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Environmental Heresies
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Book Synopsis Environmental Heresies by : Juha Hiedanpää
Download or read book Environmental Heresies written by Juha Hiedanpää and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically deconstructs the pervasive and counter-productive discourse surrounding environmental policy. The authors argue that environmental policy problems are always framed such that conflict is inevitable—a particular project or policy must be accepted versus a specific environmental asset that must be protected. Over the course of 12 chapters, the authors demonstrate that confident yet contradictory assertions by contending interests preclude necessary deliberation and reason giving. They argue that deliberation is an important social process of reflecting upon the reasons for doing something. Their innovative approach allows discourse and collaboration to continue, until—after honest and informed deliberation—the better way forward is arrived at. This approach to environmental policy illustrates just how very constructive and enabling the quest for the reasonable can be.
Book Synopsis The Environment by : William P. Kabasenche
Download or read book The Environment written by William P. Kabasenche and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays by leading scholars consider the environment from biological and ethical perspectives. Philosophical reflections on the environment began with early philosophers' invocation of a cosmology that mixed natural and supernatural phenomena. Today, the central philosophical problem posed by the environment involves not what it can teach us about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order but rather how we can understand its workings in order to make better decisions about our own conduct regarding it. The resulting inquiry spans different areas of contemporary philosophy, many of which are represented by the fifteen original essays in this volume. The contributors first consider conceptual problems generated by rapid advances in biology and ecology, examining such topics as ecological communities, adaptation, and scientific consensus. The contributors then turn to epistemic and axiological issues, first considering philosophical aspects of environmental decision making and then assessing particular environmental policies (largely relating to climate change), including reparations, remediation, and nuclear power, from a normative perspective. Contributors Katie McShane, Robert Brandon, Rachel Bryant, Michael Trestman, Brian Steverson, Denis Walsh, Lorraine Code, Jay Odenbaugh, Joseph Cannon, Mariam Thalos, Chrisoula Andreou, Clare Palmer, Ben Hale, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Andrew Light
Download or read book Divided Planet written by Tom Athanasiou and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global warming. Soil loss. Freshwater scarcity. Extinction. Overconsumption. Toxic waste production. Habitat and biodiversity erosion. These are only a few of our most urgent ecological crises. There are others as well and, despite the popularity of good-news environmentalism, few of them are going away. In this wide-ranging, grimly entertaining commentary on the environmental debate, Tom Athanasiou finds that these problems are exacerbated, if not caused, by the planet's division into "warring camps of rich and poor." Writing with passionate intelligence, Athanasiou proposes a simple yet radical solution--stop indulging easy, calming fantasies in which everything seems to change, but nothing important changes at all. Instead, do what needs to be done, now, while there is still time and goodwill. The bottom line, he concludes, is that there will be no sustainability without a large measure of justice. Without profound political and economic change, he argues, there can be no effective global environmental action, no real effort to save the planet.
Book Synopsis Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Culture by : Luigi Manca
Download or read book Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Culture written by Luigi Manca and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-24 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of essays about the media, the environment, and the whole of humanity at the brink of extinction. As the demands of overpopulation and of an unsustainable consumer economy dry up existing natural resources and destroy vital ecosystems that we need to survive, the corporate-controlled media saturate worldwide audiences with a barrage of hypnotic images and narratives to stimulate over-consumption and to distract us from the consequences of rampant consumerism, while remaining silent about the systematic destruction of the environment and our future. Academicians from the across the sciences, the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities engage in an interdisciplinary discussion informed by a vision of an interconnected humanity and focused on the role of the media in forging public discourse. Contributors to the collection argue that today’s media are failing humanity. Rather than providing pictures of reality on which the world’s citizens can act, the corporate-controlled media are widely used as instruments of commercial and political propaganda, creating an immense web of images and narratives that their creators know to be not true–-fabrications designed to sell, to manipulate, in a sense to enslave worldwide audiences. At the core of the discussion in this book is a utopian vision of one unified humanity—billions of people whose destinies and dreams are imbricated and interdependent, and who share the same world, the same habitats. It is a vision of a world that cherishes diversity but is also united—a world where our differences are no longer a cause for conflict and where separate countries or separate ethnic or religious communities no longer have to compete or wage war to exploit available resources. As extensions of humans, the media can be instruments of salvation instead of destruction, liberation instead of oppression. But first, we must recognize the challenges we face.
Book Synopsis What Will Work by : Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Download or read book What Will Work written by Kristin Shrader-Frechette and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Will Work makes a rigorous and compelling case that energy efficiencies and renewable energy-and not nuclear fission or "clean coal"-are the most effective, cheapest, and equitable solutions to the pressing problem of climate change.
Book Synopsis Counterculture Green by : Andrew G. Kirk
Download or read book Counterculture Green written by Andrew G. Kirk and published by Goodman Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many, it was more than a publication: it was a way of life. The Whole Earth Catalog billed itself as "Access to Tools, " and it grew from a Bay Area blip to a national phenomenon catering to hippies, do-it-yourselfers, and anyone interested in self-sufficiency independent of mainstream America (now known as "living off the grid"). In recovering the history of the Catalog's unique brand of environmentalism, historian Kirk recounts how Stewart Brand and the Point Foundation promoted a philosophy of pragmatic environmentalism that celebrated technological achievement, human ingenuity, and sustainable living. Kirk shows us that Whole Earth was more than a mere counterculture fad. At a time when many of these ideas were seen as heretical to a predominantly wilderness-based movement, it became a critical forum for environmental alternatives and a model for how complicated ecological ideas could be presented in a hopeful and even humorous way.--From publisher description.
Book Synopsis Gardens and Human Agency in the Anthropocene by : Maria Paula Diogo
Download or read book Gardens and Human Agency in the Anthropocene written by Maria Paula Diogo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-26 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume discusses gardens as designed landscapes of mediation between nature and culture, embodying different levels of human control over wilderness, defining specific rules for this confrontation and staging different forms of human dominance. The contributing authors focus on ways of rethinking the garden and its role in contemporary society, using it as a crossover platform between nature, science and technology. Drawing upon their diverse fields of research, including History of Science and Technology, Environmental Studies, Gardens and Landscape Studies, Urban Studies, and Visual and Artistic Studies, the authors unveil various entanglements woven in the past between nature and culture, and probe the potential of alternative epistemologies to escape the predicament of fatalistic dystopias that often revolve around the Anthropocene debate. This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental and landscape history, the history of science and technology, historical geography, and the environmental humanities.
Book Synopsis The Enemies of Progress by : Austin Williams
Download or read book The Enemies of Progress written by Austin Williams and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2016-12-02 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics. It is a malign philosophy of misanthropy, low aspirations and restraint. This book argues for a destruction of the mantra of sustainability, removing its unthinking status as orthodoxy, and for the reinstatement of the notions of development, progress, experimentation and ambition in its place. Al Gore insists that the ‘debate is over', while musician K.T. Tunstall, spokesperson for ‘Global Cool', a campaign to get stars to minimize their carbon footprint, says ‘so many people are getting involved that it is becoming really quite uncool not to be involved’. This book will say that it might not be cool, but it is imperative to argue against the moralizing of politics so that we can start to unpick the contemporary world of restrictive, sustainable practices.
Book Synopsis The Plot to Save the Planet by : Brian Dumaine
Download or read book The Plot to Save the Planet written by Brian Dumaine and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2008-06-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American entrepreneurs, corporate tycoons, and financiers are plotting what they do best—creating new industries that change the world and making billions in the process—a plot that will ultimately save the planet. The Plot to Save the Planet is an illuminating and inspiring look at the “conspiracy” to make green technology the Silicon Valley of the twenty-first century—the creator of massive numbers of jobs and huge amounts of wealth. Suddenly, the ugly mudslinging between environmentalists and big business has abated, and these two previously opposed forces are now strange bedfellows in a race to head off climate change. How is this new frontier being shaped? Brian Dumaine is your guide in this intriguing look into the very near future filled with colorful and informative stories about the entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate mavericks who are managing to pull off the feat of combining economic growth and environmental protection to battle global warming. You’ll read about: • The savvy investors: Why Warren Buffett is investing heavily in wind power; and why John Doerr, the venture capitalist and early backer of Google, is saying that “green tech is bigger than the Internet and could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.” • The cars of the future: The competitively priced plug-in hybrids that will get 60 miles to the gallon, and the battle being waged by fifteen start-ups competing to capture the electric car market. • The fuels without fossils: New sources of energy from plants such as prairie grass and algae that could capture a big chunk of the $300 billion U.S. wholesale gasoline market. • The corporate mavericks: Companies such as Duke Energy and GE who are creating the low-carbon business models of the future, as well as cleaner ways to provide our power needs. • The energy-miser homes and buildings: The new Bank of America Tower in New York City and the green low- and middle-income homes being constructed by visionaries who were told it couldn’t be done and still be affordable. • The “thin film” solar energy: How it is making the cost of heating a home comparable to traditional methods without emitting greenhouse gas. Plenty of obstacles still exist—among them resistance from the rich and powerful owners of the world’s oil supply, developing nations such as China with their reliance on coal, and an American public reluctant to give up their McMansions, SUVs, and extreme air-conditioning. But the battle cry has been sounded. The green overhaul of the utility, energy, construction, shipping, and automobile industries is well on its way and—contrary to prevailing fears—the ultimate solutions will sustain the environment without demanding huge sacrifices to our contemporary comforts and lifestyles.
Download or read book Atomic America written by Todd Tucker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 3, 1961, nuclear reactor SL-1 exploded in rural Idaho, spreading radioactive contamination over thousands of acres and killing three men: John Byrnes, Richard McKinley, and Richard Legg. The Army blamed "human error" and a sordid love triangle. Though it has been overshadowed by the accident at Three Mile Island, SL-1 is the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in American history, and it holds serious lessons for a nation poised to embrace nuclear energy once again. Historian Todd Tucker, who first heard the rumors about the Idaho Falls explosion as a trainee in the Navy's nuclear program, suspected there was more to the accident than the rumors suggested. Poring over hundreds of pages of primary sources and interviewing the surviving players led him to a tale of shocking negligence and subterfuge. The Army and its contractors had deliberately obscured the true causes of this terrible accident, the result of poor engineering as much as uncontrolled passions. A bigger story opened up before him about the frantic race for nuclear power among the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force -- a race that started almost the moment the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), where the meltdown occurred, had been a proving ground where engineers, generals, and admirals attempted to make real the Atomic Age dream of unlimited power. Some of their most ambitious plans bore fruit -- like that of the nation's unofficial nuclear patriarch, Admiral Rickover, whose "true submarine," the USS Nautilus, would forever change naval warfare. Others, like the Air Force's billion dollar quest for a nuclear-powered airplane, never came close. The Army's ultimate goal was to construct small, portable reactors to power the Arctic bases that functioned as sentinels against a Soviet sneak attack. At the height of its program, the Army actually constructed a nuclear powered city inside a glacier in Greenland. But with the meltdown in Idaho came the end of the Army's program and the beginning of the Navy's longstanding monopoly on military nuclear power. The dream of miniaturized, portable nuclear plants died with McKinley, Legg, and Byrnes. The demand for clean energy has revived the American nuclear power industry. Chronic instability in the Middle East and fears of global warming have united an unlikely coalition of conservative isolationists and fretful environmentalists, all of whom are fighting for a buildup of the emission-free power source that is already quietly responsible for nearly 20 percent of the American energy supply. More than a hundred nuclear plants generate electricity in the United States today. Thirty-two new reactors are planned. All are descendants of SL-1. With so many plants in operation, and so many more on the way, it is vitally important to examine the dangers of poor design, poor management, and the idea that a nuclear power plant can be inherently safe. Tucker sets the record straight in this fast-paced narrative history, advocating caution and accountability in harnessing this feared power source.
Book Synopsis Supporting Environmental Stability Through Ecotourism by : Abrar, Muhammad
Download or read book Supporting Environmental Stability Through Ecotourism written by Abrar, Muhammad and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2024-02-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leisure travel is more widespread and accessible than ever before, but the world faces the growing problem of its unintended consequences. The desire to explore the globe has led to an increase in tourism, with billions of individuals traveling to various destinations, fueling economic growth and infrastructure development. However, it has brought forth many challenges that demand our attention, including the unsustainable consumption of energy, environmental degradation, climate change, and the excessive cost of maintaining tourist hotspots. The high influx of visitors to many destinations has left more than just a negative imprint upon nature, it has also disrupted the daily lives and livelihoods of residents. To address these pressing issues, Supporting Environmental Stability Through Ecotourism presents one possible solution in the form of a comprehensive book on ecotourism and sustainable tourism. It delves deep into the transformative power of ecotourism, offering insights into its economic, social, and cultural impacts. This book provides a holistic model for ecotourism adaptation and explores its potential as a sustainable alternative to traditional tourism. By examining the consumption patterns of eco-tourists and providing theoretical and literature support, this book offers valuable resources for prospective research in the field.
Book Synopsis The Rough Guide to Climate Change by : Robert Henson
Download or read book The Rough Guide to Climate Change written by Robert Henson and published by Rough Guides UK. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rough Guide to Climate Change gives the complete picture of the single biggest issue facing the planet. Cutting a swathe through scientific research and political debate, this completely updated 3rd edition lays out the facts and assesses the options-global and personal-for dealing with the threat of a warming world. The guide looks at the evolution of our atmosphere over the last 4.5 billion years and what computer simulations of climate change reveal about our past, present and future. This updated edition includes scientific findings that have emerged since the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as background on recent controversies and an updated politics section that reflects post-Copenhagen developments. Discover how rising temperatures and sea levels, plus changes to extreme weather patterns, are already affecting life around the world. The Rough Guide to Climate Change unravels how governments, scientists and engineers plan to tackle the problem and includes information on what you can do to help.
Book Synopsis The Ted Book - A Video Book by : Jody Shackelford
Download or read book The Ted Book - A Video Book written by Jody Shackelford and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-07-14 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If your mobile device had a baby with print books, this would be it. A book full of online videos you can watch by scanning a QR Code - it gives a new meaning to the idea of the Video Book. The TED Book is a collection of over 1,000 TED Talks. You can access each one with the flip of a page and the snap of a smartphone. This 322 page book uses QR Codes to enable readers to browse all the videos in the TED collection and access them instantly. We are not charging for the content here - TED is free, you are buying the QR Books concept and execution. It is our dream at Newspaper Next that the world embraces this concept of blending print with the web and accessing our cloud based assets from the printed page. Books do not have to be left behind, their are qualities of the printed page can not be experienced through a device alone. Also, books and technology do not have to be enemies but rather with the rise of QR Codes, complementary tools for entertainment and education.
Book Synopsis Whole Earth Discipline by : Stewart Brand
Download or read book Whole Earth Discipline written by Stewart Brand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-28 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An icon of the environmental movement outlines a provocative approach for reclaiming our planet According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization?half the world?s population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury?is altering humanity?s land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world?s dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth?s resources. Whole Earth Discipline shatters a number of myths and presents counterintuitive observations on why cities are actually greener than countryside, how nuclear power is the future of energy, and why genetic engineering is the key to crop and land management. With a combination of scientific rigor and passionate advocacy, Brand shows us exactly where the sources of our dilemmas lie and offers a bold and inventive set of policies and solutions for creating a more sustainable society. In the end, says Brand, the environmental movement must become newly responsive to fast-moving science and take up the tools and discipline of engineering. We have to learn how to manage the planet?s global-scale natural infrastructure with as light a touch as possible and as much intervention as necessary.
Book Synopsis Earth-Friendly Energy by : Ron Fridell
Download or read book Earth-Friendly Energy written by Ron Fridell and published by Lerner Publications. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the causes of current environmental problems, particularly pollution, and discusses new trends, technology, and solutions.
Book Synopsis The Slow Boil by : Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria
Download or read book The Slow Boil written by Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street food vendors are both a symbol and a scourge of Mumbai: cheap roadside snacks are enjoyed by all, but the people who make them dance on a razor's edge of legality. While neighborhood associations want the vendors off cluttered sidewalks, many Mumbaikers appreciate the convenient bargains they offer. In The Slow Boil, Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria draws on his long-term fieldwork with these vendors to make sense of the paradoxes within the city and, thus, to create a better understanding of urban space in general. Much urban studies literature paints street vendors either as oppressed and marginalized victims or as inventive premoderns. In contrast, Anjaria acknowledges that diverse political, economic, historic, and symbolic processes create contradictions in the vendors' everday lives, like their illegality and proximity to the state, and their insecurity and permanence. Mumbai's disorderly sidewalks reflect the simmering tensions over livelihood, democracy, and rights that are central to the city but have long been overlooked. In The Slow Boil, these issues are not subsumed into a larger framework, but are explored on their own terms.
Book Synopsis Fewer, Richer, Greener by : Laurence B. Siegel
Download or read book Fewer, Richer, Greener written by Laurence B. Siegel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the world has become much better and why optimism is abundantly justified Why do so many people fear the future? Is their concern justified, or can we look forward to greater wealth and continued improvement in the way we live? Our world seems to be experiencing stagnant economic growth, climatic deterioration, dwindling natural resources, and an unsustainable level of population growth. The world is doomed, they argue, and there are just too many problems to overcome. But is this really the case? In Fewer, Richer, Greener, author Laurence B. Siegel reveals that the world has improved—and will continue to improve—in almost every dimension imaginable. This practical yet lighthearted book makes a convincing case for having gratitude for today’s world and optimism about the bountiful world of tomorrow. Life has actually improved tremendously. We live in the safest, most prosperous time in all human history. Whatever the metric—food, health, longevity, education, conflict—it is demonstrably true that right now is the best time to be alive. The recent, dramatic slowing in global population growth continues to spread prosperity from the developed to the developing world. Technology is helping billions of people rise above levels of mere subsistence. This technology of prosperity is cumulative and rapidly improving: we use it to solve problems in ways that would have be unimaginable only a few decades ago. An optimistic antidote for pessimism and fear, this book: Helps to restore and reinforce our faith in the future Documents and explains how global changes impact our present and influence our future Discusses the costs and unforeseen consequences of some of the changes occurring in the modern world Offers engaging narrative, accurate data and research, and an in-depth look at the best books on the topic by leading thinkers Traces the history of economic progress and explores its consequences for human life around the world Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance is a must-read for anyone who wishes to regain hope for the present and wants to build a better future.
