This major annual publication provides a state-of-the-art survey of contemporary research on environmental and resource economics by some of the leading experts in the field. The critical issues addressed in this year's volume include: * contingent valuation * environmental policy, technological change and economic growth * land use decisions and policy * sustainability indicators * value transfer and environmental policy * joint implementation in climate change policy * environmentally harmful subsidies.

Challenging the normalization of a capitalist reality in which environmental destruction and catastrophe have become 'second nature', Towards a Critical Theory of Nature offers a bold new theoretical understanding of the current crisis via the work of the Frankfurt School. Focusing on key notions of dialectics, natural history, and materialism, a critical theory of nature is outlined in favor of a more traditional Marxist theory of nature, albeit one which still builds on core Marxist concepts to confirm humanity's central place in manufacturing environmental misery. Pre-eminent thinkers of the Frankfurt school, including, Georg Lukacs, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and Alfred Schmidt, are highlighted for their potential to diagnose the interpenetration of capitalism and nature in a way that neither absolutizes nor obliterates the boundary between the social and natural. Further theoretical claims and practical consequences of a critical theory of nature challenge other contemporary theoretical approaches like eco-Marxism, social constructivism and new materialism, to situate it as the only approach with genuinely radical potential. The possibility of utopian idealism for understanding and responding to the current climate crisis is carefully measured against the dangers of false hope in setting out realistic goals for change. Environmental change in turn is seen through the prism of recent cultural currents and movements, situating the power of a critical theory of nature in relation to understandings of the Anthropocene; concepts of apocalypse, and postapocalypse. This book culminates in a powerful tool for an anti-capitalist critique of society's painfully extractive relationship to a deceptively abstracted natural world.

Economic Growth and the Environment explores the debate on how to reconcile economic growth with protection of the natural environment, and the closely related discussion on whether an increasing scarcity of natural resources will eventually force economic growth to cease. The debate focusses on whether environmental policies will benefit the economy or not, and is divided into growth optimists and growth pessimists. In general, economists have been optimistic and have pointed to the possibilities of technological progress and substitution, yet they also acknowledge that natural resources and environmental concern do restrict economic growth. The difficulty lies in quantifying the constraint to economic growth. Modern growth economists have constructed models to examine to what extent 'growth pessimism' is theoretically warranted. This book provides an introduction to some of these models, brings together the discussion between growth optimists and pessimists, and presents the theory behind their arguments. It aims to present models where both sides can meet and where both are able to derive expected results with the parameter values that they deem appropriate. From there, the discussions can turn to the empirical observations about these parameters. This book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates in economics, microeconomics, economic growth, sustainable development, and environmental economics. Each chapter concludes with a set of Exercises designed to help the reader master the models.

This manual offers a detailed, up-to-date explanation of how to carry out economic valuation using stated preference techniques. It is relevant for the application of these techniques to all non-market goods and services including air and water quality; provision of public open space; health care that is not sold through private markets; risk reduction policies and investments not provided privately; provision of information as with the recorded heritage, the protection of cultural assets and so on. The resulting valuations can be used for a number of purposes including, but not limited to, demonstrating the importance of a good or service; cost-benefit analysis; setting priorities for environmental policy; design of economic instruments; green national/corporate accounting, and natural resource damage assessment. Compiled by the leading experts in the field, this manual starts by explaining the concepts. It shows how to choose the most appropriate technique and how to design the questionnaires. Detailed advice on econometric analysis is provided, as well as explanation of the pitfalls that need to be avoided.

19th-century British imperial expansion dramatically shaped today's globalised world. Imperialism encouraged mass migrations of people, shifting flora, fauna, and commodities around the world and led to a series of radical environmental changes never before experienced in history. "Eco-Cultural Networks in the British Empire" explores how these networks shaped ecosystems, cultures and societies throughout the British Empire, and how they were themselves transformed by local and regional conditions.This multi-authored volume begins with a rigorous theoretical analysis of the categories of 'empire' and 'imperialism'. Its chapters, written by leading scholars in the field, draw methodologically from recent studies in environmental history, post-colonial theory, and the history of science. Together, these perspectives provide a comprehensive historical understanding of how the British Empire reshaped the globe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will be an important addition to the literature on British imperialism and global ecological change.

The Anthropocene refers to all societies' current era of environmental challenges. For the social sciences, the Anthropocene represents a historical "moment" with huge potential: it offers people new ways of considering the human condition, as well as how they interact with the rest of the living world and with the planet on all levels. At the turn of the 21st century, the idea of the Anthropocene burst onto the older, diverse and varied scene of risk studies. This "new geological era", which is entirely created by humanity, went on to revive our understanding of environmental issues, as well as the analysis of the social and political problems that constitute risk situations. Drawing together contributions from specialists in social sciences concerning risks and the environment, Risks and the Anthropocene explores the advantages that the idea of the Anthropocene can offer in understanding risks and their management, as well as the limitations it presents.

Although the full extent of the potential damages from global warming remain unknown, scientists have long argued that action should be taken now to mitigate any possible adverse consequences. However, in making such policy recommendations, economic arguments need to be considered as much as scientific ones. This volume examines the appropriate economic incentives for implementing policy to mitigate climate change and then exposes the flaws in current international agreements. The book begins by providing the economic foundations for understanding climate change. It examines how Kyoto's flexibility mechanism departs from more efficient and less-costly approaches for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and highlights the problems that terrestrial carbon credits pose for emissions trading. Unique case studies of Canada, Japan and The Netherlands indicate that most countries will be unable to meet their own Kyoto obligations. The author then uses an economic analysis of the potential damages to show that even though some countries will experience a detrimental effect from climate change, the majority will actually benefit. In this way, he clearly demonstrates that not only will current policies do little to avert global warming, most countries will also have less incentive to sign up to any future international agreements. Academics, economists and policymakers involved in the climate change debate will find this succinct yet comprehensive analysis of the economic instruments available for mitigating climate change to be essential reading.

Old men used to sit in corner stores and discuss business, work, and politics. Women used to come together and talk about the men as they took care of the home and children, or even more recently as a part of the workforce. Today, however, politics is a shunned topic, and conversation is all but dead. It is difficult to stay informed and talk with each other about life and politics.

It is even more difficult to stay informed on a technical topic such as energy and something as double-sided as politics. Yet it is imperative that people stay informed and well-connected to direct their government.

This book shows how the government (President, House and Senate, left and right) have destroyed the energy industry, taxed the middle class, and prevented well thinking, regular folks from solving our energy supply crisis. This book has thirty-three charts and graphs, most from bi-partisan or independent government sources to make a case for less government involvement in the energy industry. There are some astonishing revelations and a compelling case for reducing air emissions by 60 percent and creating jobs at the same time by building a particular type of new generation. This is a compelling argument that has never been presented before. I hope you enjoy the read.

A transporting exploration of the deep sea, and how our planet’s strangest, most ancient and astonishing creatures have urgent relevance to cutting-edge science today.

Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms the size and shape of cities, and jellyfish that glow in the dark: ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on Earth, seeming to bend the rules of land-based biology. Although sometimes unseen in the deep, these incredible spineless creatures contain 600 million years of adaptation to problems of disease, energy consumption, nutrition, and defence.

Marine ecologist Dr Drew Harvell takes us diving from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from the Caribbean to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater ‘superpowers’ of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars who garden the coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance. As our planet changes fast, the biomedical, engineering and energy innovations of these wondrous creatures hold ever more important secrets to our own survival.

The Ocean’s Menagerie is a tale of biological marvels, a story of a woman’s passionate connection to an adventurous career in science and a call to arms to protect the world’s most ancient ecosystems.

In this book a distinguished group of international contributors, from both developing and higher income countries, identify and discuss major social conflicts, labour and distributional concerns, environmental issues and impacts arising from the very rapid increase in globalisation experienced since the early 1970s. Issues considered include possible alternatives to globalisation; cultural and linguistic inequalities associated with globalisation, consequences of growing regionalism and economic inequality between and within nations. Poverty, international migration, biodiversity conservation, natural resource sustainability, and global trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are also discussed. A substantial introductory chapter provides a significant overview of the rate and process of economic globalisation and integrates the contributions and their interconnections for the reader. Economic Globalisation offers policy proposals and responses and represents divergent views and rigorous theoretical analysis. Economists, particularly those with an interest in international economics, labour, environmental and ecological economics, macroeconomics and social economics will all find this book of great interest.

In The Big Muddy, the first long-term environmental history of the Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day industrial and post-industrial society.
Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, forty thousand square miles of some of the richest, wettest land in North America, deposited there by the big muddy river that ran through it. But since then much has changed, for the river and for the surrounding valley. Indeed, by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He outlines the damage done by the introduction of foreign species, such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the reconstruction of the river itself, largely under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley environment in recent years--such as with the burgeoning catfish and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its natural abundance.
Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of natural environments to human purposes.

Industrial ecology is coming of age and this superb book brings together leading scholars to present a state-of-the-art overviews of the subject. Each part of the book comprehensively covers the following issues in a systematic style: * the goals and achievements of industrial ecology and the history of the field * methodology, covering the main approaches to analysis and assessment * economics and industrial ecology * industrial ecology at the national/regional level * industrial ecology at the sectoral/materials level * applications and policy implications. The authors are all experts at the cutting edge of the field and the bibliography alone will prove useful as a comprehensive guide to the literature. This outstanding handbook will be an indispensable reference for students and scholars working in environmental management, industrial ecology and environmental and ecological studies.