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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"
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.
"Environmental Noise Pollution: Noise Mapping, Public Health and
Policy" addresses the key debates surrounding environmental noise
pollution with a particular focus on the European Union.
Environmental noise pollution is an emerging public policy and
environmental concern and is considered to be one of the most
important environmental stressors affecting public health
throughout the world.
This book examines environmental noise pollution, its health
implications, the role of strategic noise mapping for problem
assessment, major sources of environmental noise pollution, noise
mitigation approaches, and related procedural and policy
implications. Drawing on the authors' considerable research
expertise in the area, the book is the first coherent work on this
major environmental stressor, a new benchmark reference across
disciplinary, policy and national boundaries.
Highlights recent developments in the policy arena with particular
focus on developments in the EU within the context of the European
Noise DirectiveExplores the lessons emerging from nations within
the EU and other jurisdictions attempting to legislate and mitigate
against the harmful effects of noise pollutionCovers the core
theoretical concepts and principles surrounding the mechanics of
noise pollution as well as the evidence-base linking noise with
public health concerns
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.
This timely book offers a fresh view on how oceans and coasts are,
and should be, managed. The urgency of this issue is increasingly
being recognized, as critical limits to the economic exploitation
of our oceans and coasts are reached. The authors argue that
ecological economics is in a unique position to address this
problem given its particular focus on interconnected ecological and
economic systems. Four 'cornerstones' of this ecological economics
approach to the oceans and coasts are presented; most importantly,
sustainability is the overarching policy goal, rather than economic
efficiency, as I soften emphasized in mainstream economics.
Secondly, recognizing the biophysical limits and thresholds of
marine systems is fundamental. Thirdly, a complex systems view is
adopted, which has profound implications for managing marine
systems in the face of intrinsic uncertainty, irreversibility and
interdependent behaviour. Finally, the approach is necessarily
methodologically pluralistic, given the complexity and
multi-faceted character of marine ecological-economic systems.
Ecological Economics of the Oceans and Coasts is a unique book that
will be warmly welcomed by ecological economists, researchers and
academics of coastal and marine management and policy as well as
natural resource and environmental economists. Policy advisors on
oceans and coasts, coastal and marine managers will also find this
book of great interest and value.
Concern for the environment is not new; it has always existed. One
of the flash points in the inner conflicts within human societies
of the past was fuelled by the continuous effort to resolve the
legitimate use of the natural world. Nature is one of those spaces
where we observe the most intense form of class struggle and power
politics -- the more privileged control the natural resources. The
rapid unfolding of power relations, the rise of new technology to
exploit the environment, the growing resource crunch, and a
perceived 'environmental crisis' have resulted in the development
of a new field of study -- environmental history, an important
gateway to knowledge in general and Environmental Studies in
particular. Situating Environmental History, brings together
several eminent scholars who share a common interest in the
environmental history of South Asia. The work is divided in four
sections. In Section I, Understanding Environmental History, Karl
Jacoby, Alok Kumar Ghosh, Arun Bandopadhyay and Archana Prasad
contribute to our understanding of environmentalism, its
historiography and the role of state legislation and the popular
response thereto. In Section II, Communities on the Margin, Vinita
Damodaran and Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay focus on different
communities in the periphery lying outside the supposed
'mainstream' and their fight for their own perceptions of 'justice'
and 'legitimate claims'. In Section III, Colonialism,
Post-Colonialism, the State and the Management of Nature, Kaushik
Roy, Arabinda Samanta, Amal Das, Sahara Ahmed, Jagdish N Sinha and
Sumit Guha look at the evolution of state policy on environmental
questions through different periods of Indian history. In Section
IV, Beyond India, Rita Pemberton, Lawrence Gundersen and Tridib
Chakrabarti study environmental issues in the countries beyond
India.
The interaction between climate change and trade has grown in
prominence in recent years. This Research Handbook contains
authoritative original contributions from leading experts working
at the interface between climate change and trade rules. Regional
as well as international perspectives are taken into account to
inform the complex questions that arise and redirect research
efforts towards newly emerging issues. The Research Handbook on
Climate Change and Trade Law discusses some of the most important
challenges regarding conflicting interests at the intersection of
trade, climate change and investment. The insightful chapters map
from both regional and global perspectives the state of affairs in
such diverse areas as: carbon credits and taxes, sustainable
standard-setting, and trade in 'green' goods and services. This
timely book redefines the interrelationship of trade and climate
change for future scholarship and offers specific suggestions for
much-needed research in topics such as energy, carbon taxes and
credits, food, standardization, and investment. This Research
Handbook will be essential reading for researchers and advanced
students in international trade and investment law. It will also be
an invaluable resource for practitioners and policymakers in this
dynamic and highly significant area of law. Contributors include:
M. Alder, P. Arnaiz, S. Bigdeli, J. Chaisse, T. Cottier, P.
Delimatsis, A. Dimopoulos, F. Fleurke, A. Gourgourinis, A.H. Lim,
J. McMahon, S. Melnyk, J. Munro, K. Nadakavukaren Schefer, R.
Partain, T. Payosova, V. Pogoretskyy, D. Ramos, E. Reid, M. Rimmer,
L. Tamiotti, J.P. Trachtman, A. vanDuzer, E. Vranes, M. Wu, M.
Young, R. Zhang
Human degradation of the environment has been documented by
scholars across a range of disciplines: the global temperature of
the planet continues to rise, abandoned industrial sites stain once
vibrant communities, and questions about the purity of our water
and foods linger. In the shadow of these material conditions,
concerned citizens have reacted by issuing critiques against
careless consumerism and excessive lifestyles. Their hope is to
illustrate and inspire alternative ways of living. As part of such
efforts and activism, some have turned to performance as a means to
investigate matters further, pose challenges and questions, and
enact new ways of being and thinking in a globalized world.
Performance on Behalf of the Environment is a collection of essays
from a diverse group of scholars that explore critically the
strengths, limitations, and processes of what can be termed
environmental performances.
"Coastal Disasters and Climate Change in Vietnam "is the first
book to focus specifically on natural hazards and climate change in
Vietnam. The book examines threats such as tropical cyclones,
sea-level rise, flooding, erosion, and salinity intrusion, and
their respective effects on coastal structures and environments. It
also looks at crucial management and mitigation efforts, including
breakwater design, irrigation systems, coastal dunes and dikes, and
more.
The challenges faced by this country in the future will have
important regional and global repercussions; areas such as the
Mekong Delta produce a significant proportion of the world s rice,
and coastal impacts on this region will have far-reaching economic
and public health effects. This book is an important source of
information for government and local policy makers, environmental
and climate scientists, and engineers.
Broad coverage of climate challenges specific to the region,
including sea-level rise, storms, erosion, and moreAssessments of
impact on, and effects of, economic development and port
constructionExamination of public policy responses to climate
change"
"Handbook of Recycling" is an authoritative review of the
current state-of-the-art of recycling, reuse and reclamation
processes commonly implemented today and how they interact with one
another. The book addresses several material flows, including iron,
steel, aluminum and other metals, pulp and paper, plastics, glass,
construction materials, industrial by-products, and more. It also
details various recycling technologies as well as recovery and
collection techniques. To completely round out the picture of
recycling, the book considers policy and economic implications,
including the impact of recycling on energy use, sustainable
development, and the environment.
With contemporary recycling literature scattered across
disparate, unconnected articles, this book is a crucial aid to
students and researchers in a range of disciplines, from materials
and environmental science to public policy studies.
Portrays recent and emerging technologies in metal recycling,
by-product utilization and management of post-consumer wasteUses
life cycle analysis to show how to reclaim valuable resources from
mineral and metallurgical wastesUses examples from current
professional and industrial practice, with policy and economic
implications
Despite the urgent need for action, there is a widespread lack of
understanding of the benefits of using green energy sources for not
only reducing carbon emissions and climate change, but also for
growing a sustainable economy and society. Future citizens of the
world face increasing sustainability issues and need to be better
prepared for energy transformation and sustainable future economic
development. Cases on Green Energy and Sustainable Development is a
critical research book that focuses on the important role renewable
energy and energy efficiency play in energy transition and
sustainable development and covers economic and promotion policies
of major renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies.
Highlighting a wide range of topics such as economics, energy
storage, and transportation technologies, this book is ideal for
environmentalists, academicians, researchers, engineers,
policymakers, and students.
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