America's Environmental Report Card, second edition

America's Environmental Report Card, second edition

Author: Harvey Blatt

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-02-25

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0262515911

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An accessible overview of the most important environmental issues facing the United States, with new and updated material. Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in both scientists' and politicians' ability to solve environmental problems. In America's Environmental Report Card, Harvey Blatt sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. Blatt has thoroughly updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting); infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject); the leaching of garbage buried in landfills; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter); controversies over nuclear energy; the increasing pace of climate change; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems—workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, Blatt argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it—in fact, we can't afford not to.


American Politics and the Environment, Second Edition

American Politics and the Environment, Second Edition

Author: Byron W. Daynes

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1438459343

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Changing our environmental policy has been at the forefront of many political discussions. But how can we make this change come about? In American Politics and the Environment, Second Edition, Byron W. Daynes, Glen Sussman and Jonathan P. West argue it is critical that we must understand the politics of environmental decision making and how political actors operate within political institutions. Blending behavioral and institutional approaches, each chapter combines discussion of an institution along with sidebars focusing on a particular environmental topic as well as a personal profile of a key decision maker. A central focus of this second edition is the emergence of global climate change as a key issue. Although the scientific community can provide research findings to policy makers, politics can create conflicts, tensions, and delays in the crafting of effective and necessary environmental policy responses. Daynes, Sussman, and West help us understand the role of politics in the policy making process and why institutional players such as the president, Congress, and interest groups succeed or fail in responding to important environmental challenges. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to Knowledge Unlatched—an initiative that provides libraries and institutions with a centralized platform to support OA collections and from leading publishing houses and OA initiatives. Learn more at the Knowledge Unlatched website at: https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/7128.


Environmental Planning Handbook

Environmental Planning Handbook

Author: Tom Daniels

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-08

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13: 1351178415

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Environmental protection is a global issue. But most of the action is happening at the local level. How can communities keep their air clean, their water pure, and their people and property safe from climate and environmental hazards? Newly updated, The Environmental Planning Handbook gives local governments, nonprofits, and citizens the guidance they need to create an action plan they can implement now. It’s essential reading for a post-Katrina, post-Sandy world.


Energy and Empire

Energy and Empire

Author: George A. Gonzalez

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1438442955

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What set the United States on the path to developing commercial nuclear energy in the 1950s, and what led to the seeming demise of that industry in the late 1970s? Why, in spite of the depletion of fossil fuels and the obvious dangers of global warming, has the United States moved so slowly toward adopting alternatives? In Energy and Empire, George A. Gonzalez presents a clear and concise argument demonstrating that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals. At the same time, these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation. While researchers have blamed safety concerns and other factors as helping to arrest the expansion of domestic nuclear power plant construction, Gonzalez points to an entirely different set of motivations stemming from the loss of America’s domination/control of the enrichment of nuclear fuel. Once foreign countries could enrich their own fuel, civilian nuclear power ceased to be a lever the United States could use to economically/politically dominate other nations. Instead, it became a major concern relating to nuclear weapons proliferation.


Energy, the Modern State, and the American World System

Energy, the Modern State, and the American World System

Author: George A. Gonzalez

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1438469829

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In this provocative and original study, George A. Gonzalez argues that the relationship between energy and the state, as well as global politics, has become more and more deeply intertwined, reaching something of a crescendo with the global hegemony of Pax Americana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He presents a clear and concise case for viewing the modern state as the collaborative and affirmative union of capitalism and political authority in a setting where energy resources, be it wind, coal, or oil, provide the basis for the relatively inexpensive projection of political power. More broadly, energy serves as the foundation of the modern economy and, because of this, a prime function of the modern state is ensuring access to cheap, reliable sources to power and grow the economy. Historically, energy is more of a zero-sum resource than capital, markets, labor, or technology, and thus is a greater source of geopolitical tension and violence. Energy politics, and by extension international politics is, moreover, shaped by domestic corporate elites, especially those within the United States.


Green Buildings

Green Buildings

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Frontier Technologies for Infrastructures Engineering

Frontier Technologies for Infrastructures Engineering

Author: Alfredo H.S. Ang

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2009-04-21

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0415498759

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An exclusive collection of papers introducing current and frontier technologies of special significance to the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of civil infrastructures. This volume is intended for professional and practicing engineers involved with infrastructure systems such as roadways, bridges, buildings, power generating and distribution systems, water resources, environmental facilities, and other civil infrastructure systems. Contributions are by internationally renowned and eminent experts, and cover: 1. Life-cycle cost and performance; 2.Reliability engineering; 3. Risk assessment and management; 4. Optimization methods and optimal design; 5. Role of maintenance, inspection, and repair; 6. Structural and system health monitoring; 7. Durability, fatigue and fracture; 8. Corrosion technology for metal and R/C structures; 9. Concrete materials and concrete structures.