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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Pollution & threats to the environment
Bioremediation - the use of microorganisms for environmental clean-up - is a technology that is experiencing a rapid phase of development. The authors of this text an understanding of the current progress and limitations of technologies that are designed to help nature herself. The book draws together many different aspects of environmental remediation: the environmental engineer is introduced to the bacteria of contaminated environments and the ideas developing from genetic engineering; the environmental microbiologist can grasp site assessment and the predictive kinetic analysis of potentials. The book provides an introduction to the nature of and potential for bioremediation to contribute to a critical global effort in eliminating contamination of the world's resources and to start to reverse decades of environmental mismanagement and neglect.
Where is the world really heading, and what can we do about it? This book takes an unflinching look at climate change, drawing upon the latest data to analyse what the next decades hold in store. With atmospheric CO2 at unprecedented levels and insufficient action being taken to prevent a rise in temperatures above 2 degrees centigrade, we are not just looking at significant disruption but the possibility of societal collapse. For the first time ever, the magnitude of this challenge is faced head on, with avenues to truly address it presented. Case studies and models from 16 authors around the world show ways that we can build adaptation and resilience, as well as what 'zero emissions' really mean. The book also provides a platform for those from a range of diverse backgrounds, whose unique experience and knowledge brings vital new perspectives. From those already feeling the impacts of climate change in the Global South to community leaders fighting to create real alternatives, we get a chance to understand the nuances and possibilities of the task ahead.
This book is intended as an introduction to radioactivity and aerosols for the scientifically literate reader who has had no previous exposure to either of these subjects. Although its main focus is radioactive aerosols, on the road to this subject I provide short, somewhat independent introductions to both radioactivity and aerosols, with some emphasis on experimental aspects. The audience I have in mind is upper-level undergraduates or beginning graduate students with a minimum background of introductory college courses in physics, chemistry, and calculus. This book may also be useful to "crossover" professional- professionals in other fields of science and engineering, for example biology or geoscience, who would like a step-by-step introduction to this subject matter from the physical science perspective. In writing this book I have been sensitive to requests and suggestions from students who need some background in this subject matter but will probably not specialize in it. These students are bright, but busy, and they sometimes feel overwhelmed by the mass of information in advanced, comprehensive texts. No matter how noble the intentions of the authors (or the teachers assigning the books ), these students often do not have time to read such books through cover to cover, and they fmd it difficult to pick out a coherently-connected subset of the material. Furthermore, modern students studying an interdisciplinary subject like radioactive aerosols are likely to be more diversified than ever, in educational background, in interests, and in preparation.
Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology attempts to provide concise, critical reviews of timely advances, philosophy, and significant areas of accomplished or needed endeavor in the total field of xenobiotics, in any segment of the environment, as well as toxicological implications.
As the public increasingly questioned the war in Vietnam, a group of American scientists deeply concerned about the use of Agent Orange and other herbicides started a movement to ban what they called "ecocide." David Zierler traces this movement, starting in the 1940s, when weed killer was developed in agricultural circles and theories of counterinsurgency were studied by the military. These two trajectories converged in 1961 with Operation Ranch Hand, the joint U.S.-South Vietnamese mission to use herbicidal warfare as a means to defoliate large areas of enemy territory. Driven by the idea that humans were altering the world's ecology for the worse, a group of scientists relentlessly challenged Pentagon assurances of safety, citing possible long-term environmental and health effects. It wasn't until 1970 that the scientists gained access to sprayed zones confirming that a major ecological disaster had occurred. Their findings convinced the U.S. government to renounce first use of herbicides in future wars and, Zierler argues, fundamentally reoriented thinking about warfare and environmental security in the next forty years. Incorporating in-depth interviews, unique archival collections, and recently declassified national security documents, Zierler examines the movement to ban ecocide as it played out amid the rise of a global environmental consciousness and growing disillusionment with the containment policies of the cold war era.
The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on the planet. For centuries, myth-makers and storytellers have concocted imaginary monsters of the deep, and now scientists are looking there to find bizarre, unknown species, chemicals to make new medicines, and to gain a greater understanding of how this world of ours works. With an average depth of 12,000 feet and chasms that plunge much deeper, it forms a frontier for new discoveries. The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of our relationship with the deep sea - how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery we are currently in and looks back at the history of how we got here, while also looking forward to the unfolding new environmental disasters that are taking place miles beneath the waves, far beyond the public gaze. Throughout history, there have been two distinct groups of deep-sea explorers. Both have sought knowledge but with different and often conflicting ambitions in mind. Some people want to quench their curiosity; many more have been lured by the possibilities of commerce and profit. The tension between these two opposing sides is the theme that runs throughout the book, while readers are taken on a chronological journey through humanity's developing relationship with the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss ends by looking forwards to humanity's advancing impacts on the deep, including mining and pollution and what we can do about them.
This resource document brings together available technical information on ground-water management. The book covers measures for prevention of contamination, assessment of extent of contamination, and restoration of ground-water quality.
This textbook intends to bridge the gap between knowledge about global warming and practical implementation in the political process of the necessary measures for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It therefore deals with climatology, economics and political science in five sections: - The state of scientific knowledge of climate change, the influencing factors, the man-made effects and the monitoring of GHG sources and sinks. Topics covered include: the transformation of scientific results into politically achievable aims, the criteria for the allocation of the reduction goals, and the GHG inventories of European countries; the relevant political and economical instruments, such as voluntary approaches, the carbon/energy-tax and Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) and their working principles; the instrument of tradeable emission permits (the US Acid Rain Programme as an example) and possible designs of a system for CO2 on the national and international level; and comparison and summaries of the efficacy, the cost-efficiency, the achievability and political acceptability of the different instruments.
The fixity or mobility of borders are key themes within the border studies literature and have useful critical application to urban and environmental planning through theory, pedagogy and practice. This offers potential for transformative change through the processes of re-bordering and re-orienting established boundary demarcations in ways that support and promote sustainability in a climate of change. Planning Across Borders in a Climate of Change draws on a range of diverse case studies from Australasia, North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia and offers the application of border theory, concepts and principles to planning as a critical lens. It applies this lens to a range of international case studies in key areas such as climate change adaptation, food security, spatial planning, critical infrastructure and urban ecology. This collection fills an important gap in the border studies literature, bringing climate change considerations to bear on planning. It should be of interest to students, scholars and professionals in the field of urban and environmental planning, climate change adaptation, border studies, urban studies, human and political geography, environmental studies and development.
Much has already been written about risk assessment. Epidemiologists write books on how risk assessment is used to explore the factors that influence the distribution of disease in populations of people. Toxicologists write books on how risk assess ment involves exposing animals to risk agents and concluding from the results what risks people might experience if similarly exposed. Engineers write books on how risk assessment is utilized to estimate the risks of constructing a new facility such as a nuclear power plant. Statisticians write books on how risk assessment may be used to analyze mortality or accident data to determine risks. There are already many books on risk assessment-the trouble is that they all seem to be about different sUbjects! This book takes another approach. It brings together all the methods for assessing risk into a common framework, thus demonstrating how the various methods relate to one another. This produces four important benefits: * First, it provides a comprehensive reference for risk assessment. This one source offers readers concise explanations of the many methods currently available for describing and quantifying diverse types of risks. * Second, it consistently evaluates and compares available risk assessment methods and identifies their specific strengths and limitations. Understand ing the limitations of risk assessment methods is important. The field is still in its infancy, and the problems with available methods are disappoint ingly numerous. At the same time, risk assessment is being used.
The current policy for climate change prioritises mitigation over adaptation. The collected papers of Climate Change as Environmental and Economic Hazard argue that although efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are still vital, the new policy paradigm should shift the priority to adaptation, with a special focus on disaster risk reduction. It should also consider climate change not purely as a hazard and a challenge, but as a window of opportunity to shift to a new sustainable development policy model, which stresses the particular importance of communities' resilience. The papers in this volume explore the key issues linked to this shift, including: ' Increasing research into the Earth Sciences, climate reconstruction and forecasting in order to decrease the degree of uncertainty about the origin, development and implications of climate change; ' The introduction of more binding and comprehensive regulation of both greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation measures, like that in the United Kingdom; ' Matching climate policy with that for disasters and mainstreaming it into overall development strategies. The volume is a valuable addition to previous climate change research and considers a new policy approach to this new global challenge.
Every person on our home planet is affected by a worldwide deluge of man-made chemicals and pollutants - most of which have never been tested for safety. Our chemical emissions are six times larger than our total greenhouse gas emissions. They are in our food, our water, the air we breathe, our homes and workplaces, the things we use each day. This universal poisoning affects our minds, our bodies, our genes, our grandkids, and all life on Earth. Julian Cribb describes the full scale of the chemical catastrophe we have unleashed. He proposes a new Human Right - not to be poisoned. He maps an empowering and hopeful way forward: to rid our planet of these toxins and return Earth to the clean, healthy condition which our forebears enjoyed, and our grandchildren should too.
N.M. V AN STRAALEN** and D.A. KRIVOLUTSKY* **Department of Ecology and Ecotoxicology VrUe Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands *Institute of Evolutionary Animal Morphology and Ecology Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospekt 33 117071 Moscow, Russian Federation Many industrialized and developing countries are faced with the assessment of potential risks associated with contaminated land. A variety of human activities, including municipal waste disposal, industrial emissions, military testing, and agricultural practices have left their impacts on soils in the form of elevated, and locally high concentrations of toxicants. In several cases sources have not yet been stopped and contamination continues. Decisions on the management of contaminated sites require information on the extent to which toxicants adversely affect the soil ecosystem. For this purpose, it is often insufficient to extrapolate from abiotic sampling. The detection of a toxicant in the abiotic environment usually does not allow a very strong conclusion on the potential hazards.
In 1969 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Committee on Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS). The subject of air pollution was from the start one of the priority problems under study within the framework of various pilot studies undertaken by this Committee. The organization of a yearly conference dealing with air pollution modeling and its application has become one of the main activities within the pilot study relating to air pollution. The international conference was organized for the first five years by the United States and for the second five years by the Federal Republic of Germany. Belgium, represented by the Prime Minister's Office for Science policy, became responsible in 1980 for organizing the third five years of the annual conference. This volume contains the papers presented at the 15th NATO/CCMS International Technical Meeting (ITM) on Air Pollution Modeling and Its Application, held in St. Louis, Missouri, from the 15th to 19th April 1985. This ITM was jointly organized by the Prime Minister's Office for Science Policy, Belgium (Pilot Country); by the Environmental Protection Agency, Atmospheric Sciences Research Laboratory, United States (Host Country); and by Washington University, Mechanical Engineering Department (Host Organization).
This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the different environmental strategies adopted in the football world to foster sustainability. The authors lay out useful insights, both for scholars and practitioners, to improve good governance in football organisations by empowering environmental organisational and operational actions. As well as examining practical methods of implementing green initiatives, the book discusses their added value from different perspectives including football fans, football managers and policymakers. By identifying the most important green actions for the dissemination of environmentally friendly behaviours at both individual and organisational levels, the book demonstrates how football organisations can use operational and organisational methods to develop an environmental sustainability strategy. The book contributes to developing the role of the football world by covering different facets of sustainability such as the circular economy, climate change, green marketing, fans engagement and more. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of environmental management, sustainable business and corporate social responsibility, as well as professionals working in the football industry.
To avoid uncontrolled climate change, greenhouse gas emissions will have to be brought under control by major emitters outside the affluent West. The authors investigate the political obstacles in BRIC countries and what their governments could do to strengthen climate policies without incurring serious political damage.
Climate Change Politics offers a critical, yet hopeful examination of political vitality in the politics of climate change and discusses how people use various forms of communication to challenge existing power hierarchies. Because the meanings of climate change and of the numerous aspects of reality associated with it are constructed through communication, we offer an analysis of communication practices and structures as constitutive of climate change politics. A broad variety of case studies demonstrate how the choices made within various forms of public engagement result from social interaction based on communication. The editors of the volume follow Chantal Mouffe in describing "the political" as engagement with processes of debate and decision making on collective issues where different values, preferences, and ideals are played out and opposed. This book examines communication as a key component of climate change politics and shows how climate change communication has the potential to invigorate civic politics. It analyzes how citizens represent, construct, and circulate ideas about climate change and how these practices relate to decisions and public policies, as well as to political identities. Contributing authors explore how changes in the ways information is produced and consumed have contributed to new spaces for political engagement. They analyze a range of semiotic resources and practices within which the meanings of climate change are negotiated. By looking at the multiple ways people experience and communicate about climate change, the analysis extends beyond the cognitive to include emotional, aesthetic, and other epistemologies that shape political engagement with this issue. Individual chapters examine various forms of climate change communication, including artistic expression ranging from installations to cinema, on web-based spaces, and on other alternative media. Working from the premise that communicative practices provide the basis for broad public engagement, this book identifies and examines how the possibilities entailed in that engagement may yet contribute to a transformation of climate change politics that empowers both individual political subjects and their communities. Climate Change Politics is likely to be of interest to a variety of audiences including researchers and students of climate change politics, environmental communication, and social movements in disciplines such as communication, geography, political science, and sociology. The book is suitable as a textbook for both advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on climate change and society; environmental communication; and science, technology, and society.
International concern in scientific, industrial, and governmental communi ties over traces of xenobiotics in foods and in both abiotic and biotic en vironments has justified the present triumvirate of specialized publications in this field: comprehensive reviews, rapidly published research papers and progress reports, and archival documentations. These three international publications are integrated and scheduled to provide the coherency essential for nonduplicative and current progress in a field as dynamic and complex as environmental contamination and toxicology. This series is reserved ex clusively for the diversified literature on "toxic" chemicals in our food, our feeds, our homes, recreational and working surroundings, our domestic an imals, our wildlife and ourselves. Tremendous efforts worldwide have been mobilized to evaluate the nature, presence, magnitude, fate, and toxicology of the chemicals loosed upon the earth. Among the sequelae of this broad new emphasis is an undeniable need for an articulated set of authoritative publications, where one can find the latest irr,portant world literature pro duced by these emerging areas of science together with documentation of pertinent ancillary legislation. Research directors and legislative or administrative advisers do not have the time to scan the escalating number of technical publications that may contain articles impbrtant to current responsibility. Rather, these individuals need the background provided by detailed reviews and the assurance that the latest information is made available to them, all with minimal literature searching.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the "Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society" (CCMS) at the November 1969 meeting of the North Atlantic Council. The CCMS was charged with developing meaningful environmen tal and social programs that complement other international pro grams, and with showing leadership, first, in solution of exist ing problems and, second, in development of long-range goals for environmental protection in the NATO sphere of influence and in other countries as well. A first Pilot Study on Air Pollution was initiated by the CCMS at its inaugural meeting in December 1969. The United States (Environmental Protection Agency) has been the pilot nation with the Federal Republic of Germany (Federal Minis try of the Interior) and Turkey (Scientific and Technical Rese arch Council) as co-pilot nations. The Pilot Study on Air Pollution was an action program de signed to demonstrate and encourage the utilization of existing knowledge for the development of air quality management programs. It entailed the demonstration of a systems approach to air quali ty management. Case studies have been carried out in Ankara, Turkey; Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany; St. Louis, U.S.; Oslo, Norway; and South Holland Region, The Netherlands (NATO/CCMS Report No. 6, Appendices A- E)."
This book theorizes the role of optimism in anthropological thinking, research, writing, and practice. It sets out to explore optimism's origins and implications, its conceptual and practical value, and its capacity to contribute to contemporary anthropological aims. In an era of extensive ecological disruption and social distress, this volume contemplates how an optimistic anthropology can energize the discipline while also contributing to bettering the lives, communities, and environments of those we study. It brings together scholars diverse in background, career stage, and theoretical approach in a collective attempt to comprehend the myriad intersections of anthropology and optimism. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have recently underscored the larger, longer-term catastrophes of climate change, ecosystemic collapse, social injustice, and antipathy towards scientific knowledge and those who produce it. In this context, exceedingly few anthropologists feel comfortable observing and documenting passively while their research communities face unrelenting waves of (un)natural disasters. We need to act. But we also need to hope. Discontent with the state of the world and cultural anthropology's turn to increasingly positive, future-oriented, and engaged work have converged to unleash a courageously optimistic anthropology. This book is a timely springboard for this impactful and emergent approach.
Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology publishes authoritative reviews on the occurrence, effects, and fate of pesticide residues and other environmental contaminants. It will keep you informed of the latest significant issues by providing in-depth information in the areas of analytical chemistry, agricultural microbiology, biochemistry, human and veterinary medicine, toxicology, and food technology.
Digitalizing Sustainability outlines why 'business as usual' isn't working and sets out five Transformational Forces which can be used to innovate and scale sustainability solutions using digital means. This transformation will be powered by a range of digital technologies that have the potential to ideate, propel and scale sustainability solutions in an exponential manner over the next decade. This book introduces the Five Forces of Digital Transformation. These forces all share a common root - they are powered by digital technologies that enable them to operate at the speed and scale that we need to achieve global transformation for people and planet. Working together, these forces help overcome many of the barriers and pitfalls that humanity has faced in trying to achieve sustainability 2.0.and will help you tackle these questions: Why has sustainability 1.0 failed us? What are the bugs and bad code in our operating systems that we must address to have any hope at creating a sustainable civilization? What are the Five Forces of Digital Transformation that will forge a sustainable and resilient future for our people and planet? What are the core priorities going forward for coalitions of the willing to harness these forces for sustainability and resilience? Disruptive and innovative, this book provides readers with a clear path forward to a sustainable digital future. It will be of great interest to anyone interested in the adoption of digital technologies for driving solutions to global sustainability challenges.
This book explores interdisciplinary perspectives on socioecological challenges and offers innovative solutions at both a European and global level. This book critically reflects on the latest scientific knowledge regarding the increasing instability of the Earth System caused by human activities during the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration. It focuses on the global and European challenges regarding climate, resources, bio-integrity, and environment. The authors assess the obstacles to overcoming these challenges and examine the risks posed by path dependencies, lock-ins, and trade-offs between global and regional goals. They also drill down into the complexities of the European Green Deal, specifically the similarities and differences between the scientific analyses and recommendations from the European Environment Agency and the content of the Deal. Finally, the book looks at the Just Transition put forward by the European Green Deal. The authors discuss this in a context of global and European ecological and socioecological challenges and put the question of equality, recognition, and democratization at the center. Outlining new pathways to broaden the scope of scientific collaboration between the natural and technical sciences and the social sciences and the humanities, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable development, environmental policy and governance, and environmental justice. |
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