In this collection of the best and most-requested articles from the Worldwatch Institute's award-winning magazine, "World Watch", the authors focus on such topics as energy and climate, the effects of water scarcity, the food prospect, oceans in distress, and consumerism and the future of the earth.
This book focuses on environmental issues and conflicts in the United States, with readings that offer a range of personal and academic perspectives, as well as historic and contemporary voices. The essays, articles, and fictional selections in the book present ... arguments for ways that we can use, conserve, preserve, and find pleasure in our natural heritage.
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.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LEARNING READER, ENVIRONMENT: OUR IMPACT ON THE EARTH is part of a ground-breaking new National Geographic Learning series that brings learning to life by featuring compelling images, media, and text from National Geographic. The National Geographic articles gathered in this reader offer students insight in to environmental concerns worldwide. Pre- and Post- reading pedagogy accompanies each article to reinforce reading skills and comprehension. The National Geographic Learning Reading Series connects current topics with reading and writing skills, and can be used in conjunction with any standard texts or online material available for your courses.
The first of its kind, this anthology of eighty international primary literary texts—poems, short stories, personal essays, testimonials, activist statements, and group-authored visions—illuminates Environmental Justice as a concept and a movement worldwide in a way that is accessible to students, scholars, and general readers. Also included are historical selections that ground contemporary pieces in a continuum of activist concern for the earth and human justice, a much-needed but seldom available perspective. Arts and humanities are crucial in the ongoing effort to achieve an ecologically sustainable and just world. Works of the human imagination provide analyses, articulations of experience, and positive visions of the future that no amount of statistics, data, charts, or graphs can offer because literature speaks not only to the intellect but also to our emotions. Creative literary work, which records human experience both past and present, has the power to warn, to persuade, and to inspire. Each is critical in the shared struggle for Environmental Justice.
"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.
A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollution—as well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth ofRethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published. At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions. Praise for A People's Curriculum for the Earth "To really confront the climate crisis, we need to think differently, build differently, and teach differently. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is an educator’s toolkit for our times." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "This volume is a marvelous example of justice in ALL facets of our lives—civil, social, educational, economic, and yes, environmental. Bravo to the Rethinking Schools team for pulling this collection together and making us think more holistically about what we mean when we talk about justice." — Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Bigelow and Swinehart have created a critical resource for today’s young people about humanity’s responsibility for the Earth. This book can engender the shift in perspective so needed at this point on the clock of the universe." — Gregory Smith, Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, co-author with David Sobel of Place- and Community-based Education in Schools
Environment and Society connects the core themes of environmental studies to the urgent issues and debates of the twenty-first century. In an era marked by climate change, rapid urbanization, and resource scarcity, environmental studies has emerged as a crucial arena of study. Assembling canonical and contemporary texts, this volume presents a systematic survey of concepts and issues central to the environment in society, such as: social mobilization on behalf of environmental objectives; the relationships between human population, economic growth and stresses on the planet’s natural resources; debates about the relative effects of collective and individual action; and unequal distribution of the social costs of environmental degradation. Organized around key themes, with each section featuring questions for debate and suggestions for further reading, the book introduces students to the history of environmental studies, and demonstrates how the field’s interdisciplinary approach uniquely engages the essential issues of the present.