Eco-Economy
Eco-Economy

Author: Lester R. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1134205260

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In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the view that the sun revolved around the earth, arguing instead that the earth revolved around the sun. His paper led to a revolution in thinking. In Lester Brown's brilliant and invigorating account of the industrial economy, he shows how a rethink of its fossil fuel-based, throwaway ethos is necessary to ensure that it works with, not against, the natural environment. The issue now is whether the environment is part of the economy or the economy is part of the environment. Brown argues the latter, pointing out that treating the environment as part of the economy has produced an economy that is destroying its natural support systems. One of the foremost experts on the new economic opportunities, Brown shows the vast economic potential and environmental gains that exist from eliminating the waste and destruction of current consumption. He describes how the global economy can be restructured to make it compatible with the earth's ecosystem so that economic progress can continue, with high standards of living and secure employment for all, while conserving resources and restoring the environment. In the new economy, wind farms replace coal mines, hydrogen-powered fuel cells replace internal combustion engines, and cities are designed for people, not cars. Eco-Economy is a map of how to get from here to there. It is an essential guide to the economy of the 21st century and will be compelling reading for business readers and environmentalists alike looking for ways to build a better future.

Enough Is Enough
Enough Is Enough

Author: Rob Dietz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0415820936

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This powerful book sets out arguments and an agenda of policy proposals for achieving a sustainable and prosperous, but non-growing economy, also known as a steady-state economy. The authors describe a plan for solving the major social and environmental problems which face us today on a finite planet with a rapidly growing population.

The Earth Policy Reader
The Earth Policy Reader

Author: Lester R. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1134208413

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In this study, the award-winning environmental analyst Lester Brown and his colleagues have charted progress in building the eco-economy - an economy in harmony with the Earth's ecosystems, not undermining them. This edition of the biennial reader highlights 12 key trends, from population growing by 80 million annually, to ice melting, to the boom in use of solar cells. It explains, for example, why wind-generated electricity is emerging as the foundation of the new post-fossil fuel energy economy. It also specifically investigates China's desertification problem, the issues surrounding food production, and the challenge of controlling climate change. Drawing on research and analysis by the Earth Policy Institute, the reader monitors the shift from the old economy to the new.

Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature

Author: Peter Victor

Publisher: ANU E Press

Published: 2013-12-03

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 192186205X

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The world has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a world relatively empty of humans and their artifacts. We now live in the “Anthropocene,” era in a full world where humans are dramatically altering our ecological life-support system. Our traditional economic concepts and models were developed in an empty world. If we are to create sustainable prosperity, if we seek “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities,” we are going to need a new vision of the economy and its relationship to the rest of the world that is better adapted to the new conditions we face. We are going to need an economics that respects planetary boundaries, that recognizes the dependence of human well-being on social relations and fairness, and that recognizes that the ultimate goal is real, sustainable human well-being, not merely growth of material consumption. This new economics recognizes that the economy is embedded in a society and culture that are themselves embedded in an ecological life-support system, and that the economy cannot grow forever on this finite planet. In this report, we discuss the need to focus more directly on the goal of sustainable human well-being rather than merely GDP growth. This includes protecting and restoring nature, achieving social and intergenerational fairness (including poverty alleviation), stabilizing population, and recognizing the significant nonmarket contributions to human well-being from natural and social capital. To do this, we need to develop better measures of progress that go well beyond GDP and begin to measure human well-being and its sustainability more directly.

Plan B
Plan B

Author: Lester Russell Brown

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780393325232

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A bold new plan for those concerned about rising temperatures, population projections, and spreading water scarcity.

Cents and Sustainability
Cents and Sustainability

Author: Cheryl Desha

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-23

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1136532560

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Cents and Sustainability is a clear-sighted response to the 1987 call by Dr Gro Brundtland in Our Common Future to achieve a new era of economic growth that is 'forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable'. The Brundtland Report argued that not only was it achievable, but that it was an urgent imperative in order to achieve a transition to sustainable development while significantly reducing poverty and driving 'clean and green' investment. With some still arguing for significantly slowing economic growth in order to reduce pressures on the environment, this new book, Cents and Sustainability, shows that it is possible to reconcile the need for economic growth and environmental sustainability through a strategy to decouple economic growth from environmental pressures, combined with a renewed commitment to achieve significant environmental restoration and poverty reduction. Beginning with a brief overview of some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, the book then explains 'decoupling theory', overviews a number of factors that can undermine and even block efforts to decouple in both developed and developing countries, and then discusses a number of key considerations to assist the development of national 'decoupling strategies'. The book then focuses on presenting evidence to support greater action, not just on climate change, but also on decoupling economic growth from the loss of biodiversity and the deterioration of natural systems, freshwater extraction, waste production, and air pollution. In the lead up to the 2012 United Nations Earth Summit and beyond, Cents and Sustainability will be a crucial guide to inform and assist nations to develop strategies to significantly reduce environmental pressures, strengthen their economy, create jobs and reduce poverty. 'I commend the team from The Natural Edge Project and their partners for undertaking to develop a response to 'Our Common Future' to mark its 20th anniversary.' Dr Gro Brundtland. Sequel to The Natural Advantage of Nations Published with The Natural Edge Project

Change the Story, Change the Future
Change the Story, Change the Future

Author: David C. Korten

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2015-02-02

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 162656292X

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The international bestselling author of When Corporations Rule the World shares a vital new vision for changing humanity’s self-destructive course. We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society have set us on a self-destructive path. In Change the Story, Change the Future, Korten offers a new story that lets us reimagine society and navigate the critical needs of our time. Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness, while inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a story he calls Sacred Life and Living Earth. It is grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being therefore depend on an economy that works in partnership with the Earth's community of life. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.

Ecovillages
Ecovillages

Author: Karen T. Litfin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-01-15

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0745681239

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In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/

World on the Edge
World on the Edge

Author: Lester Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-06-25

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 113654075X

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In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.