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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Environmentalist thought & ideology
The environment is part of everyone's life but there are difficulties in communicating complex environmental problems, such as climate change, to a lay audience. In this book Kloeckner defines environmental communication, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the issues involved in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour.
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 natural resources of the earth - from oil and water to minerals and land - are crucial to our basic economic and social existence. But who is entitled to control, use and benefit from them? Should anyone 'own' the natural bounty of our planet? In this book, distinguished political theorist Margaret Moore tackles these questions and examines the different positions in the debate. States claim the right to control the natural resources within their territory. Liberals argue for a system of private ownership rights, including over natural resources, while egalitarians dispute such claims and argue for equal rights to natural resources. Moore shows why these standard approaches to resource justice are wanting, and offers an original approach that examines the different ways in which people interact with resources in order to determine what good is at stake in any particular case. In the context of serious environmental crisis and looming resource conflicts, this innovative and timely book will be essential reading for all students and scholars interested in the environment, property, distributive justice, and future generations.
'A fascinating portal into arguments about why we need to get beyond money' - Harry Cleaver What would a world without money look like? This book is a lively thought experiment that deepens our understanding of how money is the driver of political power, environmental destruction and social inequality today, arguing that it has to be abolished rather than repurposed to achieve a postcapitalist future. Grounded in historical debates about money, Anitra Nelson draws on a spectrum of political and economic thought and activism, including feminism, ecoanarchism, degrowth, permaculture, autonomism, Marxism and ecosocialism. Looking to Indigenous rights activism and the defence of commons, an international network of activists engaged in a fight for a money-free society emerges. Beyond Money shows that, by organising around post-money versions of the future, activists have a hope of creating a world that embodies their radical values and visions.
The Anthropocene is a volatile and potentially catastrophic age demanding new ways of thinking about relations between humans and the nonhuman world. This book explores how responses to environmental challenges are hampered by a grief for a pristine and certain past, rather than considering the scale of the necessary socioeconomic change for a 'future' world. Conceptualisations of human-nature relations must recognise both human power and its embeddedness within material relations. Hope is a risky and complex process of possibility that carries painful emotions; it is something to be practised rather than felt. As centralised governmental solutions regarding climate change appear insufficient, intellectual and practical resources can be derived from everyday understandings and practices. Empirical examples from rural and urban contexts and with diverse research participants - indigenous communities, climate scientists, weed managers, suburban householders - help us to consider capacity, vulnerability and hope in new ways.
US Environmental Policy: A Practical Approach to Understanding Implementation provides a comprehensive look at the creation, implementation, and evaluation of environmental policy, which is of particular importance in an era of congressional gridlock. With a focus grounded in the front-lines of environmental policy, readers are afforded examples of how environmental policy works through case studies and voices sections, thereby enriching the text's practical approach to understanding contemporary American environmental policy.
Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-how for Global Flourishing's contributors describe ways of being in the world that reflect a worldview that guided humanity for 99% of human history: They describe the practical traditional wisdom that stems from Nature-based relational cultures that were or are guided by this worldview. Such cultures did not cause the kinds of anti-Nature and de-humanizing or inequitable policies and practices that now pervade our world. Far from romanticizing Indigenous histories, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom offers facts about how human beings, with our potential for good and evil behaviors, can live in relative harmony again. Contributions cover views from anthropology, psychology, sociology, leadership, native science, native history, and native art.
Complexity theories gained prominence in the 1990s with a focus on self-organising and complex adaptive systems. Since then, complexity theory has become one of the fastest growing topics in both the natural and social sciences, and touted as a revolutionary way of understanding the behaviour of complex systems. This book uses complexity theory to surface and challenge the deeply held cultural assumptions that shape how we think about reality and knowledge. In doing so it shows how our traditional approaches to generating and applying knowledge may be paradoxically exacerbating some of the 'wicked' environmental problems we are currently facing. The author proposes an innovative and compelling argument for rejecting old constructs of knowledge transfer, adaptive management and adaptive capacity. The book also presents a distinctively coherent and comprehensive synthesis of cognition, learning, knowledge and organizing from a complexity perspective. It concludes with a reconceptualization of the problem of knowledge transfer from a complexity perspective, proposing the concept of creative capacity as an alternative to adaptive capacity as a measure of resilience in socio-ecological systems. Although written from an environmental management perspective, it is relevant to the broader natural sciences and to a range of other disciplines, including knowledge management, organizational learning, organizational management, and the philosophy of science.
Through a series of multidisciplinary readings, "Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions" contextualizes environmental ethics within the history of Western intellectual tradition and traces the development of theory since the 1970s. Includes an extended introduction that provides an historical and thematic introduction to the field of environmental ethics Features a selection of brief original essays on why to study environmental ethics by leaders in the field Contextualizes environmental ethics within the history of the Western intellectual tradition by exploring anthropocentric (human-centered) and nonanthropocentric precedents Offers an interdisciplinary approach to the field by featuring seminal work from eminent philosophers, biologists, ecologists, historians, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, nature writers, business writers, and others Designed to be used with a web-site which contains a continuously updated archive of case studies: http: //environmentalethics.info/
Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of Thoreau seeks to correct oversimplified readings of Henry David Thoreau's political thought by elucidating a key tension within his imagination. With the celebration of Thoreau's two-hundredth birthday now past, this study outlines, and builds on, his own understanding of imagination and considers its implications for environmental politics. Despite the use of the word, "aftermath," Thoreau's legacy for environmental political thought is primarily constructive and foundational for modern environmentalism. Thoreau's virtues and vices have been inherited by his environmentally-conscious readers. The author of Walden's preference for an abstract, ahistorical "higher law," his radical concept of autonomy, and his frustration with government and community foster an impractical political thought characteristic of an idyllic imagination. Nevertheless, Thoreau demonstrates a more prudential and moral imagination by emphasizing the inescapable relationship between the moral order of individuals and the order of political communities and by pioneering the central questions of humanity's relationship to non-human nature. Can this tension of imaginations be resolved? What are the consequences of this tension? Thoreau's overall vision ultimately creates significant problems with which environmentalists still struggle. While Thoreau's emphasis on freedom and the immaterial aspects of human and non-human nature are of considerable value, his abstract political morality, misanthropy and escapism must be resisted both for the sake of environmental well-being and human dignity. In addition, this book is an exercise in re-thinking how the humanities may provide scholars critical insights to better diagnose and respond to the environmental challenges of our time.
The definitive history of the modern climate change era, from an award-winning writer who has been at the centre of the fight for more than thirty years In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was presented with the findings of scientists who had been investigating whether human activities might change the climate in harmful ways. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," their report said. They were right -- but no one was listening. Four decades later, we are haunted by the consequences of this inattention, and the years of complacency, obfuscation and denialism that followed. Today, the staggering scale and scope of what we have done to the planet is impossible to ignore: the seasons of fire and flood have crossed into plain view. Fire and Flood is a comprehensive, compulsively readable history of climate change from veteran environmental journalist Eugene Linden. Linden retells the story of the modern climate change era decade by decade, tracking the progress of four ticking clocks: first, the reality of climate change itself; second, advances in scientific understanding; third, the spread of public awareness; and fourth, the business and finance response. Like no previous writer, Linden has drawn together the elements of the biggest story in the world, in a book that it is gripping as history, as economic investigation, and as scientific thriller.
Humanity's best hope for confronting the looming climate crisis rests with the new science of complexity. The sheer complexity of climate change stops most solutions in their tracks. How do we give up fossil fuels when energy is connected to everything, from great-power contests to the value of your pension? Global economic growth depends on consumption, but that also produces the garbage now choking the oceans. To give up cars, coal, or meat would upend industries and entire ways of life. Faced with seemingly impossible tradeoffs, politicians dither and economists offer solutions at the margins, all while we flirt with the sixth extinction. That's why humanity's last best hope is the young science of complex systems. Quitting coal, making autonomous cars ubiquitous, ending the middle-class addiction to consumption: all necessary to head off climate catastrophe, all deemed fantasies by pundits and policymakers, and all plausible in a complex systems view. Roland Kupers shows how we have already broken the interwoven path dependencies that make fundamental change so daunting. Consider the mid-2000s, when, against all predictions, the United States rapidly switched from a reliance on coal primarily to natural gas. The change required targeted regulations, a few lone investors, independent researchers, and generous technology subsidies. But in a stunningly short period of time, shale oil nudged out coal, and carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 10 percent. Kupers shows how to replicate such patterns in order to improve transit, reduce plastics consumption, and temper the environmental impact of middle-class diets. Whether dissecting China's Ecological Civilization or the United States' Green New Deal, Kupers describes what's folly, what's possible, and which solutions just might work.
What can ecocriticism do when engaging with Japanese literature and culture? This edited volume Ecocriticism in Japan attempts to answer this question. The contributors place themselves inside the domestic fields of production of works of art and express their concerns and ideas for the English-speaking spheres of the world. Taking up subjects ranging from the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, an early twentieth-century writer Taoka Reiun, the post-WWII atomic bombing literature by women, the internationally-renowned Abe Kōbō, the Nobel laureate Ōe Kenzaburō, the world-widely popular writer Murakami Haruki, the Minamata writer Ishimure Michiko, and the anime artist Miyazaki Hayao to the recent TV anime Coppelion, a production that foresaw a devastating nuclear disaster after the Great East Japan Earthquake, this volume extricates and discusses innate, complex values of Japanese people and culture in terms of nature and environment.
Benjamin K. Sovacool applies concepts from justice and ethics theory to contemporary energy problems, and illustrates particular solutions to those problems with examples and case studies from around the world.
In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. In The Democracy of Species Robin Wall Kimmerer guides us towards a more reciprocal, grateful and joyful relationship with our animate earth, from the wild leeks in the field to the deer in the woods. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.
The Sunday Times Bestseller A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough's seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet. Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species, and often whole communities adapt to make the most of ice cap and tundra, forest and plain, desert, ocean and volcano. These adaptations can be truly extraordinary: fish that walk or lay eggs on leaves in mid-air; snakes that fly; flightless birds that graze like deer; and bears that grow hair on the soles of their feet. In The Living Planet, David Attenborough's searching eye, unfailing curiosity and infectious enthusiasm explain and illuminate the intricate lives of the these colonies, from the lonely heights of the Himalayas to the wild creatures that have established themselves in the most recent of environments, the city. By the end of this book it is difficult to say which is the more astonishing - the ingenuity with which individual species contrive a living, or the complexity of their interdependence on each other and on the habitations provided by our planet. In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology, as well as a full-colour 64-page photography section. He also addresses the urgent issues facing our living planet: climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species.
The essays collected here, by both eminent and emerging scholars, engage interlocutors from Machiavelli to Arendt. Individually, they contribute compelling readings of important political thinkers and add fresh insights to debates in areas such as environmentalism and human rights. Together, the volume issues a call to think anew about nature, not only as a traditional concept that should be deconstructed or affirmed but also as a site of human political activity and struggle worthy of sustained theoretical attention.
In the first detailed study of how a major environmental NGO works transnationally, Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle examine the relationships between the 74 national organizations of Friends of the Earth International. Drawing from a rich mix of survey data, interviews, archival sources and access to internal meetings, they show how FoEI has developed a distinctive international environmentalism, which allows for the differences in context between regions and across the North-South divide. Following the expansion of FoEI into the global South, the challenges it then faced over questions of ideology, organization and campaign strategy are examined over a twenty year period. The book demonstrates the development of an FoEI tradition of solidarity which accounts for its ability to overcome internal crises and pursue joint campaigns despite conflicting understandings of politics between its national organizations.
The greening of citizenship, the state and ideology has created both opportunities and bottlenecks for progressive political movements. Scerri argues that these are pursuing justice by making holistic demands for: fair distribution and status recognition, adequate representation and effective participation.
This compact handbook of nature practices can be used by anyone who wants to deepen their connection with the rest of nature. It is also designed to be used by people who work with others in personal development and healing - for example, coaches, therapists, ecotherapists and outdoor educators. We are a part of nature and our relationship with the Earth is reciprocal. We cannot exist separately, and what we do as humans has powerful consequences for the ecosystems we are part of. Experiencing ourselves as part of nature tends to an underlying wound we all carry - a subtle, ever-present feeling of disconnectedness that is clearly visible in our current lives and culture. Experiencing ourselves as part of nature opens up a larger community of life, unconditional acceptance and a deep feeling of belonging. The consequence of this journey is that it can motivate us to start tending the Earth’s ecological wounds and rebalancing our part in the web of life. The book's exercises fall into five categories: Ecological Self, Embodiment, Personal Journey, Mindfulness and Inviting Mystery. Some exercises concentrate on empathising with natural elements or a living being and feeling into their innate intrinsic value. These are categorised as focusing on the Ecological Self. The notion of the Ecological Self comes from the writings of the Norwegian ecophilosopher, Arne Naess and suggests an experience of deeper interconnectedness and being part of nature, where all parts of the whole have an inalienable right to their own existence. Embodiment focuses on bringing awareness to the body and exploring movement in an ecological context and as part of the Ecological Self. Exercises that invite readers to reflect on their Personal Journey are useful when looking at personal development issues or in therapeutic or coaching processes with clients. Exercises in the Mindfulness category emphasise exploring the senses, observing the mind and experiencing the present moment. Finally, Inviting Mystery describes exercises that invoke playfulness and creativity, expanding beyond the rational everyday world. These experiences may go beyond easy description and invite a taste of mystery into life.
Written for a wide range of readers in environmental science, philosophy, and policy-oriented programs The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics is a landmark, comprehensive reference work in this interdisciplinary field. Not merely a review of theoretical approaches to the ethics of the environment, the Companion focuses on specific environmental problems and other concrete issues. Its 65 chapters, all appearing in print here for the first time, have been organized into the following eleven parts: I. Animals II. Land III. Water IV. Climate V. Energy and Extraction VI. Cities VII. Agriculture VIII. Environmental Transformation IX. Policy Frameworks and Response Measures X. Regulatory Tools XI. Advocacy and Activism The volume not only explains the nuances of important core philosophical positions, but also cuts new pathways for the integration of important ethical and policy issues into environmental philosophy. It will be of immense help to undergraduate students and other readers coming up to the field for the first time, but also serve as a valuable resource for more advanced students as well as researchers who need a trusted resource that also offers fresh, policy-centered approaches.
Our attitude to nature has changed over time. This book explores the historical, literary and philosophical origins of the changes in our attitude to nature that allowed environmental catastrophes to happen. It presents a philosophical reflection on human societies' attitude to the environment, informed by the history of the concept of landscape and the role played by the concept of nature in the human imagination and features a wealth of examples from around the world to help understand the contemporary environmental crisis in the context of both the built and natural environment. Thinking Through Landscape locates the start of this change in human labour and urban elites being cut off from nature. Nature became an imaginary construct masking our real interaction with the natural world. The book argues that this gave rise to a theoretical and literary appreciation of landscape at the expense of an effective practical engagement with nature. It draws on Heideggerian ontology and Veblen's sociology, providing a powerful distinction between two attitudes to landscape: the tacit knowledge of earlier peoples engaged in creating the landscape through their work - "landscaping thought"- and the explicit theoretical and aesthetic attitudes of modern city dwellers who love nature while belonging to a civilization that destroys the landscape - "landscape thinking". This book gives a critical survey of landscape thought and theory for students, researchers and anyone interested in human societies' relation to nature in the fields of landscape studies, environmental philosophy, cultural geography and environmental history.
Green social work espouses a holistic approach to all peoples and other living things - plants and animals, and the physical ecosystem; emphasises the relational nature of all its constituent parts; and redefines the duty to care for and about others as one that includes the duty to care for and about planet earth. By acknowledging the interdependency of all living things it allows for the inclusion of all systems and institutions in its remit, including both (hu)man-made and natural disasters arising from the (hu)made ones of poverty to chemical pollution of the earth's land, waters and soils and climate change, to the natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes which turn to disasters through human (in)action. Green social work's value system is also one that favours equality, social inclusion, the equitable distribution of resources, and a rights-based approach to meeting people's needs to live in an ethical and sustainable manner. Responding to these issues is one of the biggest challenges facing social workers in the twenty-first century which this Handbook is intended to address. Through providing the theories, practices, policies, knowledge and skills required to act responsibly in responding to the diverse disasters that threaten to endanger all living things and planet earth itself, this green social work handbook will be required reading for all social work students, academics and professionals, as well as those working in the fields of community development and disaster management.
This book develops a fresh perspective on everyday forms of engagement, one that foregrounds the role of objects, technologies and settings in democracy. Examining a range of devices, from smart meters to eco-homes, the book sets out new concepts and methods for analyzing the relations between participation, innovation and the environment.
Humanity is dependent on Nature to survive, yet our society largely acts as if this is not the case. The energy that powers our very cells, the nutrients that make up our bodies, the ecosystem services that clean our water and air; these are all provided by the Nature from which we have evolved and of which we are a part. This book examines why we deny or ignore this dependence and what we can do differently to help solve the environmental crisis. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Haydn Washington provides an excellent overview of humanity's relationship with Nature. The book looks at energy flow, nutrient cycling, ecosystem services, ecosystem collapse as well as exploring our psychological and spiritual dependency on nature. It also examines anthropocentrism and denial as causes of our unwillingness to respect our inherent dependence on the natural environment. The book concludes by bringing these issues together and providing a framework for solutions to the environmental crisis. |
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