The Decline of Nature
Author: Gilbert F. LaFreniere
Publisher: Oak Savanna Publishing
Published: 2012-07
Total Pages: 481
ISBN-13: 0974866857
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The Retreat of the Elephants
Author: Mark Elvin
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2004-03-10
Total Pages: 592
ISBN-13: 0300133537
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe eminent China scholar delivers a landmark study of Chinese culture’s relationship to the natural environment across thousands of years of history. Spanning the three millennia for which there are written records, The Retreat of the Elephants is the first comprehensive environmental history of China. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape. China scholar and historian Mark Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated elephant habitats; the destruction of most of the forests; the impacts of war on the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through gigantic water-control systems. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time. Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China’s present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.
The Balance of Nature and Human Impact
Author: Klaus Rohde
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-02-14
Total Pages: 431
ISBN-13: 1107019613
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores equilibrium and non-equilibrium in undisturbed and disturbed ecological systems, examining how human activities affect the balance/imbalance of nature.
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2012-09-25
Total Pages: 834
ISBN-13: 0143122010
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFaced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.
Brink of Extinction
Author: Eric Braun
Publisher: Compass Point Books
Published: 2020-08
Total Pages: 65
ISBN-13: 0756566193
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The Decline of Natural Law
Author: Stuart Banner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 265
ISBN-13: 0197556493
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe law of nature -- The common law -- The adoption of written constitutions -- The separation of law and religion -- The explosion in law publishing -- The two-sidedness of natural law -- The decline of natural law and custom --Substitutes for natural law -- Echoes of natural law.
Sea Change
Author: Richard Girling
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-05-31
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 1446486818
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWe have a special relationship with the sea. It is the single most powerful driver of our economy, our lifestyle and our politics. It affects what we eat, how we use the land, how we relate to our neighbours, how we travel, even the thickness of our coats. Yet we go on treating it, with childlike faith and unreason, as if we imagine it to be infinitely resourceful and endlessly forgiving. Sea Change addresses such issues as pollution by sewage, nuclear waste and dumping at sea; extinction of fish stocks; destruction of marine environment, impacts of climate change, coastal erosion and rising sea levels; decline of our seaside resorts; the failure of the 'integrated transport policy';and smuggling. In each case Girling questions: how did the situation arise? What are the consequences? What should be done? And what will happen when we fail? His unique voice blends horror, humour and 'just fancy that'; sifting for solutions in the sands, he is utterly compelling, entertaining and inspirational.
Shrinking the Earth
Author: Donald Worster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-01-08
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0190265035
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe discovery of the Americas around 1500 AD was an extraordinary watershed in human experience. It gave rise to the modern period of human ecology, a phenomenon global in scope that set in motion profound changes in almost every society on earth. This new period, which saw the depletion of the lands of the New World, proved tragic for some, triumphant for others, and powerfully affecting for all. In this work, acclaimed environmental historian Donald Worster takes a global view in his examination of the ways in which complex issues of worldwide abundance and scarcity have shaped American society and behavior over three centuries. Looking at the limits nature imposes on human ambitions, he questions whether America today is in the midst of a shift from a culture of abundance to a culture of limits--and whether American consumption has become reliant on the global South. Worster engages with key political, economic, and environmental thinkers while presenting his own interpretation of the role of capitalism and government in issues of wealth, abundance, and scarcity. Acknowledging the earth's agency throughout human history, Shrinking the Earth offers a compelling explanation of how we have arrived where we are and a hopeful way forward on a planet that is no longer as large as it once was.
The End of Nature
Author: Bill McKibben
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-09-03
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 0804153442
DOWNLOAD EBOOKReissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
Questioning Collapse
Author: Patricia A. McAnany
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 0521515726
DOWNLOAD EBOOKQuestioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies - past and present - collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from Chaco Canyon in the American southwest, the crisis and resilience of Lowland Maya kingship, and other societies that purportedly "collapsed." Collectively, these essays demonstrate that resilience in the face of societal crises, rather than collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the earliest civilizations to the present. Scrutinizing the notion that Euro-American colonial triumphs were an accident of geography, Questioning Collapse also critically examines the complex historical relationship between race and political labels of societal "success" and "failure."
