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.

Capitalism is destroying our planet, but like most social progress in the last two centuries, ecological justice can only be achieved through working-class struggle. In Workers of the Earth, Stefania Barca uncovers the environmental history and political ecology of labour to shed new light on the potentiality of workers as ecological subjects. Taking an ecofeminist approach, this ground-breaking book makes a unique contribution to the emerging field of environmental labour studies, expanding the category of labour to include waged and unwaged, industrial and meta-industrial workers. Going beyond conventional categories of ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ as separate spheres of human experience, Barca offers a fresh perspective on the place of labour in today’s global climate struggle, reminding us that the fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism.

Reducing energy consumption and costs is an issue of ever-increasing importance, and European as well as international legislation aimed at reducing carbon emissions is tightening up minimum energy standards for new buildings and those being extended or renovated. Energy-saving measures in the home will, therefore, become ever more cost-effective throughout our lifetimes. Find a comprehensive outline of them here.

Are profits and sustainability compatible? This book brings unique perspectives to this key debate by exploring the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The book uses the lens of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet, rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored as the book looks at how they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies. The green entrepreneurs seen here are shown to have created new markets and industries, and driven innovations in sustainable practices, even at times when most consumers and governments marginalized the entire subject. The struggles of early pioneers appear to have been rewarded by the growth of environmental awareness among consumers, business leaders, and others in recent years, but the Earth's environmental health continues to deteriorate. If profits and sustainability have proved challenging to reconcile, this book argues that one reason was how they were both defined.

Climate change, habitat loss, rising extinction rates - such problems call for more than just new policies and practices. They raise fundamental questions about the world and our place in it. What, for instance, is the natural world? Do we humans belong to it? Which parts of it are we morally obliged to protect? Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of sources, from virtue ethics to Buddhism, leading environmental philosopher Simon P. James sets out to answer these vitally important questions. The book begins with a discussion of animal minds, before moving on to explore our moral relations with non-human organisms, ecosystems and the earth as a whole. James then considers environmental aesthetics, humanity's place in the natural world and the question of what it means to be wild. In the concluding chapter, he applies his findings to the topic of global climate change, building a strong moral case for urgent action. This accessible, entertainingly written book will be essential reading for students of the environment across the humanities and social sciences. It will, moreover, be an ideal guide for anyone keen to deepen their understanding of environmental issues.

This is a visionary, consciousness-raising book that asks us to rethink the purposes and design of study away and study abroad experiences in the context of a broadened set of global threats, including climate disruption, soaring inequality, ecosystem breakdown, the dying off of distinct languages and cultural communities, and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe. As we ask students to truly comprehend this world from the privileged perspective of the global North, Rich Slimbach asks us to consider two fundamental questions: What and how should we learn? And having learned, for what should we use what we know? A panoply of pedagogies and methods of inquiry -- from study away/abroad and service-based learning to diversity programming, environmental education, and community-based research -- aim to develop students who both understand the challenges faced by global communities and act in ways that advance their social and environmental health. What temperaments, social habits, and intellectual abilities will they need to help heal their corner of creation? And what pedagogical perspectives, principles, and procedures can best support them in this creative challenge? Rich Slimbach argues that transforming student consciousness and life choices requires a global learning curriculum that integrates multi-disciplinary inquiry into the structural causes of problems that riddle the common good, along with mechanisms that bid students to cross borders, to pay attention, and to listen to those unlike themselves. At its heart, this book proposes a truly transformative approach to community-engaged global learning.

Fur uber 600 soziokulturelle Zentren und Kulturinitiativen in Deutschland liegen kaum fundierte Handlungsansatze fur eine nachhaltige Ausrichtung vor, weder auf Landes- noch auf Bundesebene. Zu fragen ist: Wie koennen zukunftsweisende Wege der Kulturbetriebe gestaltet werden? Welche Kriterien sind heranzuziehen? Welche Beitrage zur Nachhaltigkeit sind wesentlich und leistbar? Die hier vorliegende qualitative Studie untersucht beispielhaft 13 soziokulturelle Zentren aus Hessen und Nordrhein-Westfalen unter Berucksichtigung bundesweiter Erhebungen. Offenbart werden deutliche Desiderate und nicht genutzte Entwicklungspotentiale. Sie bietet erste Starthilfen, Wegweiser und Positionslichter, die fur eine strategische, zukunftsweisende Perspektive foerderlich sein koennen - nicht nur fur soziokulturelle Zentren.

A great, rhapsodic, urgent book full of joy, grief, rage and love . . . A must-read' Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk Nature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide - feelings stemming ultimately from our own unbreakable links to nature, which mean that we cannot be fully human if we are separate from it. In The Moth Snowstorm Michael McCarthy, one of Britain's leading writers on the environment, proposes this joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened, and which, he argues, is inadequately served by the two defences put forward hitherto: sustainable development and the recognition of ecosystem services. Drawing on a wealth of memorable experiences from a lifetime of watching and thinking about wildlife and natural landscapes, The Moth Snowstorm not only presents a new way of looking at the world around us, but effortlessly blends with it a remarkable and moving memoir of childhood trauma from which love of the natural world emerged. It is a powerful, timely, and wholly original book which comes at a time when nature has never needed it more.

Many environmental scientists, scholars and activists characterise our situation as one of alienation from nature, but this notion can easily seem meaningless or irrational. In this book, Simon Hailwood critically analyses the idea of alienation from nature and argues that it can be a useful notion when understood pluralistically. He distinguishes different senses of alienation from nature pertaining to different environmental contexts and concerns, and draws upon a range of philosophical and environmental ideas and themes including pragmatism, eco-phenomenology, climate change, ecological justice, Marxism and critical theory. His novel perspective shows that different environmental concerns - both anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric - can dovetail, rather than compete with, each other, and that our alienation from nature need not be something to be regretted or overcome. His book will interest a broad readership in environmental philosophy and ethics, political philosophy, geography and environmental studies.

This book explores how street art has been used as a tool of resistance to express opposition to political systems and social issues around the world. Aesthetic devices such as murals, tags, posters, street performances and caricatures are discussed in terms of how they are employed to occupy urban spaces and present alternative visions of social reality. Based on empirical research, the authors use the framework of creative psychology to explore the aesthetic dimensions of resistance that can be found in graffiti, art, music, poetry and other creative cultural forms. Chapters include case studies from countries including Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico and Spain to shed new light on the social, cultural and political dynamics of street art not only locally, but globally. This innovative collection will be of particular interest to scholars of social and political psychology, urban studies and the wider sociologies and is essential reading for all those interested in the role of art in social change.

Environmental Philosophy in Desperate Times examines environmental philosophy in the context of climate denial, inaction, and thoughtlessness. It introduces readers to the varied theories and movements of environmental philosophy. But more than that, it seeks to unsettle our received understanding of the world and our role in it, especially through consideration of Indigenous, feminist, and radical voices. KEY FEATURES An impassioned introduction to environmental philosophy. Many perspectives are examined, including traditional western views, as well as Indigenous, feminist, and radical approaches. Examines the epistemic and political obstacles that have slowed our response to climate change, and the methods by which those obstacles can be overcome. Questions for discussion and further reading suggestions are included.

How can Daoism, China's indigenous religion, give us the aesthetic, ethical, political, and spiritual tools to address the root causes of our ecological crisis and construct a sustainable future? In China's Green Religion, James Miller shows how Daoism orients individuals toward a holistic understanding of religion and nature. Explicitly connecting human flourishing to the thriving of nature, Daoism fosters a "green" subjectivity and agency that transforms what it means to live a flourishing life on earth. Through a groundbreaking reconstruction of Daoist philosophy and religion, Miller argues for four key, green insights: a vision of nature as a subjective power that informs human life; an anthropological idea of the porous body based on a sense of qi flowing through landscapes and human beings; a tradition of knowing founded on the experience of transformative power in specific landscapes and topographies; and an aesthetic and moral sensibility based on an affective sensitivity to how the world pervades the body and the body pervades the world. Environmentalists struggle to raise consciousness for their cause, Miller argues, because their activism relies on a quasi-Christian concept of "saving the earth." Instead, environmentalists should integrate nature and culture more seamlessly, cultivating through a contemporary intellectual vocabulary a compelling vision of how the earth materially and spiritually supports human flourishing.

One of the earliest warnings about climate change and one of environmentalism's lodestars 'Nature, we believe, takes forever. It moves with infinite slowness,' begins the first book to bring climate change to public attention. Interweaving lyrical observations from his life in the Adirondack Mountains with insights from the emerging science, Bill McKibben sets out the central developments not only of the environmental crisis now facing us but also the terms of our response, from policy to the fundamental, philosophical shift in our relationship with the natural world which, he argues, could save us. A moving elegy to nature in its pristine, pre-human wildness, The End of Nature is both a milestone in environmental thought, indispensable to understanding how we arrived here.

The first edition of this book fostered the emergence of the "Spiritual Ecology Movement," which recognizes the need for a spiritual response to our present ecological crisis. It drew an overwhelmingly positive response from readers, many of whom are asking the simple question, "What can I do?"

This second expanded edition offers new chapters, including two from younger authors who are putting the principles of spiritual ecology into action, working with their hands as well as their hearts. It also includes a new preface and revised chapter by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, that reference two major recent events: the publication of Pope Francis's encyclical, "On Care for Our Common Home," which brought into the mainstream the idea that "the ecological crisis is essentially a spiritual problem"; and the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, which saw representatives from nearly 200 countries come together to address global warming, including faith leaders from many traditions.

Bringing together voices from Buddhism, Sufism, Christianity, and Native American traditions, as well as from physics, deep psychology, and other environmental disciplines, this book calls on us to reassess our underlying attitudes and beliefs about the Earth and wake up to our spiritual as well as physical responsibilities toward the planet.

Emerging Dynamics: Science, Energy, Society and Values focuses on the impact of science, science-based technology and scientific values on present-day humanity and its future. The book advocates for a science willing to accommodate both human values and scientific facts. The four main subjects focused on throughout the text are: The overwhelming impact of modern science and science-based technology on virtually every aspect of human life Human values and their significance for science and society The need for mutual accommodation between scientific values and the traditional values of society The fundamental role of energy for civilization and society. The book cuts across scientific disciplines and looks at modern civilization through the knowledge provided by the physical, chemical, biomedical and other branches of natural science. The book is unique in its holistic approach, combining knowledge acquired by deduction, reduction-induction, and experimental scientific methods with knowledge acquired through history, philosophy, the arts, faith and cultural traditions. Modern civilization's most distinct characteristics are due to science, science-based technology and energy. The role of energy in the sustainability of civilization and the impact of biomedical science on man are especially emphasized throughout this timely book, making a case for a hopeful future based on both science and values. A science guided in its applications by human values and a value system cognizant of the facts of science and willing to accommodate them

El cambio climatico y la crisis de extincion entrelazados se prestan a la economia politica. Joseph Henry Vogel ha construido un argumento a favor de llevar a los paises ricos en carbono, pero pobres economicamente, a traves del cuello de botella de la economia de vaquero y hacia el "comercio en el derecho de emisiones" de los paises Anexo I del Protocolo de Kioto. Ecuador sirve como el modelo. "La economia de la Iniciativa Yasuni-ITT" es un contrapunto a muchos niveles a "El Informe Stern" por Sir Nicholas Stern. En el nivel mas basico, Vogel sostiene que Stern se equivoca por su falta de reconocimiento de la naturaleza del cambio climatico como termodinamica, con lo cual pierde de vista la apropiacion del Norte del sumidero atmosferico. El cambio a la termodinamica pone de relieve la legitimidad de una "deuda de carbono," que comienza a hacer tictac con el primer informe del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre Cambio Climatico ((IPCC) por sus siglas en ingles) en 1990. A traves del lente de la teoria economica, la intransigencia comprensible de los paises pobres para asumir el "tope" en el "comercio en el derecho de emisiones" es una distorsion del sistema economico. No obstante, acorde con esa misma economia, una distorsion puede justificar otra. Esa otra distorsion es el pago que Ecuador busca por no perforar en la Reserva de la Biosfera Yasuni. Haciendo caso de la llamada de Deirdre (antes Donald) McCloskey de que la economia necesita mas humor, Vogel ha escrito una critica penetrante sobre la economia convencional que a su vez entretiene.

In today’s Western, industrialised society, ‘wild’ has come to mean dangerous, savage, crazy, out of control. This book celebrates wildness, both in global ecosystems and in the human psyche. Totton argues that embracing unpredictability and boundlessness is vital for our wellbeing and, in these times of environmental crisis, for the survival of humans and other-than-humans. Drawing on psychotherapy, philosophy, ecology, anthropology, futuristic fiction and much other literature, he shows the links between domesticated civilisation and the destruction of the innate balance of ecosystems – including human relationships and psyches. This second edition builds on the first to suggest what a wild civilisation might be like, and how psychotherapy could help create it.

Habit rules our lives. And yet climate change and the catastrophic future it portends, makes it clear that we cannot go on like this. Our habits are integral to narratives of the good life, to social norms and expectations, as well as to economic reality. Such shared shapes are vital. Yet while many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell disaster. Beyond consumerism, other forms of life and patterns of dwelling are clearly possible. But how can we get there from here? Who precisely is the 'we' that our habits have created, and who else might we be? Philosophy is about emancipation-from illusions, myths, and oppression. In Reoccupy Earth, the noted philosopher David Wood shows how an approach to philosophy attuned to our ecological existence can suspend the taken-for-granted and open up alternative forms of earthly dwelling. Sharing the earth, as we do, raises fundamental questions about space and time, place and history, territory and embodiment-questions that philosophy cannot directly answer but can help us to frame and to work out for ourselves. Deconstruction exposes all manner of exclusion, violence to the other, and silent subordination. Phenomenology and Whitehead's process philosophy offer further resources for an ecological imagination. Bringing an uncommon lucidity, directness, and even practicality to sophisticated philosophical questions, Wood plots experiential pathways that disrupt our habitual existence and challenge our everyday complacency. In walking us through a range of reversals, transformations, and estrangements that thinking ecologically demands of us, Wood shows how living responsibly with the earth means affirming the ways in which we are vulnerable, receptive, and dependent, and the need for solidarity all round. If we take seriously values like truth, justice, and compassion we must be willing to contemplate that the threat we pose to the earth might demand our own species' demise. Yet we have the capacity to live responsibly. In an unfashionable but spirited defense of an enlightened anthropocentrism, Wood argues that to deserve the privileges of Reason we must demonstrably deploy it through collective sustainable agency. Only in this way can we reinhabit the earth.

This book argues that the ancient allodial principle enables a paradigmatic shift in the way specialist educators in environmental, Indigenous, and legal studies; teacher educators; and teachers think about land and water education. Land and water are basic to human life, and students will need to grapple with matters of sustainability and Indigenous entitlement in their future work. People now living in lands and on waterways that have been colonized, such as Australia, are taught to regard land and water in ways that have been fundamentally shaped by English law. This book introduces ancient as well as more contemporary forms of land and water access and examines the underlying ontological and epistemological enframements that shape the way that 'land' and 'water' are understood and taught. As peoples of the world grapple with environmental sustainability and Indigenous rights, the author provides a pivotal rejection of the entitlement to 'abuse'. The book also reasons that educators should employ alod pedagogy to develop their approach to 'working out' difficult matters to do with balancing the rights and responsibilities of nations, regions, corporations, communal and individual owners in the access to, use of, and transferability of land and waterways.

This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'-an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. Coming from both well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings.

How does Nature work? When one looks closely at the enormously complex web of life, it is impossible not to be caught by the wonder of how all living things - including rocks and crystals - are interconnected. Just as there is thought behind action, so there is energy behind matter. Schauberger is able to demonstrate how Nature works because he has been able to observe and describe how its energies manifest and produce the material world.

Follow the call of the wild with these incredible true stories from an international group of nature lovers, nomads and adventurers. In these pages, you are invited to share the wisdom they gained on their wild journeys. You will walk across the Australian desert with American explorer Angela Maxwell; live with Hamza Yassin and a family of eagles in Scotland; survive for 10 years in an Australian forest with Gregory Smith; hunt in the wilderness with Miriam Lancewood in New Zealand; chart Karl Bushby's passage through the formidable Darien Gap; and set up a surf school for people of colour in California with David Malana. With beautiful illustrations, a foreword from explorer Belinda Kirk and contributions from leading poets, including David Whyte and Fatimah Asghar, this book will inspire you to get out of your comfort zone and connect to your wild, animal soul.

In Tomorrow Is Too Late, Grace Maddrell collects testimonies of activism and hope from young climate strikers, from Brazil and Burundi to Pakistan and Palestine. These youth activists are experiencing the reality of the climate crisis, including typhoons, drought, flood, fire, crop failure and ecological degradation, and are all engaged in the struggle to bring these issues to the centre of the world stage. Their strength and determination show the urgency of their cause, and their understanding that the generations above them have failed to safeguard their environment.   With contributors aged between eight and twenty-five, this is an inspiring collection of essays from the most vital generation of voices in the global struggle for climate justice, and offers a manifesto for how you can engage, educate, and inspire change for a more hopeful future. 

'How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over.' John Muir is known internationally for his dedication to protecting the environment and for founding The Sierra Club in 1892. His first book, as Muir authority Terry Gifford writes in the foreword, 'became the bible of the fledgling Sierra Club, which is now a major national environmental activists' organisation with branches in every corner of America'. The Mountains of California not only details Muir's visits to the magnificent mountains along the Sierra Nevada Range, which he affectionately calls 'The Range of Light', but also the stunning glaciers, forests and landscapes that he encounters: 'Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate ... patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness: a manuscript written by the hand of nature alone.' Throughout the book, Muir's philosophy of nature's ability to soothe and amaze is evident. He heart-warmingly discusses at length how his encounters with animals, such as the Douglas squirrel, cheered him so. This is a truly beautiful read; Muir's writing, embedded with emotion, wit, and at times, humour, will never fail to speak to his reader. The enthusiasm contained within these pages is infectious, and as well as making a powerful read, Muir will inspire you, too, to 'come and see' the innumerable delights that nature can offer: 'The best words only hint at [California's] charms. Come to the mountains and see.'

The Story of my Boyhood and Youth is the affecting memoir of the now internationally renowned John Muir, a Scottish-American boy subject to a most unusual upbringing, his transition into adulthood, and the path that led him to petition for the concept of protected national parks. Born in East Lothian, Scotland in 1838, Muir was raised by a fanatically strict, religious father with his numerous brothers and sisters and loving mother. From an early age, a shy Muir showed fascination with the natural world, and at aged eleven, his father announced the family were to move to an American wilderness in Wisconsin - Muir had a new playground. His adolescence is spent labouring on the family's grassroots farm. Working seventeen-hour days, an exhausted yet inquisitive Muir desperately snatches moments to himself, yearning to explore the environment around him, secretly studying books on topics other than religion, and rising at 1 a.m. to pursue his hobby of inventing intricate time and energy-saving devices - much to his father's disapproval and everyone else's admiration. At age twenty-two, Muir takes it upon himself to apply to university, and does so without financial or moral support from his father. He makes his way to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study chemistry and botany, and though never graduating with a degree, he is satisfied that he had learned all he wanted to there, before completing the rest of his nature education in 'the university of the wilderness'. The Story of my Boyhood and Youth includes a new foreword by Terry Gifford, and offers insight into the development of Muir's spiritual connection with the natural world, and suggests an explanation for his passion for freedom in the wilderness, a stark contrast to the forced rigidity of his early years.