Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion examines the complex nexus of issues at play in the developing world's use of crude cookstoves — factors such as poverty, energy, environment, and gender inequality. This multidisciplinary work aims to prompt new awareness of a wicked problem: how families can depend on, and be plagued by, crude cookstoves.
Energy weaves the tapestry of our lives, and it does so in more ways than we usually recognize. While it is clear that it powers our homes, airplanes, and factories, its overwhelming influence often goes without notice in other areas, from the heartbreak of poverty to the motivation for war. While maintaining its availability has the potential to create jobs and contribute to competitive economies, nonrenewable energy sources are scarring our landscapes, polluting our air, and fouling our water. Understanding how we use energy and what we are willing to do to maintain our access to it can help us prepare for the complex and daunting challenges that linger as we look for alternatives. In The Thread of Energy, Martin J. Pasqualetti homes in on this vital driver of human actions and decisions. He exposes the impact of energy according to multiple scales of measurement and assessment, from everyday applications to global entanglements. The book traces our increasing dependence on Earth's nonrenewable energy resources by comparing lifestyle changes throughout history. Pasqualetti showcases the many ways energy infiltrates communication methods in all its forms (e.g., print, visuals, digital, etc.). The final chapters detail various approaches used by democratic societies looking to lessen their energy usage, including the critical importance of environmentally conscious policymakers. The Thread of Energy treats energy as a social issue with a technical component, rather than the other way around.
Inside small homes and huts throughout the developing world, billions of people burn fires in rudimentary stoves to prepare their meals and heat their homes. Besides providing heat, these stoves also release large amounts of dense black soot, which has a staggeringly negative impact on the health, ecosystems, and advancement of the poor in the developing world. Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion examines the complex nexus of issues at play in the developing world's use of crude cookstoves -- factors such as poverty, energy, environment, and gender inequality. Melding succinct prose, scientific synthesis, and unforgettable images of communities in rural India, this multidisciplinary work aims to prompt new awareness of a wicked problem: how families can depend on, and be plagued by, crude cookstoves. What is clear in this visual and scientific treatise is the fact this is not simply a problem of rudimentary stoves; it is a symptom of energy insecurity. The images, narratives, and illustrated scientific data make this book an urgent call to better understand and address energy poverty and household air pollution around the globe.
Crowded, hot, subject to violent swings in climate, with a government unable or unwilling to face the most vital challenges, the rich and poor increasingly living in worlds apart; for most of the world, this picture is of a possible future. For India, it is the very real present. In this lyrical exploration of life, loss, and survival, Meera Subramanian travels in search of the ordinary people and microenterprises determined to revive India's ravaged natural world: an engineer-turned-farmer brings organic food to Indian plates; villagers resuscitate a river run dry; cook stove designers persist on the quest for a smokeless fire; biologists bring vultures back from the brink of extinction; and in Bihar, one of India's most impoverished states, a bold young woman teaches adolescents the fundamentals of sexual health. While investigating these five environmental challenges, Subramanian discovers the stories that renew hope for a nation with the potential to lead India and the planet into a sustainable and prosperous future.
Inside small homes and huts throughout the developing world, billions of people burn fires in rudimentary stoves to prepare their meals and heat their homes. Besides providing heat, these stoves also release large amounts of dense black soot, which has a staggeringly negative impact on the health, ecosystems, and advancement of the poor in the developing world. Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion examines the complex nexus of issues at play in the developing world's use of crude cookstoves -- factors such as poverty, energy, environment, and gender inequality. Melding succinct prose, scientific synthesis, and unforgettable images of communities in rural India, this multidisciplinary work aims to prompt new awareness of a wicked problem: how families can depend on, and be plagued by, crude cookstoves. What is clear in this visual and scientific treatise is the fact this is not simply a problem of rudimentary stoves; it is a symptom of energy insecurity. The images, narratives, and illustrated scientific data make this book an urgent call to better understand and address energy poverty and household air pollution around the globe.
Imagine fuel without fear. No climate change. No oil spills, no dead coalminers, no dirty air, no devastated lands, no lost wildlife. No energy poverty. No oil-fed wars, tyrannies, or terrorists. No leaking nuclear wastes or spreading nuclear weapons. Nothing to run out. Nothing to cut off. Nothing to worry about. Just energy abundance, benign and affordable, for all, forever. That richer, fairer, cooler, safer world is possible, practical, even profitable-because saving and replacing fossil fuels now works better and costs no more than buying and burning them. Reinventing Fire shows how business-motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy-can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later beyond natural gas as well. Authored by a world leader on energy and innovation, the book maps a robust path for integrating real, here-and-now, comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies.Popular in tone and rooted in applied hope, Reinventing Fire shows how smart businesses are creating a potent, global, market-driven, and explosively growing movement to defossilize fuels. It points readers to trillions in savings over the next 40 years, and trillions more in new business opportunities.Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, this major contribution by world leaders in energy innovation offers startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.Pragmatic citizens today are more interested in outcomes than motives. Reinventing Fire answers this trans-ideological call. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, its startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.
National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time. On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today. This e-book includes a sample chapter of SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER.
The study of nature is a complex science involving many different fields from geology and meteorology to biology, zoology, and botany. This complexity indicates nature’s broad scope of impact. It is at once beautiful and dangerous, displaying power beyond human control. An understanding of the basic principles and concepts of the study of nature is therefore both enriching and practical. In The Handbook of Nature, authors Frank R. Spellman and Joni Price-Bayer provide a comprehensive guide to the study of nature in terms the layperson can grasp easily. This accessible reference work is for the non-specialist looking for quick, accurate information on all aspects of the study of nature. The handbook is arranged thematically for a logical and user-friendly progression through the material. It includes chapters on the earth’s structure and landforms, the atmosphere and weather, water and water sources, and the many different forms of life from single-celled organisms to complex vertebrates. Along with basic natural scientific principles, the authors look closely at the consequences of human interactions with the environment we inhabit. This reference concludes with a glossary and index, and each chapter provides further resources and recommended reading. It is an essential tool for students and professionals alike.
The world runs on petroleum. This resource is crucial to modern society, yet it threatens the environment and may not be available much longer. The future of petroleum will determine the future of the planet. What will that look like?