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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Environmentalist thought & ideology
A critical resource for approaching sustainability across the disciplines Sustainability and social justice remain elusive even though each is unattainable without the other. Across the industrialized West and the Global South, unsustainable practices and social inequities exacerbate one another. How do social justice and sustainability connect? What does sustainability mean and, most importantly, how can we achieve it with justice? This volume tackles these questions, placing social justice and interdisciplinary approaches at the center of efforts for a more sustainable world. Contributors present empirical case studies that illustrate how sustainability can take place without contributing to social inequality. From indigenous land rights, climate conflict, militarization and urban drought resilience, the book offers examples of ways in which sustainability and social justice strengthen one another. Through an understanding of history, diverse cultural traditions, and complexity in relation to race, class, and gender, this volume demonstrates ways in which sustainability can help to shape better and more robust solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Blending methods from the humanities, environmental sciences and the humanistic social sciences, this book offers an essential guide for the next generation of global citizens.
Computational intelligence techniques have enjoyed growing interest in recent decades among the earth and environmental science research communities for their powerful ability to solve and understand various complex problems and develop novel approaches toward a sustainable earth. This book compiles a collection of recent developments and rigorous applications of computational intelligence in these disciplines. Techniques covered include artificial neural networks, support vector machines, fuzzy logic, decision-making algorithms, supervised and unsupervised classification algorithms, probabilistic computing, hybrid methods and morphic computing. Further topics given treatment in this volume include remote sensing, meteorology, atmospheric and oceanic modeling, climate change, environmental engineering and management, catastrophic natural hazards, air and environmental pollution and water quality. By linking computational intelligence techniques with earth and environmental science oriented problems, this book promotes synergistic activities among scientists and technicians working in areas such as data mining and machine learning. We believe that a diverse group of academics, scientists, environmentalists, meteorologists and computing experts with a common interest in computational intelligence techniques within the earth and environmental sciences will find this book to be of great value.
In Inherit the Holy Mountain, historian Mark Stoll introduces us to the religious roots of the American environmental movement. Religion, he shows, provided environmentalists both with deeply-embedded moral and cultural ways of viewing the world and with content, direction, and tone for the causes they espoused. Stoll discovers that specific denominational origins corresponded with characteristic sets of ideas about nature and the environment as well as distinctive aesthetic reactions to nature, as can be seen in key works of art analyzed throughout the book. Stoll also provides insight into the possible future of environmentalism in the United States, concluding with an examination of the current religious scene and what it portends for the future. By debunking the supposed divide between religion and American environmentalism, Inherit the Holy Mountain opens up a fundamentally new narrative in environmental studies.
In 1949, Oxford University Press published ecologist and writer Aldo Leopold's (1887-1948) classic work, A Sand County Almanac. The book, which has sold over two million copies worldwide, develops Leopold's "land ethic," calling for a responsible relationship between people and the land they inhabit. It remains a touchstone text for the American conservation movement, and has been little less than foundational to the fields of environmentalism and ecology. In this new project, Stories from the Leopold Shack Aldo's daughter Estella B. Leopold offers a window into the development of the land-ethic theory as it unfolded in her father's life and thought. She reveals this organic development through a series of biographical accounts centered on "the Shack," a small barn on 80 acres in south central Wisconsin purchased by Aldo in 1934 and used by the family every weekend. Working the land together, the family built more than a successful farm, habitable family shelter, or pleasant weekend getaway; they established a new way of living and relating to the land. This experiment became one of the earliest efforts in ecological restoration in the United States, and had a profound impact on Aldo Leopold's later work in forest management and conservationism. This autobiographical collection begins with the shack and how it came to be rebuilt, giving readers a glimpse into the lives of the Leopold children as they grew up in it. It goes on to describe the family's efforts from 1935 until 1948 to begin ecological restoration on the property of the old farm, and concludes with a discussion of more recent and sustained restoration from 1948 until 2012, including the development of the Aldo Leopold Foundation and its work. Readers of this collection will certainly come away with not only a better understanding of the genesis of Leopold's "land ethic," but also an intimate portrait of the family that grew within Aldo's hub of restoration and conservation.
Ina Peters analyzes how collective identities and collective action frames have contributed to the persistence and eventual fragmentation of the collective action against the Belo Monte Dam. Reconstructing the rationale of the conflict, Ina Peters addresses theoretical research gaps regarding the dynamics - particularly cohesion and fragmentation - in social movements. The study considers the influence of the regional context and the applicability of Western theories in non-Western case studies. It is based on primary data that was collected through semistructured interviews and analyzed in detail by means of a combined top-down and bottom-up procedure based on the grounded theory methodology.
Since the 2008 financial crash the expansion of neoliberalism has had an enormous impact on nature-society relations around the world. In response, various environmental movements have emerged opposing the neoliberal restructuring of environmental policies using arguments that often bridge traditional divisions between the environmental and labour agendas. The Right to Nature explores the differing experiences of a number of environmental-social movements and struggles from the point of view of both activists and academics. This collection attempts to both document the social-ecological impacts of neoliberal attempts to exploit non-human nature in the post-crisis context and to analyse the opposition of emerging environmental movements and their demands for a radically different production of nature based on social needs and environmental justice. It also provides a necessary space for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics and activists and aims to motivate further academic-activist collaborations around alternative and counter-hegemonic re-thinking of environmental politics. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in environmental policy, environmental justice, social and environmental movements.
Environmental Ethics and Behavioural Change takes a practical approach to environmental ethics with a focus on its transformative potential for students, professionals, policy makers, activists, and concerned citizens. Proposed solutions to issues such as climate change, resource depletion and accelerating extinctions have included technological fixes, national and international regulation and social marketing. This volume examines the ethical features of a range of communication strategies and technological, political and economic methods for promoting ecologically responsible practice in the face of these crises. The central concern of the book is environmental behaviour change: inspiring, informing and catalysing reflective change in the reader, and in their ability to influence others. By making clear the forms of environmental ethics that exist, and what each implies in terms of individual and social change, the reader will be better able to formulate, commit to, articulate and promote a coherent position on how to understand and engage with environmental issues. This is an essential companion to environmental ethics and philosophy courses as well as a great resource for professionals interested in practical approaches to environmental ethics. It is also excellent supplementary reading for environmental studies, environmental politics and sustainable consumption courses.
Environmental Ethics and Behavioural Change takes a practical approach to environmental ethics with a focus on its transformative potential for students, professionals, policy makers, activists, and concerned citizens. Proposed solutions to issues such as climate change, resource depletion and accelerating extinctions have included technological fixes, national and international regulation and social marketing. This volume examines the ethical features of a range of communication strategies and technological, political and economic methods for promoting ecologically responsible practice in the face of these crises. The central concern of the book is environmental behaviour change: inspiring, informing and catalysing reflective change in the reader, and in their ability to influence others. By making clear the forms of environmental ethics that exist, and what each implies in terms of individual and social change, the reader will be better able to formulate, commit to, articulate and promote a coherent position on how to understand and engage with environmental issues. This is an essential companion to environmental ethics and philosophy courses as well as a great resource for professionals interested in practical approaches to environmental ethics. It is also excellent supplementary reading for environmental studies, environmental politics and sustainable consumption courses.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Climate Change Scepticism is the first ecocritical study to examine the cultures and rhetoric of climate scepticism in the UK, Germany, the USA and France. Collaboratively written by leading scholars from Europe and North America, the book considers climate skeptical-texts as literature, teasing out differences and challenging stereotypes as a way of overcoming partisan political paralysis on the most important cultural debate of our time.
Conservation for the Anthropocene Ocean: Interdisciplinary Science in Support of Nature and People emphasizes strategies to better connect the practice of marine conservation with the needs and priorities of a growing global human population. It conceptualizes nature and people as part of shared ecosystems, with interdisciplinary methodologies and science-based applications for coupled sustainability. A central challenge facing conservation is the development of practical means for addressing the interconnectedness of ecosystem health and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science that underlies conservation practice, and implementing this science in decisions to manage, preserve, and restore ocean ecosystems. Though humans have intentionally and unintentionally reshaped their environments for thousands of years, the scale and scope of human influence upon the oceans in the Anthropocene is unprecedented. Ocean science has increased our knowledge of the threats and impacts to ecological integrity, yet the unique scale and scope of changes increases uncertainty about responses of dynamic socio-ecological systems. Thus, to understand and protect the biodiversity of the ocean and ameliorate the negative impacts of ocean change on people, it is critical to understand human beliefs, values, behaviors, and impacts. Conversely, on a human-dominated planet, it is impossible to understand and address human well-being and chart a course for sustainable use of the oceans without understanding the implications of environmental change for human societies that depend on marine ecosystems and resources. This work therefore presents a timely, needed, and interdisciplinary approach to the conservation of our oceans.
As global environmental changes become increasingly evident and efforts to respond to these changes fall short of expectations, questions about the circumstances that generate environmental reforms become more pressing. Defensive Environmentalists and the Dynamics of Global Reform answers these questions through a historical analysis of two processes that have contributed to environmental reforms, one in which people become defensive environmentalists concerned about environmental problems close to home and another in which people become altruistic environmentalists intent on alleviating global problems after experiencing catastrophic events such as hurricanes, droughts and fires. These focusing events make reform more urgent and convince people to become altruistic environmentalists. Bolstered by defensive environmentalists, the altruists gain strength in environmental politics and reforms occur.
Over the last thirty years, the European Union has created a system of environmental governance in Europe. With a large number of legislative measures, the EU's environmental policy is broad in scope, extensive in detail and often stringent in effect. Environmental governance also extends to the ways in which decision making on environmental policy has become institutionalized within Europe, both at the level of the EU itself and in the practices of the member states. This work seeks to understand this new system of environmental governance both at the European level and at the level of member states. It argues that the system is multi-level, horizontally complex, evolving and incomplete. Locating developments at the European level in theories of European integration, it goes on to examine the extent of convergence and divergence in environmental policy among six member states: Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. It then looks at the operation of the system of environmental governance through an examination of policy case studies before examining the wider political significance of these developments.
There are many current socio-environmental conflicts and problems around the world that affect distinct nationalities, races, or ethnicities. Part of the solution to these issues involves interdisciplinary scholarship to make sense of the communication challenges that are involved. However, current research in this area has lacked clear focus on the ways in which environmental issues are culturally and socially constructed by racial and ethnic minorities. This volume aims to improve our understanding of culturally bounded rationalities across racial and ethnic groups facing environmental challenges, as they relate to the formation of environmental identities, environmental injustice, political activism, public engagement, and media representations, among others. The ideas presented in this book dovetail with the idea that environmental communication scholars and practitioners can effectively intervene to engage ethnic groups that traditionally are not included in decision making or deliberation processes that directly affect their livelihoods. Considering problems such as the siting of industrial facilities, flooding, droughts, climate change, and air and water pollution, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of environmental communication.
Global climate change is one of the most daunting ethical and political challenges confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. The intergenerational and transnational ethical issues raised by climate change have been the focus of a significant body of scholarship. In this new collection of essays, leading scholars engage and respond to first-generation scholarship and argue for new ways of thinking about our ethical obligations to present and future generations. Topics addressed in these essays include moral accountability for energy consumption and emissions, egalitarian and libertarian perspectives on mitigation, justice in relation to cap-and trade schemes, the ethics of adaptation, and the ethical dimensions of the impact of climate change on nature.
A sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism, and the degrowth movement is bursting into the mainstream. As climate catastrophe looms closer, people are eager to learn what degrowth is about, and whether we can save the planet by changing how we live. This book is an introduction to the movement. As politicians and corporations obsess over growth objectives, the degrowth movement demands that we must slow down the economy by transforming our economies, our politics and our cultures to live within the Earth's limits. This book navigates the practice and strategies of the movement, looking at its strengths and weaknesses. Covering horizontal democracy, local economies and the reduction of work, it shows us why degrowth is a compelling and realistic project.
Given the urgency of environmental problems, how we communicate about our ecological relations is crucial. Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice is concerned with ways to help learners effectively navigate and consciously contribute to the communication shaping our environmental present and future. The book brings together international educators working from a variety of perspectives to engage both theory and application. Contributors address how pedagogy can stimulate ecological wakefulness, support diverse and praxis-based ways of learning, and nurture environmental change agents. Additionally, the volume responds to a practical need to increase teaching effectiveness of environmental communication across disciplines by offering a repertoire of useful learning activities and assignments. Altogether, it provides an impetus for reflection upon and enhancement of our own practice as environmental educators, practitioners, and students. Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice is an essential resource for those working in environmental communication, environmental and sustainability studies, environmental journalism, environmental planning and management, environmental sciences, media studies and cultural studies, as well as communication subfields such as rhetoric, conflict and mediation, and intercultural. The volume is also a valuable resource for environmental communication professionals working with communities and governmental and non-governmental environmental organisations.
The fruit of twenty years of moral reflection on the emerging greatest challenge to humanity of the 21st century, these far-sighted and influential essays by a pioneering practical philosopher on the tangled questions of justice between nations and justice across generations confronting all attempts at international cooperation in controlling climate change sharply crystallize the central choices and offer constructive directions forward. Arguing that persistent attempts by U.S. negotiators to avoid the fundamental issues of justice at the heart of persistent international disagreement on the terms of a binding multilateral treaty are as morally misguided as they are diplomatically counter-productive, Henry Shue has built a case that efforts to price carbon (through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes) as a mechanism to drive down greenhouse gas emissions by the affluent must, for both ethical and political reasons, be complemented by international transfers that temporarily subsidize the development of non-carbon energy and its dissemination to those trapped in poverty. Our vital escape from climate change rooted in the dominance of the fossil fuel regime ought not, and in fact need not, come at the price of de-railing the escape of the world's poorest from poverty rooted in lack of affordable energy that does not undermine the climate. The momentum of changes in the planetary climate system and the political inertia of energy regimes mean that future generations, like the poorest of the present, are vulnerable to our decisions, and they have rights not to be left helpless by those of us with the power instead to leave them hope.
Food, Animals, and the Environment: An Ethical Approach examines some of the main impacts that agriculture has on humans, nonhumans, and the environment, as well as some of the main questions that these impacts raise for the ethics of food production, consumption, and activism. Agriculture is having a lasting effect on this planet. Some forms of agriculture are especially harmful. For example, industrial animal agriculture kills 100+ billion animals per year; consumes vast amounts of land, water, and energy; and produces vast amounts of waste, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Other forms, such as local, organic, and plant-based food, have many benefits, but they also have many costs, especially at scale. These impacts raise difficult ethical questions. What do we owe animals, plants, species, and ecosystems? What do we owe people in other nations and future generations? What are the ethics of risk, uncertainty, and collective harm? What is the meaning and value of natural food in a world reshaped by human activity? What are the ethics of supporting harmful industries when less harmful alternatives are available? What are the ethics of resisting harmful industries through activism, advocacy, and philanthropy? The discussion ranges over cutting-edge topics such as effective altruism, abolition and regulation, revolution and reform, individual and structural change, single-issue and multi-issue activism, and legal and illegal activism. This unique and accessible text is ideal for teachers, students, and anyone else interested in serious examination of one of the most complex and important moral problems of our time.
The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program is, in a sense, an experiment to transform the nature of science, and represents one of the most effective mechanisms for catalyzing comprehensive site-based research that is collaborative, multidisciplinary, and long-term in nature. The scientific contributions of the Program are prodigious, but the broader impacts of participation have not been examined in a formal way. This book captures the consequences of participation in the Program on the perspectives, attitudes, and practices of environmental scientists. The edited volume comprises three sections. The first section includes two chapters that provide an overview of the history, goals, mission, and inner workings of the LTER network of sites. The second section comprises three dozen retrospective essays by scientists, data managers or educators who represent a broad spectrum of LTER sites from deserts to tropical forests and from arctic to marine ecosystems. Each essay addresses the same series of probing questions to uncover the extent to which participation has affected the ways that scientists conduct research, educate students, or provide outreach to the public. The final section encompasses 5 chapters, whose authors are biophysical scientists, historians, behavioral scientists, or social scientists. This section analyzes, integrates, or synthesizes the content of the previous chapters from multiple perspectives and uncovers emergent themes and future directions.
This book explores the development of climate change discourses in Russia. It contributes to the study of climate change as a cultural idea by developing the extensive Anglophone literature on environmental science, politics and policy pertaining to climate change in the West to consider how Russian discourses of climate change have developed. Drawing on contributors specialising in numerous periods, regions, disciplines and topics of study, the central thread of this book is the shared attempt to understand how environmental issues, particularly climate change, have been understood, investigated and conceptualised in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The chapters aim to complement work on the history of the discursive political construction of climate change in the West by examining a highly contrasting (but intimately related) cultural context. Russia remains one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters with one of the most carbon-intensive economies. As the world begins to suffer the extreme consequences of anthropogenic climate change, finding adequate solutions to global environmental problems necessitates the participation of all countries. Russia is a central actor in this global process and it, therefore, becomes increasingly important to understand climate change discourse in this region. Insights gained in this area may also be illuminating for examining environmental discourses in other resource rich regions of the world with alternative economic and political experiences to that of the West (e.g. China, Middle East). This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russian environmental policy and politics, climate change discourses, environmental communication and environment and sustainability in general.
Three-fourths of scientific research in the United States is funded by special interests. Many of these groups have specific practical goals, such as developing pharmaceuticals or establishing that a pollutant causes only minimal harm. For groups with financial conflicts of interest, their scientific findings often can be deeply flawed. To uncover and assess these scientific flaws, award-winning biologist and philosopher of science Kristin Shrader-Frechette uses the analytical tools of classic philosophy of science. She identifies and evaluates the concepts, data, inferences, methods, models, and conclusions of science tainted by the influence of special interests. As a result, she challenges accepted scientific findings regarding risks such as chemical toxins and carcinogens, ionizing radiation, pesticides, hazardous-waste disposal, development of environmentally sensitive lands, threats to endangered species, and less-protective standards for workplace-pollution exposure. In so doing, she dissects the science on which many contemporary scientific controversies turn. Demonstrating and advocating "liberation science," she shows how practical, logical, methodological, and ethical evaluations of science can both improve its quality and credibility - and protect people from harm caused by flawed science, such as underestimates of cancers caused by bovine growth hormones, cell phones, fracking, or high-voltage wires. This book is both an in-depth look at the unreliable scientific findings at the root of contemporary debates in biochemistry, ecology, economics, hydrogeology, physics, and zoology - and a call to action for scientists, philosophers of science, and all citizens.
Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene offers a new perspective on international environmental scholarship, focusing on the emotional and affective connections between human and nonhuman lives to reveal fresh connections between global issues of climate change, species extinction and colonisation. Combining the rhythm of road travel, interviews with local Aboriginal Elders, and autobiographical storytelling, the book develops a new form of nature writing informed by concepts from posthumanism and the environmental humanities. It also highlights connections between the studied area and the global environment, drawing conceptual links between the auto-ethnographic accounts and international issues. This book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduates in environmental philosophy, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, Australian studies, anthropology, literary and place studies, ecocriticism, history and animal studies. Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene may also be beneficial to studies in nature writing, ecocriticism, environmental literature, postcolonial studies and Australian studies.
Includes a guide to ethical shopping and investing Your introduction to taking simple steps towards sustainable living Packed with practical and realistic advice, Green Living For Dummies is a comprehensive guide to minimising your impact on the world around you. Here you'll discover effective and simple strategies for making a difference in every part of your life - from reducing energy waste in your home and cutting reliance on your car, to going green in the garden and at work. * Minimise household rubbish* Buy green energy* Eat seasonally and organically* Switch holidays for eco-tourism* Teach your kids to be green
Serpent River Resurgence tells the story of how the Serpent River Anishinaabek confronted the persistent forces of settler colonialism and the effects of uranium mining at Elliot Lake, Ontario. Drawing on extensive archival sources, oral histories, and newspaper articles, Lianne C. Leddy examines the environmental and political power relationships that affected her homeland in the Cold War period. Focusing on Indigenous-settler relations, the environmental and health consequences of the uranium industry, and the importance of traditional uses of land and what happens when they are compromised, Serpent River Resurgence explores how settler colonialism and Anishinaabe resistance remained potent forces in Indigenous communities throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
As global environmental changes become increasingly evident and efforts to respond to these changes fall short of expectations, questions about the circumstances that generate environmental reforms become more pressing. Defensive Environmentalists and the Dynamics of Global Reform answers these questions through a historical analysis of two processes that have contributed to environmental reforms, one in which people become defensive environmentalists concerned about environmental problems close to home and another in which people become altruistic environmentalists intent on alleviating global problems after experiencing catastrophic events such as hurricanes, droughts and fires. These focusing events make reform more urgent and convince people to become altruistic environmentalists. Bolstered by defensive environmentalists, the altruists gain strength in environmental politics and reforms occur. |
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