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Books > Earth & environment > The environment
In 2005, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) provided the
first global assessment of the world's ecosystems and ecosystem
services. It concluded that recent trends in ecosystem change
threatened human wellbeing due to declining ecosystem services.
This bleak prophecy has galvanized conservation organizations,
ecologists, and economists to work toward rigorous valuations of
ecosystem services at a spatial scale and with a resolution that
can inform public policy.
Now more than ever we are facing pressing world challenges of energy (identifying alternate energy), food (ensuring the food supply), water (providing clean water), and human health (enabling individualized medicine); and to solve these challenges will require chemistry and the related chemical sciences. Integrating sustainability into everything we do from instituting responsible operations, to selecting partners for change and innovating sustainable solutions. Industry needs academe to prepare their graduates to ascend the ladder with skill and agility. This can only be done by integrating sustainability expeditiously into chemistry curricula.
This book makes a serious effort at bringing forth and synergistically combining the concepts of green chemistry, sustainability and nanotechnology and should motivate scientistsat all levels to think clearly and seriously about creating and optimizing novel and sustainable green approaches to nanotechnology. The chapters in this book can be divided into three broad categories: 1) Advancement in research on pollution control through the green chemistry principles of nanotechnology; 2) Emergence of nanomaterials in widespread applications in various scientific fields, including but not limited to sensors and catalysts; 3) Extension of research into nanotechnology and green nanotechnology at a rapid pace. Review articles on the individual aspects of these diverse and complementary topics have become important resources for researchers, industry leaders, and regulators, both nationally and internationally. This book contains a few chapters associated with these particular themes, and provides glimpses of the many difficulties and challenges faced by those who seek to not only understand but also regulate the new nanomaterials. Nanotechnology represents a unique field of science, and necessitates new and novel sustainable approaches to create usable end products for the market place with the primary goal of yielding less adverse effects upon both human health and the environment.
From gluten-free to all-Paleo, GMOs to grass-fed beef, our newsfeeds abound with nutrition advice. Whether sensational headlines from the latest study or anecdotes from celebrities and food bloggers, we're bombarded with "superfoods" and "best ever" diets promising to help us lose weight, fight disease, and live longer. At the same time, we live in an over-crowded food environment that makes it easy to eat, all the time. The result is an epidemic of chronic disease amidst a culture of nutrition confusion-and copious food choices that challenge everyday eaters just trying to get a healthy meal on the table. But the exhilarating truth is that scientists know an astounding amount about the power of food. A staggering 80% of chronic diseases are preventable through modifiable lifestyle changes, and diet is the single largest contributing factor. And we also know the secrets to eating sustainably to protect our planet. In Food & Nutrition, Harvard- and Columbia-trained nutrition scientist Dr. P.K. Newby examines 134 stand-alone questions addressing "need to know" topics, including how what we eat affects our health and environment, from farm to fork, and why, when it comes to diet, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts-and one size doesn't fit all. At the same time, Newby debunks popular myths and food folklore, encouraging readers to "learn, unlearn, and relearn" the fundamentals of nutrition at the heart of a health-giving diet. Her passion for all things food shines through it all, as does her love of the power of science, technology, and engineering to help create healthier diets for ourselves, and a more sustainable future for the planet we share.
A charming, moving account of one man's race to save a herd of elephants. When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of 'rogue' elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival - dangerous and unpredictable, they would be killed if Anthony wouldn't take them in. As Anthony risked his life to create a bond with the troubled elephants and persuade them to stay on his reserve, he came to realize what a special family they were, from the wise matriarch Nana, who guided the herd, to her warrior sister Frankie, always ready to see off any threat, and their children who fought so hard to survive. With unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, this is an enthralling book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.
Biological invasions are one of the strongest drivers of global
environmental change, and invasive species are now often in the
public discourse. At the same time, economists have begun to take a
real interest in determining how invasive species interact with
economic systems, and how invaders should be controlled to optimize
societal wealth. Although the work from ecologists and economists
have both greatly expanded our understanding of the drivers and
impacts of invasions, little integration between the fields has
occurred that would allow managers and policy-makers to identify
the optical expenditures on, for example, prevention and control of
invasive species. Because the level of effort expended on invasive
species management is intricately linked to the costs and projected
benefits of that management, there is an urgent need for greater
synthesis between ecology and economics.
Veld is 'n lewensbelangrike natuurlike hulpbron vir ons aardse bestaan. Sowat 80% van ons mooi land bestaan uit veld. Die grootste deel daarvan word vir vee- en wildboerdery asook vir bewaring van biodiversiteit en vir ontspanning gebruik. Goeie veldbestuur is nodig om grondagteruitgang te stuit en om volhoubare voedselproduksie en bewaring van biodiversiteit te verseker. Maar goeie veldbestuur berus op 'n goeie kennis van ekologiese beginsels en veldbestuurspraktyke, iets wat baie grondgebruikers nie beskore was om te verkry nie. Die boek poog om die nodige kennis te verskaf om grondgebruikers te help om die grond in hul sorg doeltreffend te bestuur - inderdaad 'n reuseverantwoordelikheid. Die insluiting van meer as 380 foto's en illustrasies en die gebruik van maklik verstaanbare taal in Veldbestuur - Beginsels en Praktyke is daarop gemik om die taamlik tegniese onderwerp te vereenvoudig.
Winds of Change examines the global development of the wind energy industry from a political, social movements-based perspective. It argues the wind energy industry developed successfully in certain regions and countries in large part because the environmental movement influenced its growth. Vasi then defines and analyses the three main pathways through which the environmental movement has contributed to industry growth: it has influenced the adoption and implementation of renewable energy policies, it has created consumer demand for clean energy, and it has changed the institutional logics of the energy sector. The book uses quantitative analysis to present the big picture of the global development of the wind energy industry, then draws on qualitative analyses to understand why countries such as Germany, Denmark, or Spain are world leaders in wind energy, while other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada have a somewhat underdeveloped wind power industry. It also analyzes how the environmental movement contributed to the recent growth of the market for renewable energy certificates in the United States. The book also examines the remarkable transformation of the electricity sector in different countries, showing how environmentalists in Germany, Denmark, United States and United Kingdom contributed to wind turbine manufacturing by becoming entrepreneurs, innovators, and/or advocates, and, furthermore, how environmental groups and activists formed new companies that specialize in wind-farm development and operation, and pressured utility companies to invest in renewable energy by using tactics such as protests, lawsuits, and lobbying for stricter regulation. In conclusion, Vasi presents the main implications for future studies on industry development and social movement outcomes, as well as for the future growth of the renewable energy sector.
The Protection of Subjects in Human Research rule by the USEPA,
including the establishment of the Human Studies Review Board
(HSRB), has resulted in changes to both study design and study
evaluation processes, particularly with respect to ethical
considerations. Non-Dietary Human Exposure andRisk Assessment is a
compilation of the presentations given in a symposium of the same
name at the 238th ACS National Meeting in Washington D.C. The
purpose of the symposium was to provide a forum for scientists from
industry, academia, and government to share investigative methods
used to generate data for use in non-dietary human risk assessments
and to share methodology for performing and evaluating those
assessments.
The Cost of the Car is a dispassionate but engaging account of the consequences of predicating our habitat on the automobile, largely from a technical point of view. (The author is a former physicist and aerospace engineer.) Treating transport as an engineering problem, the car is first assessed, in comparison with other options, with regard to efficacy, safety, price, and performance. The cost to the wider economy, community, health, and the environment is then also considered. While the extent of its deficiencies become clear, so does the value we place on privacy and control. Three short stories attempt to relate the true nature of road accidents, obscure in dry statistics. Each is an account of real events but substitutes fictional characters to protect the individuals concerned. Only in this way can the aftermath be understood, and the full human cost counted. An introduction to the greenhouse effect and global warming is included, along with a discussion of alternative sources of energy. The root cause of congestion is also explained, along with the nature of the 'modal inversion' that occurred between road and rail in the 1950s. The Cost of the Car represents the first widely accessible collected account of these issues. Lastly, the author considers alternatives to sprawl which, while preserving the freedom to drive a private car, introduce the liberty not to.
The complex and multidisciplinary nature of environmental problems
requires that they are dealt with in an integrated manner. Modeling
and software have become key instruments used to promote
sustainability and improve environmental decision processes,
especially through systematic integration of various knowledge and
data and their ability to foster learning and help make
predictions. This book presents the current state-of-the-art in
environmental modeling and software and identifies the future
challenges in the field.
Nuclear power has been a contentious issue in Japan since the 1950s, and in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the conflict has only grown. Government agencies and the nuclear industry continue to push a nuclear agenda, while the mainstream media adheres to the official line that nuclear power is Japan's future. Public debate about nuclear energy is strongly discouraged. Nevertheless, antinuclear activism has swelled into one of the most popular and passionate movements in Japan, leading to a powerful wave of protest music. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima shows that music played a central role in expressing antinuclear sentiments and mobilizing political resistance in Japan. Combining musical analysis with ethnographic participation, author Noriko Manabe offers an innovative typology of the spaces central to the performance of protest music-cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. She argues that these four spaces encourage different modes of participation and methods of political messaging. The openness, mobile accessibility, and potential anonymity of cyberspace have allowed musicians to directly challenge the ethos of silence that permeated Japanese culture post-Fukushima. Moving from cyberspace to real space, Manabe shows how the performance and reception of music played at public demonstrations are shaped by the urban geographies of Japanese cities. While short on open public space, urban centers in Japan offer protesters a wide range of governmental and commercial spaces in which to demonstrate, with activist musicians tailoring their performances to the particular landscapes and soundscapes of each. Music festivals are a space apart from everyday life, encouraging musicians and audience members to freely engage in political expression through informative and immersive performances. Conversely, Japanese record companies and producers discourage major-label musicians from expressing political views in recordings, forcing antinuclear musicians to express dissent indirectly: through allegories, metaphors, and metonyms. The first book on Japan's antinuclear music, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised provides a compelling new perspective on the role of music in political movements.
Energy crises, which amount to painful combinations of energy shortages and soaring prices, have struck the United States several times in recent decades. Each time they have resulted in political and economic shockwaves because, when gasoline becomes more expensive, the American public tends to react with anger and suspicion. Energy crises instantly put related issues at the top of the nation's agenda, sometimes with dramatic consequences for public policy. What can we learn from recent history, particularly as it may predict the role that volatile public opinion will play throughout the energy policy making process? As The Politics of Energy Crises demonstrates, one can discern patterns in politics and policymaking when looking at the cycles of energy crises in the United States. As such it is the first systematic historical study of political conflict, public opinion, and organized interest group and presidential and congressional action on energy issues, starting with the 1973 OPEC boycott and continuing through the present day. By charting the commonalities in political battles during energy crises, the authors make prognoses about what future energy crises will mean for United States policy.
This book presents a critical review of designing, siting,
constructing and demonstrating the safety and environmental impact
of deep repositories for radioactive wastes. It is structured to
provide a broad perspective of this multi-faceted,
multi-disciplinary topic: providing enough detail for a
non-specialist to understand the fundamental principles involved
and with extensive references to sources of more detailed
information.
A year-round escape for one million annual tourists, Catalina Island is gaining popularity as a world-class eco-destination. Eighty-eight percent of the island is under the watch of the Catalina Island Conservancy, which preserves, manages and restores the island's unique wild lands. Bison, foxes and bald eagles are its best-known inhabitants, but Catalina is home to more than sixty other animal and plant species that exist nowhere else on earth. And they are all within the boundaries of one of the world's most populous regions: Los Angeles County. Biologists Frank Hein and Carlos de la Rosa present a highly enjoyable tour through the fascinating origins, mysterious quirks and ecological victories of one of the West Coast's most remarkable places.
Environmental Law and Local Government in South Africa is the only work of its kind to
Half of all insect species are dependent on living plant tissues, consuming about 10 per cent of plant annual production in natural habitats and an even greater percentage in agricultural systems, despite sophisticated control measures. Plants possess defences that are effective against almost all herbivorous insect species. Host-plant specialization, observed in over 80 percent of these animals, appears to be an effective adaptation to breach these defence systems. The mechanisms underlying plant defence to invading herbivores on the one side, and insect adaptations to utilize plants for nutrition, defence and shelter on the other, are the main subjects of this book. For plants exposed to insect herbivores, these mechanisms include the activation of defence systems and the emission of chemical signals which may attract natural enemies of the invading herbivores and may even be exploited by neighbouring plants to induce an early defence.
In the first decade of the 21st century, five rising powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) formed an exclusive and informal international club, the BRICS. Although neither revolutionaries nor extreme revisionists, the BRICS perceive an ongoing global power shift and contest the West's pretensions to permanent stewardship of the existing economic order. Together they have exercised collective financial statecraft, employing their expanding financial and monetary capabilities for the purpose of achieving larger foreign policy goals. This volume examines the forms and strategies of such collective financial statecraft, and the motivations of each individual government for collaborating through the BRICS club. Their cooperative financial statecraft takes various forms, ranging from pressure for "inside reforms" of either multilateral institutions or global markets, to "outside options" exercised through creating new multilateral institutions or jointly pushing for new realities in international financial markets. To the surprise of many observers, the joint actions of the BRICS are largely successful. Although each member has its unique rationale for collaboration, the largest member, China, controls resources that permit it the greatest influence in intra-club decision-making. The BRICS cooperate due to both common aversions (for example, resentment over being perennial junior partners in global economic and financial governance and resistance to infringements on their autonomy due to U.S. dollar dominance and financial power) and common interests (such as obtaining greater voice in international institutions, as the IMF). The group seeks reforms, influence, and enhanced leadership roles within the liberal capitalist global system. Where blocked, they experiment with parallel multilateral institutions in which they are the dominant rule-makers. The future of the BRICS depends not only on their bargaining power and adjustment to market players, but also on their ability to overcome domestic impediments to sustainable economic growth, the basis for their international influence.
Retaining the introductory flavor of the now classic First Edition,
this revision includes all the latest techniques in the field. New
information on methods of radio tag harnessing, new sections on
satellite tracking techniques and new types of data analysis are
all included. Still the only comprehensive, up-to-date,
introduction to this fundamental technique for wildlife and
behavioral biologists.
When environmentalists fail to persuade us that there is an imminent threat of environmental disaster, they typically invoke the "precautionary principle" in order to justify their calls for more regulation. This work challenges the claim that the precautionary principle (PP) is an appropriate guide to public policy decisions. The fundamental problem is that it is impossible to prove a negative, so the PP can be used to justify any regulation limiting emissions of any substance. Taken in its extreme form, the PP would end civilisation. In its more practical form, the PP is about taking a hyper-cautious approach to emissions of substances into the environment. This means imposing very strict controls on the licensing of new technologies and cutting back drastically on emissions of substances into the environment. Although not as devastating as Leggett's philosophically dubious proposal, this more practical approach has serious drawbacks The opening brace of papers discusses the dubious philosophical foundations of PP, and consider the consequences of applying it in various policy contexts relating to scientific controversies.
"Global Change Scenarios of the 21st Century" informs readers of
conceivable environmental changes in the next hundred years.
Integrated scenarios are used to communicate large amounts of
information about different aspects of the global environmental
system, together with society's role within this system. Uniquely,
the scenarios are generated by an integrated computer model, IMAGE
2.1, which enhances consistency and provides a framework for
linking environmental and social aspects of global change.
European explorers were captivated by the seemingly endless bounty of natural resources on Cape Cod Bay. One Englishman declared that the codfish were so thick one "could" walk on their backs. Early settlers quickly learned how to harness the bay's resources and excelled at shore whaling, shipping and salt making. But as these new industries flourished, the native Wampanoag, who helped the fledgling colony to take root, nearly vanished. Author Theresa Mitchell Barbo's skillful narrative weaves together the natural and cultural histories of the bay, highlighting some of the region's diverse milestones- from the drafting of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 to the establishment of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant 350 years later. "Cape Cod Bay: A History of Salt & Sea" inspires new appreciation for this storied and stunning seascape, and underscores the importance of new efforts to preserve the bay's unique ecosystem.
Appreciating that coastal areas are under threat from misuse and overuse worldwide, this book reviews the need for marine conservation, summarizes general measures for ocean and coastal conservation, and explains the rationale for establishing marine protected areas. The second half of the book is a guideline for designing and implementing protected areas in order to make them viable and long-lasting in their effectiveness.
This book brings together current thought on several aspects of the use of pesticides in and around homes, schools and workplaces. The book addresses several parts of the process, from the discovery and development of new active ingredients, their formulation, use, longevity, environmental fate and human exposure.
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