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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > General
A bold vision of an economy as an intelligent living organism, freed
from the mindless finance algorithm, unlocking unseen potential
Regenerative Economics is based on the deceptively simple idea that an
economic system should emulate the process and patterns that define all
life, enabling it to adapt and evolve to higher levels of complexity.
This science-based next evolution of economics explains the root cause
of the polycrisis–the compounding impacts of climate change, ecosystem
and biodiversity loss, planetary systems breakdown, and increasing
social and economic inequity―and promises a hopeful pathway forward at
this pivotable moment.
Rather than reacting to crisis after crisis, the purpose of a
regenerative economy is to create the conditions that nurture and
sustain health and all life.
This hard-hitting and scientifically rigorous yet ultimately hopeful
book:
- Identifies the unseen fatal error of our current economic model
- Outlines a set of key regenerative design principles to navigate
the polycrisis
- Prescribes transformative individual actions and policies which
both embrace and move beyond current materialist ideas of
sustainability, circularity, and degrowth, to redefine systemic health
and true value within the context of a whole-living-systems approach
- Offers a fresh pathway through the polycrisis and toward a new
economy―one that prioritizes human and planetary well-being, operates
within ecological limits, and promotes a more just and sustainable
future.
This seminal work is required reading for business, government, and
community leaders; economic thinkers; academics; and anyone who
questions the future of capitalism given the reality of finite
planetary boundaries and growing social injustice.
In the post-COVID-19 era, it is essential to adhere to an
international framework for sustainable development goals (SDGs),
which requires the management of the economic, social, and
environmental shocks and disasters. While many have suffered across
the world from the COVID-19 pandemic, these SDGs work to ensure
healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages, as well as
inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Frameworks for
Sustainable Development Goals to Manage Economic, Social, and
Environmental Shocks and Disasters provides an updated view of the
newest trends, novel practices, and latest tendencies concerning
the benefits, advantages, opportunities, and challenges of building
an internationally successful framework for SDGs. Covering topics
such as business longevity, green innovation, and vaccination
willingness, this premier reference source is an excellent resource
for government officials, business leaders and executives, human
resource managers, economists, sociologists, students and faculty
of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.
The Application of Green Solvents in Separation Processes features
a logical progression of a wide range of topics and methods,
beginning with an overview of green solvents, covering everything
from water and organic solvents, to ionic liquids, switchable
solvents, eutectic mixtures, supercritical fluids, gas-expanded
solvents, and more. In addition, the book outlines green extraction
techniques, such as green membrane extraction, ultrasound-assisted
extraction, and surfactant-mediated extraction techniques. Green
sampling and sample preparation techniques are then explored,
followed by green analytical separations, including green gas and
liquid capillary chromatography, counter current chromatography,
supercritical fluid chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, and
other electrical separations. Applications of green chemistry
techniques that are relevant for a broad range of scientific and
technological areas are covered, including the benefits and
challenges associated with their application.
Understanding marine pollution and the contamination of coastal
environments requires knowledge from a variety of scientific
fields. Marine Environmental Quality promotes a multidisciplinary
approach to investigations, drawing on not only natural sciences,
but also applied mathematics and social sciences. The
investigations in this book focus on both organic and inorganic
pollutants, firstly in a study conducted in the city of La
Rochelle, on the North Atlantic French coast, then expanding the
areas under examination to regions of English and Portuguese waters
and, lastly, to the Mediterranean Sea. The improvement such
research can bring to biomarkers, models and experiments enables
equal progress in the quality of seawater in ports and protected
areas of coastal regions. The eight chapters of Marine
Environmental Quality present many aspects of this research,
including experiments with floating barriers, water governance in
various areas, sampling sites and sentinel species that act as
biomarkers in harbors. Also covered are environmental commitments,
both international and local, the risk that marine contamination
poses to human health, experimental designs for interactions with
microplastics and a study biomonitoring the juveniles of sentinel
species. Such results will bring many benefits, to human health, to
economic inclusion and to regional development.
The idea of socioecosystems answers the growing need to understand,
in the context of the Anthropocene, how adaptive processes
interact, and how that interplay results in the coevolution of
living beings. Studying socioecosystems means taking into account
the diversity of temporal and physical scales in order to grasp how
ecological, social and economic forces are interwoven. Based on
these drivers, the complex dynamics that determine the habitability
of the Earth emerge. This book analyzes, through concrete cases
from regional socioecosystems on several continents, how research
action has provided answers to problems related to agriculture,
health and the conservation of biodiversity. It demonstrates that
these undertakings could not have succeeded without the combined
efforts of the communities of living beings and objects, the
community of knowledge and the communities of action. These
examples are accompanied by a reflection on the conditions that
make it possible to bring this research to completion.
Physics and the Environment directly connects the physical world to
environmental issues that the world is facing today and will face
in the future. It shows how the first and second laws of
thermodynamics limit the efficiencies of fossil fuel energy
conversions to less than 100%, while also discussing how clever
technologies can enhance overall performance. It also extensively
discusses renewable forms of energy, their physical constraints and
how we must use science and engineering as tools to solve problems
instead of opinion and politics. Dr. Kyle Forinash takes you on a
journey of understanding our mature and well developed technologies
for using fossil fuel resources and how we are unlikely to see huge
gains in their efficiency as well as why their role in climate
change ought to be an argument for their replacement sooner rather
than later. He also discusses the newest technologies in employing
renewable resources and how it is important to understand their
physical constrains in order to make a smooth transition to them.
An entire chapter is dedicated to energy storage, a core question
in renewable energy as well as another chapter on the technical
issues of nuclear energy. The book ends with a discussion on how no
environmental solution, no matter how clever from a technical
aspect, will succeed if there are cheaper alternative, even if
those alternatives have undesirable features associated with them.
In 1891 Benjamin Harrison, the first president engaged in
conservation, had to have this new area of public policy explained
to him by members of the Boone and Crockett Club. This didn't take
long, as he was only asked to sign a few papers setting aside
federal timberland. But from such small moments great social
movements grow, and the course of natural resource protection
policy through 22 presidents has altered Americans' relationship to
the natural world in then almost unimaginable ways. Presidents and
the American Environment charts this course. Exploring the ways in
which every president from Harrison to Obama has engaged the
expanding agenda of the Nature protection impulse, the book offers
a clear, close-up view of the shifting and nation shaping mosaic of
both "green" and "brown" policy directions over more than a
century. While the history of conservation generally focuses on the
work of intellectuals such as Muir, Leopold, and Carson, such
efforts could only succeed or fail on a large scale with the
involvement of the government, and it is this side of the story
that Presidents and the American Environment tells. On the one
hand, we find a ready environmental engagement, as in Theodore
Roosevelt's establishment of Pelican Island bird refuge upon being
informed that the Constitution did not explicitly forbid it. On the
other hand, we have leaders like Calvin Coolidge, playing
hide-and-seek games in the Oval Office while ignoring reports of
coastal industrial pollution. The book moves from early cautious
sponsors of the idea of preserving public lands to crusaders like
Theodore Roosevelt, from the environmental implications of the New
Deal to the politics of pollution in the boom times of the forties
and fifties, from the emergence of "environmentalism" to recent
presidential detractors of the cause. From Harrison's act, which
established the American system of National Forests, to Barack
Obama's efforts on curbing climate change, presidents have mattered
as they resisted or used the ever-changing tools and objectives of
environmentalism. In fact, with a near even split between "browns"
and "greens" over those 22 administrations, the role of president
has often been decisive. How, and how much, distinguished historian
Otis L. Graham, Jr., describes in in full for the first time, in
this important contribution to American environmental history.
The Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) has
conducted the Environmental exposure related activity pattern
research of Chinese population (Adults). Exposure Factors Handbook
of Chinese Population (Adults) was compiled based on the results
from this study. Highlights of the Chinese Exposure Factors
Handbook is a brief introduction to the content of Exposure Factors
Handbook of Chinese Population (Adults). In each chapter,
definitions, possible influence factors, and survey methods have
been introduced, followed by recommended values for urban/rural
areas, different genders, age groups and regions with information
of mean, median and P5, P25, P75, P95 values. With the abundant
data and tables, readers are provided with an accessible and
comprehensive overview of Chinese exposure factors.
'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of
nature' IRISH TIMES Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their
twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive
decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to
Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural
Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated
themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed
the rhythms of the earth. In 2019, with Christine in the final
stages of recovery from cancer and the land itself threatened by
the arrival of turbines just one farm over, Niall and Christine
decided to document a year of living in their garden and in their
small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month
through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many
splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its
wonders.
The advances in microsystems offer new opportunities and
capabilities to develop systems for biomedical applications, such
as diagnostics and therapy. There is a need for a comprehensive
treatment of microsystems and in particular for an understanding of
performance limits associated with the shrinking scale of
microsystems. The new edition of Microsystems for Bioelectronics
addresses those needs and represents a major revision, expansion
and advancement of the previous edition. This book considers
physical principles and trends in extremely scaled autonomous
microsystems such as integrated intelligent sensor systems, with a
focus on energy minimization. It explores the implications of
energy minimization on device and system architecture. It further
details behavior of electronic components and its implications on
system-level scaling and performance limits. In particular,
fundamental scaling limits for energy sourcing, sensing, memory,
computation and communication subsystems are developed and new
applications such as optical, magnetic and mechanical sensors are
presented. The new edition of this well-proven book with its unique
focus and interdisciplinary approach shows the complexities of the
next generation of nanoelectronic microsystems in a simple and
illuminating view, and is aimed for a broad audience within the
engineering and biomedical community.
Natural history collections have recently acquired an unprecedented
place of importance in scientific research. Originally created in
the context of systematics and taxonomy, they are now proving to be
fundamental for answering various scientific and societal questions
that are as significant as they are current. Natural History
Collections in the Science of the 21st Century presents a wide
range of questions and answers raised by the study of collections.
The billions of specimens that have been collected from all around
the world over more than two centuries provide us with information
that is vital in our quest for knowledge about the Earth, the
universe, the diversity of life and the history of humankind. These
collections also provide valuable reference points from the past to
help us understand the nature and dynamics of global change today.
Their physical permanence is the best guarantee we have of a return
to data and to information sources in the context of open science.
In Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury: A Chemical History of Silver
Refining in New Spain and Mexico, 16th to 19th Centuries, Saul
Guerrero combines historical research with geology and chemistry to
refute the current prevailing narrative of a primitive effort
dominated by mercury and its copious emissions to the air. Based on
quantitative historical data, visual records and geochemical
fundamentals, Guerrero analyses the chemical and economic reasons
why two refining processes had to share production, creating along
the way major innovations in the chemical recipes, milling
equipment, mercury recycling practice, and industrial architecture
and operations. Their main environmental impact was lead fume and
the depletion of woodlands from smelting, and the transformation of
mercury into calomel during the patio process.
How will chemists of the future balance competing concerns of
environmental stewardship and innovative, cost-effective product
development? For chemists to accept the idea that environmental
quality and economic prosperity can be intertwined, the concept of
the food-energy-water nexus must first be integrated into
underlying thought processes. Food, Energy and Water: The Chemistry
Connection provides today's scientists with the background
information necessary to fully understand the inextricable link
between food, energy and water and how this conceptual framework
should form the basis for all contemporary research and development
in chemistry in particular, and the sciences in general.
How to sustain our world for future generations has perplexed us
for centuries. We have reached a crossroads: we may choose the
rocky path of responsibility or continue on the paved road of
excess that promises hardship for our progeny. Independent efforts
to resolve isolated issues are inadequate. Different from these
efforts and from other books on the topic, this book uses systems
thinking to understand the dominant forces that are shaping our
hope for sustainability. It first describes a mental model - the
bubble that holds our beliefs - that emerges from preponderant
world views and explains current global trends. The model
emphasizes economic growth and drives behavior toward short-term
and self-motivated outcomes that thwart sustainability. The book
then weaves statistical trends into a system diagram and shows how
the economic, environmental, and societal contributors of
sustainability interact. From this holistic perspective, it finds
leverage points where actions can be most effective and combines
eight areas of intervention into an integrated plan. By emphasizing
both individual and collective actions, it addresses the conundrum
of how to blend human nature with sustainability. Finally, it
identifies primary three lessons we can learn by applying systems
thinking to sustainability. Its metaphor-rich and accessible style
makes the complex topic approachable and allows the reader to
appreciate the intricate balance required to sustain life on Earth.
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