|
|
Books > Earth & environment > The environment
Using the principle that extracting energy from the environment
always involves some type of impact on the environment, "The Future
of Energy "discusses the sources, technologies, and tradeoffs
involved in meeting the world's energy needs. A historical,
scientific, and technical background set the stage for discussions
on a wide range of energy sources, including conventional fossil
fuels like oil, gas, and coal, as well as emerging renewable
sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels. Readers will
learn that there are no truly "green" energy sources all energy
usage involves some tradeoffs and will understand these tradeoffs
and other issues involved in using each energy source.
Each potential energy source includes discussions of tradeoffs in
economics, environmental, and policy implicationsExamples and cases
of implementing each technology are included throughout the
bookTechnical discussions are supported with equations, graphs, and
tablesIncludes discussions of carbon capture and sequestration as
emerging technologies to manage carbon dioxide emissions"
This unique book examines the role of institutions in transport
regulation within a sustainability and comparative Trans-Atlantic
framework. With contributions from leading experts in the field,
three areas of analysis are provided: barriers to implementation of
reforms, regulatory issues and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP).
The discussion on barriers focuses on political and public
acceptance, as well as equity and environmental justice. Regulatory
reform analyses include comparative discussions of railroad and
airline deregulation in North America and Europe which are
complimented with analyses of EU integration and transport
regulation for sustainability, transport pricing and inter country
competition. Finally, infrastructure finance and evaluation
frameworks for PPP form the topical focus for a comprehensive
assessment of PPP within the transport sector. Scholars and
advanced students in engineering, public policy, planning, policy
and international business will find Institutions and Sustainable
Transport of great interest, as will national and sub-national
transport senior planners and policy advisors in Europe and North
America, and analysts and strategic planners for logistics
organizations.
Sustainability is becoming an increasingly urgent factor in all
areas of life, and its effect on contemporary economies can be
vast. Sustainable development can truly propel modern economies
forward, and it is important to study the impacts of such progress.
Measuring Sustainable Development and Green Investments in
Contemporary Economies provides an authoritative look at how green
investments are shaping global economies. Highlighting emerging
topics such as socio-economic systems, green performance
strategies, forest ecosystems, and food security, this is a
detailed reference resource for all practitioners, academicians,
graduate students, and researchers interested in discovering more
about the impact of sustainable development on modern economies.
Alongside increasing demands for transparency and accountability,
business governance is transforming due to decades of economic
turmoil, regulatory reform, and technological change. There is now
a holistic approach to this concept, as it is no longer just about
running companies and organization efficiently. Ethics and
Decision-Making for Sustainable Business Practices is a critical
scholarly resource that examines issues of sustainability, ethics,
governance, and cultural influence in the business world. Featuring
coverage on a broad range of topics such as entrepreneurship, cost
management, environmental business, and cultural diversity, this
book is geared towards managers, leaders, researchers, and
organizations interested in the integration of sustainable business
practices.
This Handbook provides a comprehensive study of research, practice
and policy at the nexus of accounting and sustainability, or
sustainable development. Internationally renowned accounting
academics in the field offer critical discussions of the topic to
stimulate debate as the future policy infrastructure is formed.
Chapters explain key drivers of developments at the nexus, critique
those developments, summarise the findings of research on key
themes in the field, and suggest areas for further research,
offering evidence-based practice and policy solutions. The Handbook
sets the scene by exploring accounting, power, social justice and
unsustainability, before moving on to appraise the role of
enterprise value-based integrated reporting in (un)sustainable
development. It further analyses contemporary issues in the field,
including climate change-related disclosures, accounting for
greenhouse gases and emissions trading schemes. The thorough
coverage of key issues in accounting and sustainability, and the
analysis of research literature in the Handbook will make this a
critical read for accounting and business researchers and students.
It is an invigorating guide for policymakers and policy
influencers, accounting professionals and business leaders looking
to move forward in a more sustainable way.
Tourism is the world's largest industry and its fastest growing
one. It has the potential to contribute significantly to the
economic development of most economies, including those of less
developed countries and peripheral economic regions. However, it
depends heavily on environmental conditions, natural and man-made,
for its market and its sustainability. This book analyzes market
and political failures in relation to tourism development and the
environment, and the implications of those for national gains from
international tourism, for public finance and policy, and for the
sustainability of tourism. Particular emphasis is placed on
ecotourism and the sustainable use of natural sites, methods of
evaluating the sustainability of tourism and the impacts of
pollution on tourism. Case studies cover both large and small
developing countries e.g. Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India and the
Maldives, as well as more developed economies. While some attention
is given to the evaluation of protected areas, most attention is
given to policies in terms of the sustainable recreational use of
such areas - examples include scuba diving and encounters of
tourists with whale sharks and sea turtles. This is a fascinating
book that will be of great use to a wide readership including
economists, environmentalists, geographers, tourism scholars and
professionals, as well as academics in development studies.
"This fascinating and most timely critical medical anthropology
study successfully binds two still emergent areas of contemporary
anthropological research in the global world: the nature and
significant impact of multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers on
human social life everywhere, and the contribution of corporations
to the fast-paced degradation of our life support system, planet
Earth. . . . Focusing on a pharmaceutically-impacted town on the
colonized island of Puerto Rico, Dietrich ably demonstrates the
value of ethnography carried out in small places in framing the
large issues facing humanity." -Merrill Singer, University of
Connecticut The production of pharmaceuticals is among the most
profitable industries on the planet. Drug companies produce
chemical substances that can save, extend, or substantially improve
the quality of human life.However, even as the companies present
themselves publicly as health and environmental stewards, their
factories are a significant source of air and water
pollution--toxic to people and the environment. In Puerto Rico, the
pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of the island's economy: in
one small town alone, there are over a dozen drug factories
representing five multinationals, the highest concentration per
capita of such factories in the world. It is a place where the
enforcement of environmental regulations and the public trust they
ensure are often violated in the name of economic development. The
Drug Company Next Door unites the concerns of critical medical
anthropology with those of political ecology, investigating the
multi-faceted role of pharmaceutical corporations as polluters,
economic providers, and social actors. Rather than simply
demonizing the drug companies, the volume explores the dynamics
involved in their interactions with the local community and
discusses the strategies used by both individuals and community
groups to deal with the consequences of pollution. The Drug Company
Next Door puts a human face on a growing set of problems for
communities around the world. Accessible and engaging, the book
encourages readers to think critically about the role of
corporations in everyday life, health, and culture.
A practical guide to improve classes that are bored, hostile,
aggressive or just not quite right. The book provides tips form
making small class teaching more effective, with practical
suggestions for a broad range of problems that teachers regularly
encounter.
Consisting of presented papers from the 15th International
Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability, the included
works address various aspects of the urban environment and provide
solutions leading towards sustainability. Urban areas result in a
series of environmental challenges varying from the consumption of
natural resources and the subsequent generation of waste and
pollution, contributing to the development of social and economic
imbalances. As cities continue to grow all over the world, these
problems tend to become more acute and require the development of
new solutions. The challenge of planning sustainable contemporary
cities lies in considering the dynamics of urban systems, exchange
of energy and matter, and the function and maintenance of ordered
structures directly or indirectly supplied and maintained by
natural systems. The task of researchers is to improve the capacity
to manage human activities, pursuing welfare and prosperity in the
urban environment. Any investigation or planning on a city ought to
consider the relationships between the parts and their connections
with the living world. The dynamics of its networks (flows of
energy matter, people, goods, information and other resources) are
fundamental for an understanding of the evolving nature of
today’s cities. Large cities represent a fertile ground for
architects, engineers, city planners, social and political
scientists, and other professionals able to conceive new ideas and
time them according to technological advances and human
requirements. Coastal areas and coastal cities are an important
area covered in this volume as they have some specific features.
Their strategic location facilitates transportation and the
development of related activities, but this requires the existence
of large ports, with the corresponding increase in maritime and
road traffic and all its inherent negative effects. This requires
the development of well-planned and managed urban environments, not
only for reasons of efficiency and economics but also to avoid
inflicting environmental degradation that causes the deterioration
of natural resources, quality of life and human health. These
research papers put a focus on sustainability across the
multidisciplinary components of urban planning, the challenges
presented by the increasing size of cities, the number of resources
required and the complexity of modern society.
In recent years our understanding of corporate sustainability has
moved from exploitation to exploration, from corporate
environmental management to sustainable entrepreneurship, and from
efficiency to innovation. Yet current trends indicate the need for
radical innovation via entrepreneurial start-ups or new ventures
within existing corporations despite difficulties with the
financing and marketing of such efforts. Presenting both conceptual
and empirical research, this fascinating book addresses how we can
combine environmental and social sustainability with economic
sustainability in order to produce innovative new business models.
The international cast of contributors addresses the wide range of
issues in the balance between growth and environmental concerns.
The first five chapters discuss various aspects of sustainable
entrepreneurship. This is followed by two chapters that look at
innovation within existing firms. Innovation is not successful
until it finds a customer, so the two chapters that follow delve
into the marketing aspects of business-to-consumer and
business-to-business settings. The book closes with a broad
discussion of the evolution and future of the research agenda into
the intersection of sustainability, innovation and
entrepreneurship. Academics, students, business professionals, and
NGOs will find this volume enlightening and useful.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have transformed the
Earth's atmosphere, committing our planet to more extreme weather,
rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, and mass extinction.
This period of observable human impact on the Earth's ecosystems
has been called the Anthropocene Age. The anthropogenic climate
change that has impacted the Earth has also affected our
literature, but criticism of the contemporary novel has not
adequately recognized the literary response to this level of
environmental crisis. Ecocriticism's theories of place and planet,
meanwhile, are troubled by a climate that is neither natural nor
under human control. Anthropocene Fictions is the first systematic
examination of the hundreds of novels that have been written about
anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on climatology, the sociology
and philosophy of science, geography, and environmental economics,
Adam Trexler argues that the novel has become an essential tool to
construct meaning in an age of climate change. The novel expands
the reach of climate science beyond the laboratory or model,
turning abstract predictions into subjectively tangible experiences
of place, identity, and culture. Political and economic
organizations are also being transformed by their struggle for
sustainability. In turn, the novel has been forced to adapt to new
boundaries between truth and fabrication, nature and economies, and
individual choice and larger systems of natural phenomena.
Anthropocene Fictions argues that new modes of inhabiting climate
are of the utmost critical and political importance, when
unprecedented scientific consensus has failed to lead to action.
As the population of the greater Las Vegas area grows and the
climate warms, the threat of a water shortage looms over southern
Nevada. But as Christian S. Harrison demonstrates in All the Water
the Law Allows, the threat of shortage arises not from the local
environment but from the American legal system, specifically the
Law of the River that governs water allocation from the Colorado
River. In this political and legal history of the Las Vegas water
supply, Harrison focuses on the creation and actions of the
Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) to tell a story with
profound implications and important lessons for water politics and
natural resource policy in the twenty-first century. In the state
with the smallest allocation of the Colorado's water supply, Las
Vegas faces the twin challenges of aridity and federal law to
obtain water for its ever-expanding population. All the Water the
Law Allows describes how the impending threat of shortage in the
1980s compelled the five metropolitan water agencies of greater Las
Vegas to unify into a single entity. Harrison relates the
circumstances of the SNWA's evolution and reveals how the
unification of local, county, and state interests allowed the
compact to address regional water policy with greater force and
focus than any of its peers in the Colorado River Basin. Most
notably, the SNWA has mapped conservation plans that have
drastically reduced local water consumption; and, in the interstate
realm, it has been at the center of groundbreaking, water-sharing
agreements. Yet these achievements do not challenge the fundamental
primacy of the Law of the River. If current trends continue and the
Basin States are compelled to reassess the river's distribution,
the SNWA will be a force and a model for the Basin as a whole.
|
You may like...
Anouska Hempel
Marcus Binney
Hardcover
R1,375
R1,292
Discovery Miles 12 920
|