Global seawater levels are rising and the low-lying coasts of the North Sea basin are amongst the most vulnerable in Europe. In our current moment of environmental crisis, the North Sea coasts are literary arenas in which the challenges and concerns of the Anthropocene are being played out. This book shows how the fragile landscapes around the North Sea have served as bellwethers for environmental concern both now and in the recent past. It looks at literary sources drawn from the countries around the North Sea (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and England) from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, taking them out of their established national and cultural contexts and reframing them in the light of human concern with fast-changing and hazardous environments. The six chapters serve as literary case studies that highlight memories of flood disaster and recovery, attempts to engineer the landscape into submission, perceptions of the landscape as both local and global, and the imagination of the future of our planet. This approach, which combines environmental history and ecocriticism, shows the importance of cultural artefacts in understandings of, and responses to, environmental change, and advocates for the importance of literary studies in the environmental humanities. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the Environmental Humanities, including Eco-criticism and Environmental History, as well as anyone studying literature from the Germanic philologies.

At the beginning of the 21st 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, Liberation Ecologies elaborates a political-economic explanation drawing from the most recent advances in social theory. The 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.

While struggling to deny it, many practising environmentalists already suspect what they cannot admit: that it is now too late for sustainability. This book makes clear why that is true, but rather than despairing, it explores where coming out of denial could take us. It shows where the deep environmental crisis truly lies, in the way we think about ourselves and our lives as much as in our material arrangements. This in turn suggests what we might be able to retrieve from breakdown. Giving an original philosophical account, After Sustainability argues that the roots of our embedded denial lie in progressivism which, either as insatiable material consumption or as the self-blinded optimism of sustainable development, underlies the whole environmental problematic. As progressivism has provided the impetus for many genuine advances in material welfare, this book shows that our environmental situation is tragic in the full sense and entails losses which cannot be mitigated or compensated. But it also reveals us to ourselves and shows how we can break free from a progressive mindset in conceptual and practical terms.This book thus develops a unique account of natural responsibility in environmental-philosophical terms, and also challenges the conventional modern conception of the individual without embracing any sort of quasi-mystical 'ecological self'. It concludes by suggesting what may be possible politically, educationally and economically, if we approach what is coming with honesty and a new realism grounded in genuinely non-optimistic life-hope. This book is essential reading for students and researchers in environment and sustainability, geography, sociology, philosophy, climate change and economics. Academically informed, it is accessible to an interested general reader, as well as to policy makers and environmentalists.

Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these,perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another. The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help "save the Earth"? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

Half of the ancient woodlands present in 1945 have been destroyed, replanted with conifers or cleared for cereal production, roads and building development. The intention of this book is to present evidence of our deep cultural need for trees and woods and to inspire people to take care of them. Trees, and indeed woods, know no distinction between town and country; they are close to everyone. If we are to combat local pollution, make even the slightest impact on global warming, enjoy our surroundings and share them with many other creatures, we need trees: trees here and trees now. If we are to nourish more than our prosaic needs we need their longevity, their beauty, their generosity. Trees stand for nature and culture. We shall stand or fall with them.

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells of the creation of the world and our dominion over it. But is this the whole story? The planet on which we live is ecologically fragile, and all people of good will have a responsibility to take care of this most precious gift. During his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly drew attention to the environment, whether in terms of preserving it such as his address concerning Amazonia and his letter regarding the Arctic or distributing its vital resources such as water more equitably. What is more, during Benedict's papacy, the Vatican became the first, and remains the only, carbon-neutral country in the world. This book gathers together the audiences, addresses, letters, and homilies of Benedict on a wide-ranging set of topics that deal with the world about us. The major themes and connections he explores are creation and the natural world; the environment, science, and technology; and hunger, poverty, and the earth's resources. In these pages, Benedict insists that if we truly desire peace, we must be increasingly conscious of and nurture all of creation. Furthermore, he argues convincingly that as our love of God should cause us to protect the environment, so should our heightened sense of appreciation of the natural world draw us closer to God. Benedict speaks out against the spread of nuclear weapons, threats to biodiversity, and in favor of alternative energy. He urges sustainable development, equitable distribution of food and water, and an end to hunger. This book is a valuable resource for all those who seek to understand more fully the relationships among the environment, Catholic social teaching, and theology. Whether speaking to a vast crowd, meeting with a small group of scientists, or writing letters to world leaders, Benedict has shown a clear path towards a theologically cogent concern for the planet on which we live.

Since there is no supranational institution which can enforce international environmental agreements (IEAs), international cooperation proves difficult in practice. Global emissions exhibit negative externalities in countries other than that of their origin and hence there is a high interdependence between countries, and strategic considerations play an important role. Game theory analyses the interaction between agents and formulates hypotheses about their behavior and the final outcomes in games. Hence, international environmental problems are particularly suited for analysis by this method. The book investigates various strategies to provide countries with an incentive to accede, agree and comply to an international environmental agreement (IEA). Finus shows that by integrating real world restrictions into a model, game theory is a powerful tool for explaining the divergence between 'first-best' policy recommendations and 'second-best' designs of actual IEAs. For instance he explains why (inefficient) uniform emission reduction quotas have played such a prominent role in past IEAs despite economists' recommendations for the use of (efficient) market-based instruments as for example emission targets and permits. Moreover, it is stated, that a single, global IEA on climate is not necessarily the best strategy and small coalitions may enjoy a higher stability and may achieve more. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and lecturers in the fields of international environmental economics, game theory and international relations.

Contemplative or "noetic" knowledge has traditionally been seen as the highest mode of understanding, a view that persists both in many non-Western cultures and in Eastern Christianity, where "theoria physike," or the illumined understanding of creation that follows the purification of the heart, is seen to provide deeper insights into nature than the discursive rationality modernity has used to dominate and conquer it.
Working from texts in Eastern Orthodox philosophy and theology not widely known in the West, as well as a variety of sources including mystics such as the Sufi Ibn 'Arabi, poets such as Basho, Traherne, Blake, Holderlin, and Hopkins, and nature writers such as Muir, Thoreau, and Dillard, The Noetics of Nature challenges both the primacy of the natural sciences in environmental thought and the conventional view, first advanced by Lynn White, Jr., that Christian theology is somehow responsible for the environmental crisis.
Instead, Foltz concludes that the ancient Christian view of creation as iconic its "holy beauty" manifesting the divine energies and constituting a primal mode of divine revelation offers the best prospect for the radical reversal that is needed in our relation to the natural environment.

Human societies have always been deeply interconnected with our ecosystems, but today those relationships are witnessing greater frictions, tensions, and harms than ever before. These harms mirror those experienced by marginalized groups across the planet. In this novel book, David Naguib Pellow introduces a new framework for critically analyzing Environmental Justice scholarship and activism. In doing so he extends the field's focus to topics not usually associated with environmental justice, including the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. In doing so he reveals that ecological violence is first and foremost a form of social violence, driven by and legitimated by social structures and discourses. Those already familiar with the discipline will find themselves invited to think about the subject in a new way. This book will be a vital resource for students, scholars, and policy makers interested in transformative approaches to one of the greatest challenges facing humanity and the planet.

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.

Thoreau's Religion presents a ground-breaking interpretation of Henry David Thoreau's most famous book, Walden. Rather than treating Walden Woods as a lonely wilderness, Balthrop-Lewis demonstrates that Thoreau's ascetic life was a form of religious practice dedicated to cultivating a just, multispecies community. The book makes an important contribution to scholarship in religious studies, political theory, English, environmental studies, and critical theory by offering the first sustained reading of Thoreau's religiously motivated politics. In Balthrop-Lewis's vision, practices of renunciation like Thoreau's can contribute to the reformation of social and political life. In this, the book transforms Thoreau's image, making him a vital source for a world beset by inequality and climate change. Balthrop-Lewis argues for an environmental politics in which ecological flourishing is impossible without economic and social justice.

Despite sporadic news coverage of extreme weather events, high-level climate change diplomacy, special UN days of celebration, and popular media references to impending ecological collapse, most students are not exposed to the detailed presentation and analysis of the international relations and diplomacy of environmental policy-making. Comprehensive and accessibly written for first-year or second-year undergraduates, the second edition of Global Ecopolitics provides students with a panoramic view of the policymakers and the structuring bodies involved in the creation of environmental policies. Detailing a considerable amount of environmental activity since its initial 2012 publication, this up-to-date second edition uses an applicable framework of systemic analysis and important case studies that push students to form their own conclusions about past efforts, present needs, and future directions.

History is not a prerogative of the human species, Edward O. Wilson declares in Half-Earth. Demonstrating that we blindly ignore the histories of millions of other species, Wilson warns us that a point of no return is imminent. Refusing to believe that our extinction is predetermined, Wilson has written Half-Earth as a cri de coeur, proposing that the only solution to our impending "Sixth Extinction" is to increase the area of natural reserves to half the surface of the earth. Half-Earth is a resounding conclusion to the best-selling trilogy begun by the "splendid" (Financial Times) The Social Conquest of Earth (ISBN 978 0 87140 363 6) and "engaging and highly readable" (Times Higher Education) The Meaning of Human Existence (ISBN 978 0 87140 100 7).

Johann Wolfgang yon Goethe ranks with Shakespeare as a European man of letters, playwright, and poet. But he himself considered that his scientific work was far more important than all his other achievements. In the twentieth century his ideas have been given special attention by scientists such as Adolf Portmann and Werner Heisenberg.

Jeremy Naydler provides for the first time a systematic arrangement of extracts from Goethe's major scientific works to provide a dear picture of Goethe's fundamentally different approach to scientific study of the natural world. According to Goethe, our deepest knowledge of phenomena can arise only from a contemplative relationship with nature, in which our feelings of awe and wonder are intrinsic. As conceived by him, science is as much a path of inner development as it is a way to accumulating knowledge. It therefore involves a rigorous training of our faculties of observation and thinking.

From a Goethean standpoint, our modern ecological crisis is a crisis of relationship to nature. Goethe shows us a path of sensitive science that holds the potential for healing both nature and ourselves.

In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. In The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah, the celebrated pioneer of the 'do-nothing' farming method reflects on global ecological trauma and argues that we must radically transform our understanding of both nature and ourselves in order to have any chance of healing. 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.

Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding-and reclaiming-the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.

Environmental rights are a category of human rights necessarily central to both democracy and effective earth system governance (any environmental-ecological-sustainable democracy). For any democracy to remain democratic, some aspects must be beyond democracy and must not be allowed to be subjected to any ordinary democratic collective choice processes shy of consensus. Real, established rights constitute a necessary boundary of legitimate everyday democratic practice. We analyze how human rights are made democratically and, in particular, how they can be made with respect to matters environmental, especially matters that have import beyond the confines of the modern nation state.

Dedicated to an articulation of the earth from broadly ecological perspectives, eco art is a vibrant subset of contemporary art that addresses the widespread public concern with rapid climate change and related environmental issues. In Landscape into Eco Art, Mark Cheetham systematically examines connections and divergences between contemporary eco art, land art of the 1960s and 1970s, and the historical genre of landscape painting. Through eight thematic case studies that illuminate what eco art means in practice, reception, and history, Cheetham places the form in a longer and broader art-historical context. He considers a wide range of media-from painting, sculpture, and photography to artists' films, video, sound work, animation, and installation-and analyzes the work of internationally prominent artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Holt, Mark Dion, and Robert Smithson. In doing so, Cheetham reveals eco art to be a dynamic extension of a long tradition of landscape depiction in the West that boldly enters into today's debates on climate science, government policy, and our collective and individual responsibility to the planet. An ambitious intervention into eco-criticism and the environmental humanities, this volume provides original ways to understand the issues and practices of eco art in the Anthropocene. Art historians, humanities scholars, and lay readers interested in contemporary art and the environment will find Cheetham's work valuable and invigorating.

The first comprehensive treatment of environmental philosophy, going beyond ethics to address the philosophical concepts that underlie environmental thinking and policy-making today * Encompasses all of environmental philosophy, including conservation biology, restoration ecology, sustainability, environmental justice, and more * Offers the first treatment of decision theory in an environmental philosophy text * Explores the conceptions of nature and ethical presuppositions that underlie contemporary environmental debates, and, moving from theory to practice, shows how decision theory translates to public policy * Addresses both hot-button issues, including population and immigration reform, and such ongoing issues as historical legacies and nations' responsibility and obligation for environmental problems * Anchors philosophical concepts to their practical applications, establishing the priority of the discipline's real-world importance

"Privatizing" public resources by creating stronger property rights is an increasingly popular environmental policy option. While advocates of these "market-based' approaches tend to f5ocus on their efficiency and ecological implications, the policies also raise important considerations of equity and distributive justice. Private Rights in Public Resources confronts these ethical implications by showing that, despite their limited attention as subjects of academic study, equity ideas have long had an influence in environmental policy. It argues that equity issues should be considered more explicitly in both the analysis and formulation of environmental policy.

Leigh Raymond investigates equity norms through original studies of two important environmental laws, the Acid Rain Title of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act (TGA). He reviews legislative records, administrative documents, and interviews key policymakers. Confirming that much of the debate in the two programs centered on the equity or fairness of the initial allocation of property rights, he then uses the theories of John Locke, Morris Cohen and others to build a framework for identifying the competing norms of equity in play.

Raymond's study reveals that, despite the different historical and ecological settings, the political actors in the two cases struggled to reconcile similar arguments -- and were able to achieve a similar synthesis of conflicting ownership ideas. He notes that the prominence of equity arguments in the debates and decisions about allocations contradict traditional views that the TGA and the CAAA simply "grandfathered" rights to existing users.

Raymond extendshis analysis to ongoing national and international debates about allocations of greenhouse gas emissions. He demonstrates how ideas about equity and fairness operate in the context of global climate change, where there is less structure in the political, legal, and scientific context of the policy debate.

This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change. With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields.

This book surveys major environmental writings on a wide range of subjects, from the origin and evolution of plants and animals to such recent environmental philosophies as deep ecology and the Gaia hypothesis. Environmental Literature examines works such as The Origin of Species, The Anatomy of Plants, Climate and Evolution, The Descent of Man, The Living Sea, Natural History, Playing God in Yellowstone, and Silent Spring. Each entry summarizes the work's main points and notes its reception and impact. Other entries include animal ecology, biodiversity, Chernobyl, Alexander von Humboldt, forest management, Stephen Jay Gould, nature writing, Charles Darwin, and the simple living movement.

Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d'Eaubonne surveyed women's status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but about life and death-for humans and the planet. In this wide-ranging manifesto, d'Eaubonne first proposed a politics of ecofeminism, the idea that the patriarchal system's claim over women's bodies and the natural world destroys both, and that feminism and environmentalism must bring about a new 'mutation'-an overthrow of not just male power but the system of power itself. As d'Eaubonne prophesied, "the planet placed in the feminine will flourish for all." Never before published in English, and translated here by French feminist scholar Ruth Hottell, this edition includes an introduction from scholars of ecology and feminism situating d'Eaubonne's work within current feminist theory, environmental justice organizing, and anticolonial feminism.

Environmental issues raise crucial questions. What should we value? What is our place in nature? What kind of life should we live? How should we interact with other living things? Environmental management and policy-making is ultimately based on answers to these and similar questions, but do we need a new ethics to be able overcome the environmental crisis we face? This book addresses these important questions and explores the values that decision-makers often presuppose in their environmental policy-making. Examining the content of the ethics of sustainable development that the UN and the world's governments want us to embrace, this book examines alternatives to this kind of ethics, and the differences in basic values that these make in practice. Offering a detailed analysis of the ethics that lie behind current policy-making as it is expressed in documents such as Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration, this unique contribution to the field of environmental studies shows how different environmental ethical theories support different goals of environmental management and generate different policies when it comes to population growth, agriculture, and preservation and management of wilderness areas and endangered species. Mikael Stenmark concludes that policy-makers must take more seriously the value assumptions and conflicts connected to environmental issues, and state explicitly on what values their own proposals and decisions are based and why these should be accepted. Those studying environmental issues or environmental philosophy will find this accessible text invaluable in presenting a clear understanding of environmental ethics and contemporary applications and policies.

The term "climate justice" began to gain traction in the late 1990s following a wide range of activities by social and environmental justice movements that emerged in response to the operations of the fossil fuel industry and, later, to what their members saw as the failed global climate governance model that became so transparent at COP15 in Copenhagen. The term continues to gain momentum in discussions around sustainable development, climate change, mitigation and adaptation, and has been slowly making its way into the world of international and national policy. However, the connections between these remain unestablished. Addressing the need for a comprehensive and integrated reference compendium, The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice provides students, academics and professionals with a valuable insight into this fast-growing field. Drawing together a multidisciplinary range of authors from the Global North and South, this Handbook addresses some of the most salient topics in current climate justice research, including just transition, urban climate justice and public engagement, in addition to the field's more traditional focus on gender, international governance and climate ethics. With an emphasis on facilitating learning based on cutting-edge specialised climate justice research and application, each chapter draws from the most recent sources, real-world best practices and tutored reflections on the strategic dimensions of climate justice and its related disciplines. The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice will be essential reading for students and scholars, as well as being a vital reference tool for those practically engaged in the field.