory and practice inform pacifist treaties, movements and methods, from the international to the domestic spheres. The contributors propose a range of solutions that include arms abolition, centring Indigenous knowledge, economic restructuring, and transforming how we 'count' civilian deaths. Ending war requires challenging complex structures, but the solutions found in this edition have risen to this challenge. By thinking beyond the violence of the capitalist patriarchy, this book makes the powerful case that the possibility of life without war is real.
Social workers are called upon to shift from a human-centric bias to an ecological ethical sensibility by embracing love as integral to their justice mission and by extending the idea of social justice to include environmental and species justice. This book presents the love ethic model as a way to do eco-justice work using public campaigns, research, community arts practice and other nonviolent, direct action strategies. The model is premised on an active and ongoing commitment to the eco-values of love, eco-justice and nonviolence for the purpose of upholding the public interest. The love ethic model is informed by the stories of eco-activists who used nonviolent actions to address ecological issues such as: pollution; degradation of the environment; exploitation of farm animals; mining industry overriding First Nation Peoples' land rights; and human health and social costs related to the natural resource industries, private land developments and government infrastructure projects. Informed by practice insights by activists from a range of eco-justice concerns, this innovative book provides new directions in social work and environmental studies involving transformational change leadership and dialogical group work between interest groups. It should be considered essential reading for social work students, researchers and practitioners as well as eco-activists more generally.
Written as a series of lectures, The Ecological Life offers a humanistic perspective on environmental philosophy that challenges some of the dogmas of deep ecology and radical environmentalism while speaking for their best desires. The book argues that being human-centered leaves us open to ecological identifications, rather than the opposite. Bendik-Keymer draws on analytic and continental traditions of philosophy as well as literature and visual media. He argues for a sense of ecological justice consonant with human rights, and shows how humanistic thinking is committed to deepening respect for life and our ecological orientation. In a clear, jargon-free and conversational tone, The Ecological Life presents a timely and important contribution to civic engagement in an ecological century.
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
A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Beautifully written, movingly told and meticulously researched ... a convincing plea for a wilder, richer world' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 'By the time I'd read the first chapter, I'd resolved to take my son into the woods every afternoon over winter. By the time I'd read the sixth, I was wanting to break prisoners out of cells and onto the mossy moors. Losing Eden rigorously and convincingly tells of the value of the natural universe to our human hearts' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. For centuries, we have acted on an intuitive sense that we need communion with the wild to feel well. Now, in the moment of our great migration away from the rest of nature, more and more scientific evidence is emerging to confirm its place at the heart of our psychological wellbeing. So what happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural world-might we also be losing part of ourselves? Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health. Travelling from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches, Jones takes us to the cutting edge of human biology, neuroscience and psychology, and discovers new ways of understanding our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the earth. Urgent and uplifting, Losing Eden is a rallying cry for a wilder way of life - for finding asylum in the soil and joy in the trees - which might just help us to save the living planet, as well as ourselves.
One of the more frequently lodged, serious, and justifiable complaints about ecocritical work is that it is insufficiently theorized. "Ecocritical Theory" puts such claims decisively to rest by offering readers a comprehensive collection of sophisticated but accessible essays that productively investigate the relationship between European theory and ecocritique. With its international roster of contributors and subjects, it also militates against the parochialism of ecocritics who work within the limited canon of the American West. Bringing together approaches and orientations based on the work of European philosophers and cultural theorists, this volume is designed to open new pathways for ecocritical theory and practice in the twenty-first century.
This title was first published in 2003. Environmental Human Rights redefines the political, ethical and legal relationships between the environment and human rights to claim the human rights to an environment free from toxic pollution and to natural resources. Through a focus on the operational dynamics of social power, this compelling book details how global capitalism subjugates concerns of human security and environmental protection to the values of allocative efficiency and economic growth. The capacity of social power to construct ethical norms and to determine the efficacy of law is examined to explain how ethical and legal concepts have been selectively applied to accommodate existing patterns of production, consumption and exchange that cause environmental degradation and human rights violations. By looking at how environmental values have been systematically excluded from the human rights discourse, the book claims that human rights politics and law has been constructed on double standards to accommodate the destructive forces of capitalism.
Clean Energy presents a broad survey of the energy problems facing society over the coming decades and the prospects for their solution. The book emphasizes the importance of developing a strategy for the world's future energy supply. The strategy must take into account: the finite supplies of natural gas and petroleum; the increased consumption of fuel by developing economies; the concern over greenhouse gas emissions; the pollution caused by burning coal (especially coal with a high sulphur content); the difficulties and costs of extracting unconventional fossil fuels; and the technical, sociological and cost barriers that restrict the use of renewable forms of energy. Clean Energy sets the various renewable energies (wind, waves, solar etc) in the context of present and projected world production of energy and its use in the time-frame until 2020 and looks speculatively beyond that. It looks at the possibilities for reducing pollution from fossil fuels and tackles the serious problem of how to store energy, in order to smooth out fluctuations in supply and demand. Clean Energy is well illustrated with diagrams and photographs. It is accessible to anyone who has studied science to A-level and will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in environmental matters, and the interaction between energy usage and the environment.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the environment and the future of development continue to be issues of crucial importance. Most explanations of environmental crisis emphasize the role of population growth, thus focusing their attention on the poor. By comparison, Peet and Watts' innovative book elaborates a political-economic explanation drawing from the most recent advances in social theory. This new edition has been extensively revised to reflect recent changes in debates over the real definitions of 'development' and 'environment', and contains nine completely new chapters.
Darrell A. Posey, who died in 2001, was internationally known for his support of indigenous peoples and their natural habitats, and particularly for his pioneering work with the Kayapo people of Brazil. He was an organiser of the First International Congress of Ethnobiology which resulted in the Declaration of Belem: the first instance of an international scientific organisation recognizing an obligation to compensate native peoples for use of their knowledge and biological resources. In 1993, Posey received the United Nations Global 500 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Service to the Environment. Indigenous Knowledge and Ethics presents seventeen of his articles on the topics of environment, indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights. Demonstrating his belief in the validity of indigenous knowledge systems, and his insistence that indigenous rights must be recognised and protected, it is an ideal introduction to his thought and work. |
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