What is reality, really? Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we perceive? How does this change the way we understand the world? We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that objects - whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human or non-human - are mutually autonomous. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out the history, ideas and impact of Object-Oriented Ontology, taking in everything from art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles. A key figure in the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of the field of object-oriented ontology, he was named by Art Review magazine as one of the 100 most influential figures in international art.

What are our obligations towards future generations who stand to be harmed by the impact of today's environmental crises? This book explores ecological sustainability as a human rights issue and examines what our long-term responsibilities might be. This interdisciplinary collection of chapters provides a basis for understanding the debates on the provision of sustainability for future generations from a diverse set of theoretical standpoints. Covering a broad range of perspectives such as risk and uncertainty, legal implementation, representation, motivation and economics, Towards the Ethics of a Green Future sets out the key questions involved in this complex ethical issue. The contributors bring theoretical discussions to life through the use of case studies and real-world examples. The book also includes clear and tangible recommendations for policymakers on how to put the suggestions proposed within the book into practice. This book will be of great interest to all researchers and students concerned with issues of sustainability and human rights, as well as scholars of environmental politics, law and ethics more generally.

As global temperatures rise and polar bears begin to drown in the melting artic ice, a growing chorus of voices is calling on governments to act now whilst there is still a small chance of saving the planet. Yet the harsh reality ignored by pundits and policy makers is that capitalism stands as the most intractable obstacle in the way of the changes that could avert ecological devastation. This timely, well-grounded analysis reveals an inconvenient truth - that there needs to be a choice made between saving capitalism and saving the environment.

Written by three leading thinkers in the field of sustainability, 'All In' defines the essential attributes of high-impact corporate sustainability leadership and describes how companies can combine and apply those characteristics for future success. All In draws on research involving thousands of experts globally as collected via the GlobeScan-SustainAbility Leaders Survey over two decades. The book also reveals insights from dozens of interviews with Chairs, CEOs and Chief Sustainability Officers of pioneering companies, including 3M, BASF, BP, DuPont, Google, GE, Huawei, IKEA, Interface, Marks Spencer, Natura, Nestle acute;, Nike, Novo Nordisk, Patagonia, Shell, Tata, Toyota, Unilever and Walmart, explaining how they have gained recognition, created value and boosted resiliency based on their sustainability leadership. All In also outlines what the private sector must do to lift sustainability performance, protect business's license to operate and help deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. This unique book, rich with quantitative and qualitative insights, offers current and aspiring business leaders a succinct overview of the most important developments and trends in corporate sustainability and responsible leadership. 'All In' will also appeal to others interested in why sustainability has become a critical mainstream business issue. With a foreword by Dan Hendrix, Chairman, Interface, and afterword by Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever.

This book applies the analytical methods of third-wave ecocriticism to selected twenty-first century Italian literary works. Turning abstract issues into narrative form, literary writing increases awareness of environmental issues as well as exerting a deep emotive influence on its readership. The author analyses Roberto Saviano's "Gomorra", Kai Zen's "Delta blues", Wu Ming's "Previsioni del tempo", Simona Vinci's "Rovina", Giancarlo di Cataldo's "Fuoco!", Laura Pugno's "Sirene", and Alessandra Montrucchio's "E poi la sete". He demonstrates that these works offer an invaluable opportunity to communicate meaningfully and accessibly the discomforting truths of global environmental change.

In less than a decade, activism against the fossil fuel industry has exploded across the globe. While environmentalists used to focus on legislative goals, such as carbon emissions trading or renewable energy policies, today the most prominent activists directly attack the fossil fuel industry. This timely book offers a comprehensive evaluation of different types of activism, the success and impact of campaigns and activities, and suggestions as to ways forward. This book is the first systematic treatment of the anti-fossil fuel movement in the United States. An accessible and readable text, it is an essential reference for scholars, policymakers, activists, and citizens interested in climate change, fossil fuels, and environmental sustainability. The entire book or chapters from it can be used as required or supplementary material in various courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. As the book is not technically challenging but contains a comprehensive review of climate change, fossil fuels, and the literature on environmental activism, it can be used as an accessible introduction to the anti-fossil fuel campaign across disciplines.

This book addresses the question of domestic environmental labour from an ecofeminist perspective. A work of cultural geography, it explores the proposition that the practice and politics of domestic labour being undertaken in the name of 'the environment' needs to be better recognized, understood and accounted for as a phenomenon shaped by, and shaping of, gender, class and spatial relations. The book argues that a significant yet neglected phenomenon worthy of research attention is the upsurge in voluntary, and yet mostly unrecognized, domestic environmental labour in high-consuming households in late modernity, with the burden often falling on women seeking to green their lives and homes in aid of a sustainable planet. Further, because domestic environmental labour is undervalued in governance and the formal economy, much like other types of domestic labour, householders have become an unrecognized and unaccounted-for supply of labour for the greening of capitalism. Situated within broad global debates on links between ecological and social change, the book has relevance in the many jurisdictions around the world in which households are positioned as sites of environmental protection through green consumption. The volume engages existing interest in household environmental behaviour and practice, advancing understanding of these topics in new ways.

A revolutionary perspective on the climate catastrophe bridging history, philosophy, science, and religion. You’ve heard the hard-hitting data and you’ve seen the documentaries. But what will it truly take for humanity to change? We will not tackle the climate catastrophe with data alone – we need new stories and new ways of seeing and thinking. By drawing on traditional eco-philosophies and Buddhist wisdom, Erik Jampa Andersson offers an approach to our environmental emergency that will make us rethink the very nature of our existence on this incredible planet. Looking at the climate catastrophe through the framework of disease, Unseen Beings examines our ecological diagnosis, its historical causes and conditions and, crucially, its much-needed treatment, as well as exploring: · how and why we constructed a human-centric worldview · amazing recent discoveries around non-human intelligence · how religious traditions have dealt with questions of nature, sentience and ecology · critical connections between human health and environmental health This book is a call to action. Climate anxiety has left many of us feeling confused and powerless, but there is another way. If we can recover our natural sense of enchantment and kinship with non-human beings, we may still find a path to build a better future.

The volatility of climate change is increasing. It is bad news, and many climatologists, policy analysts and environmental groups regard the West as the largest contributor to the problems caused by climate change. This book raises questions concerning the systemic and cultural reasons for Western countries' unwillingness to bear full responsibility for their carbon emissions. Is the Western paradigm failing? Can other cultures offer solutions? Are there alternatives for designing a better future? Just as the roots of the problem of climate change are cultural, the solution must be too. The contributors to Global Ethics on Climate Change explore cultural alternatives. This differs from conventional climate ethics, which tends to address the crisis with utilitarian, legalistic, and analytic tools. The authors in this volume doubt whether such paradigm patches will work. It may be time to think outside the box and consider non-Western insights about the good life, indigenous wisdom on being-in-the-world, and new ideas for civil evolution. This book is an examination of candidates for a Plan B. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Global Ethics.

A political history of environmental policy and regulation in California, from the Gold Rush to the present Over the course of its 150-year history, California has successfully protected its scenic wilderness areas, restricted coastal oil drilling, regulated automobile emissions, preserved coastal access, improved energy efficiency, and, most recently, addressed global climate change. How has this state, more than any other, enacted so many innovative and stringent environmental regulations over such a long period of time? The first comprehensive look at California's history of environmental leadership, California Greenin' shows why the Golden State has been at the forefront in setting new environmental standards, often leading the rest of the nation. From the establishment of Yosemite, America's first protected wilderness, and the prohibition of dumping gold-mining debris in the nineteenth century to sweeping climate- change legislation in the twenty-first, David Vogel traces California's remarkable environmental policy trajectory. He explains that this pathbreaking role developed because California had more to lose from environmental deterioration and more to gain from preserving its stunning natural geography. As a result, citizens and civic groups effectively mobilized to protect and restore their state's natural beauty and, importantly, were often backed both by business interests and bystrong regulatory authorities. Business support for environmental regulation in California reveals that strict standards are not only compatible with economic growth but can also contribute to it. Vogel also examines areas where California has fallen short, particularly in water management and the state's dependence on automobile transportation. As environmental policy debates continue to grow more heated, California Greenin' demonstrates that the Golden State's impressive record of environmental accomplishments holds lessons not just for the country but for the world.

This must-have book shows us WHY we need to take action now to combat climate change and then, critically, HOW, through easy-to-understand language and stunning infographics that offer each of us varied and doable solutions to the overwhelming challenges facing our planet. As more focus is put on climate science, there is a need for each of us to learn how we can change our habits in our home, communities, and government to help mitigate the existential threat of climate change. The Climate Action Handbook is the response to this need, and the book every household needs. This visually stunning guide does what no other climate change book manages to do: it's approachable, digestible, and offers the average human ideas, options, and a roadmap for action. It also offers hope. Climate scientist Dr. Heidi Roop lays out the issues facing the planet and offers up 100 important actions that readers can take right now in their daily lives to help slow the adverse effects of climate change. Compelling infographics provide visual impact and context to the topic at hand.

Investigating the relationship between literature and climate, this Companion offers a genealogy of climate representations in literature while showing how literature can help us make sense of climate change. It argues that any discussion of literature and climate cannot help but be shaped by our current - and inescapable - vantage point from an era of climate change, and uncovers a longer literary history of climate that might inform our contemporary climate crisis. Essays explore the conceptualisation of climate in a range of literary and creative modes; they represent a diversity of cultural and historical perspectives, and a wide spectrum of voices and views across the categories of race, gender, and class. Key issues in climate criticism and literary studies are introduced and explained, while new and emerging concepts are discussed and debated in a final section that puts expert analyses in conversation with each other.

Like never before in history, humans are becoming increasingly interconnected with one another and with the other inhabitants and habitats of Earth. There are numerous signs of planetary interrelations, from social media and international trade to genetic engineering and global climate change. The scientific study of interrelations between organisms and environments, Ecology, is uniquely capable of addressing the complex challenges that characterize our era of planetary coexistence. Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence focuses on newly emerging approaches to ecology that cross the disciplinary boundaries of sciences and humanities with the aim of responding to the challenges facing the current era of planetary interconnectedness. It introduces concepts that draw out a creative contrast between religious and secular approaches to the integration of sciences and humanities, with religious approaches represented by the "geologian" Thomas Berry and the whole Earth thinking of Stephanie Kaza and Gary Snyder, and the more secular approaches represented by the "geophilosophy" of poststructuralist theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This book will introduce concepts engaging with the ecological challenges of planetary coexistence to students and professionals in fields of environmental studies, philosophy and religious studies.

'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.

This book examines current trends in scholarly thinking about the new field of the Environmental Humanities, focusing in particular on how the history of globalization and imperialism represents a special challenge to the representation of environmental issues. Essays in this path-breaking collection examine the role that narrative, visual, and aesthetic forms can play in drawing attention to and shaping our ideas about long-term and catastrophic environmental challenges such as climate change, militarism, deforestation, the pollution and management of the global commons, petrocapitalism, and the commodification of nature. The volume presents a postcolonial approach to the environmental humanities, especially in conjunction with current thinking in areas such as political ecology and environmental justice. Spanning regions such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Australasia and the Pacific, as well as North America, the volume includes essays by founding figures in the field as well as new scholars, providing vital new interdisciplinary perspectives on: the politics of the earth; disaster, vulnerability, and resilience; political ecologies and environmental justice; world ecologies; and the Anthropocene. In engaging critical ecologies, the volume poses a postcolonial environmental humanities for the twenty-first century. At the heart of this is a conviction that a thoroughly global, postcolonial, and comparative approach is essential to defining the emergent field of the environmental humanities, and that this field has much to offer in understanding critical issues surrounding the creation of alternative ecological futures.

The planet is sick. Human beings are guilty of damaging it. We have to pay. Today, that is the orthodoxy throughout the Western world. Distrust of progress and science, calls for individual and collective self-sacrifice to 'save the planet' and cultivation of fear: behind the carbon commissars, a dangerous and counterproductive ecological catastrophism is gaining ground. Modern society's susceptibility to this kind of thinking derives from what Bruckner calls "the seductive attraction of disaster," as exemplified by the popular appeal of disaster movies. But ecological catastrophism is harmful in that it draws attention away from other, more solvable problems and injustices in the world in order to focus on something that is portrayed as an Apocalypse. Rather than preaching catastrophe and pessimism, we need to develop a democratic and generous ecology that addresses specific problems in a practical way.

With melting ice caps in the Arctic causing catastrophic environmental issues, it's hard to believe that we've had to spend so much time convincing each other that climate change is real. Lead for the Planet shifts the focus to how we, the members of Team Humanity, are going to organize to solve the twin issues of climate change and energy evolution. The book channels a broad range of social science perspectives, from anthropology to psychology to economics, to help decision-makers explore how Team Humanity can get this thing done. Lead for the Planet outlines five practices that successful climate leaders will need to adopt, from getting the truth about the state of the planet, to assessing the risks and identifying the interests of key stakeholders, to implementing change within and between organizations and sectors on a global scale. Building on her experience as an organizational psychologist, Rae Andre shows how these practices comprise an effective model for climate leadership. Lead for the Planet is a guide for the kind of leadership that is necessary to help us all avoid the worst of global warming and to create a clean energy future for the generations to come.

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.

In this challenging and highly original book, the author tackles the dynamic relationships between physical nature and societies over time. It is argued that within each eco-cultural habitat, the relationship between physical nature and society is mediated by specific entanglements between technologies, institutions, and cultural values. These habitat-specific entanglements are neither ecologically nor culturally predetermined, but result from mutual adaptation based on variation (trial and error) and selection. It is shown how a variety of eco-cultural habitats evolves from this coevolutionary process. The book explores how these varieties come into being and how their specific characteristics affect the capacity to cope with environmental or social problems such as flooding or unemployment. There are two case studies illustrating the potential of a coevolutionary understanding of the society-nature nexus. In the first, rural and urban settlement structures are conceptualized as distinct paths of eco-cultural adaptation. It is shown that each of these paths is characterized by predictable spatial correspondences between dwelling technologies, modes of social reproduction, cultural preferences, and related patterns in energy consumption (i.e. social metabolism). The second case study deals with flood protection in liberal and coordinated eco, welfare, and production regimes, drawing on lessons from the Netherlands and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. As a contribution to theory in environmental sociology, the coevolutionary perspective developed provides deeper insights into the intricate interplay between physical and social nature.

Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis tells the story of a fundamental fight between a caring and an uncaring imagination. It helps us to recognise the uncaring imagination in politics, in culture - for example in the writings of Ayn Rand - and also in ourselves. Sally Weintrobe argues that achieving the shift to greater care requires us to stop colluding with Exceptionalism, the rigid psychological mindset largely responsible for the climate crisis. People in this mindset believe that they are entitled to have the lion's share and that they can 'rearrange' reality with magical omnipotent thinking whenever reality limits these felt entitlements. While this book's subject is grim, its tone is reflective, ironic, light and at times humorous. It is free of jargon, and full of examples from history, culture, literature, poetry, everyday life and the author's experience as a psychoanalyst, and a professional life that has been dedicated to helping people to face difficult truths.

This book examines current trends in scholarly thinking about the new field of the Environmental Humanities, focusing in particular on how the history of globalization and imperialism represents a special challenge to the representation of environmental issues. Essays in this path-breaking collection examine the role that narrative, visual, and aesthetic forms can play in drawing attention to and shaping our ideas about long-term and catastrophic environmental challenges such as climate change, militarism, deforestation, the pollution and management of the global commons, petrocapitalism, and the commodification of nature. The volume presents a postcolonial approach to the environmental humanities, especially in conjunction with current thinking in areas such as political ecology and environmental justice. Spanning regions such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Australasia and the Pacific, as well as North America, the volume includes essays by founding figures in the field as well as new scholars, providing vital new interdisciplinary perspectives on: the politics of the earth; disaster, vulnerability, and resilience; political ecologies and environmental justice; world ecologies; and the Anthropocene. In engaging critical ecologies, the volume poses a postcolonial environmental humanities for the twenty-first century. At the heart of this is a conviction that a thoroughly global, postcolonial, and comparative approach is essential to defining the emergent field of the environmental humanities, and that this field has much to offer in understanding critical issues surrounding the creation of alternative ecological futures.

In "Smokestacks and Progressives," David Stradling explains the evolution of one of America's first environmental movements--the antismoke crusade of the early 1900s. The roots of modern environmentalism, Stradling explains, reach deep into the Victorian era, when early reformers connected beauty, health, and cleanliness with morality and demanded government assistance in maintaining all of them. Air quality became an important issue for middle-class residents in coal-dependent cities--how could a city without pure air, they asked, truly be clean, healthful, and moral? Eventually engineers came to the fore, displaced the reformers (many of them women) as leaders of the movement, and answered their own question--how to abate dirty air.

How do scientists, scholars, and other experts engage with the general public and with the communities affected by their work or residing in their sites of study? Where are the fine lines between public scholarship, civic engagement, and activism? Must academics 'give back' once they collect data and publish results? In this volume, authors from a wide range of disciplines examine these relationships to assess how they can be fruitful or challenging. Describing the methodological and ethical issues that experts must consider when carrying out public scholarship, this book includes a checklist for critical factors of success in engagement and an examination of the role of digital social media in science communication. Illustrated by a range of case studies addressing environmental issues (climate change, resource use, post-disaster policy) and education, it offers an investigation into the levels and ways in which scholars can engage, and how and whether academics and experts who engage in community work and public scholarship are acknowledged and rewarded for doing so by their institutions. Also bringing into the debate the perspective of citizens who have collaborated with academics, the book offers an exploration of the democratizing potential of participatory action research.