Harvesting the Biosphere
Harvesting the Biosphere

Author: Vaclav Smil

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-08-21

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0262528274

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An interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistoric hunting to modern energy production. The biosphere—the Earth's thin layer of life—dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapiens. In Harvesting the Biosphere, Vaclav Smil offers an interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistory to the present day. Smil examines all harvests—from prehistoric man's hunting of megafauna to modern crop production—and all uses of harvested biomass, including energy, food, and raw materials. Without harvesting of the biomass, Smil points out, there would be no story of human evolution and advancing civilization; but at the same time, the increasing extent and intensity of present-day biomass harvests are changing the very foundations of civilization's well-being. In his detailed and comprehensive account, Smil presents the best possible quantifications of past and current global losses in order to assess the evolution and extent of biomass harvests. Drawing on the latest work in disciplines ranging from anthropology to environmental science, Smil offers a valuable long-term, planet-wide perspective on human-caused environmental change.

The Biologist's Imagination
The Biologist's Imagination

Author: William Hoffman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0199974594

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"Scholars and policymakers alike agree that innovation in the biosciences is key to future growth. The field continues to shift and expand, and it is certainly changing the way people live their lives in a variety of ways. But despite the lion's share offederal research dollars being devoted to innovation in the biosciences, the field has yet to live up to its billing as a source of economic productivity and growth. With vast untapped potential to imagine and innovate in the biosciences, adaptation of the innovative model is needed. In The Biologist's Imagination, William Hoffman and Leo Furcht examine the history of innovation in the biosciences, tracing technological innovation from the late eighteenth century to the present and placing special emphasis on how and where technology evolves. Place is key to innovation, from the early industrial age to the rise of the biotechnology industry in the second half of the twentieth century. The book uses the distinct history of bioscientific innovation to discuss current trends as they relate to medicine, agriculture, biofuels, stem-cell research, neuroscience, and more. Ultimately, Hoffman and Furcht argue that, as things currently stand, we fall short in our efforts to innovate in the biosciences; our system of innovation is itself in need of innovation. It needs to adapt to the massive changes brought about by converging technologies, globalization in higher education as well as in finance, and increases in entrepreneurship. The Biologist's Imagination is both an analysis of past models for bioscience innovation and a forward-looking, original argument for how future models should be developed"--

Who Will Build the Ark?
Who Will Build the Ark?

Author: Benjamin Kunkel

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2023-06-27

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1839767480

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In Who Will Build the Ark?, leading radical thinkers debate left alternatives to runaway global heating, capitalist crisis and wider environmental breakdown, clarifying the stakes in today's key disputes between Green New Deal supporters and proponents of 'degrowth'. In a series of landmark texts first published by New Left Review, Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel discusses the possibility of an egalitarian, steady-state economy, while Robert Pollin warns against the worldwide slump 'degrowth' could bring and calls instead for a single-issue campaign - 2 per cent of global GDP dedicated to the switch to renewable energy - as the swiftest solution to the emissions crisis. Nancy Fraser envisages an eco-socialist exit from capitalism's multifold crises, while Troy Vettese advocates eco-austerity and half-earth rewilding. Lola Seaton draws out the strategic implications of these contested perspectives, in a set of unavoidable 'green questions'. In the realm of contemporary politics, Alyssa Battistoni writes on the dead-end of COP diplomacy, Cdric Durand asks whether energy shortages will derail the transition away from fossil fuels, and Thomas Meaney compares Green New Deal proposals to the pinched reality of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. The world's major powers accept the likelihood of dangerous climate change, yet seem incapable of averting it. Can radical green models generate the social leverage needed to do so? Or, as Mike Davis puts it: Who will build the Ark?

Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy
Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy

Author: Sally K. Fairfax

Publisher: CQ Press

Published: 2014-08-14

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 1483346552

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Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy provides the analytical connections showing readers how issues and actions are translated into public policies and persistent institutions for resolving or managing environmental conflict in the U.S. The guide highlights a complex decision-making cycle that requires the cooperation of government, business, and an informed citizenry to achieve a comprehensive approach to environmental protection. The book’s topical, operational, and relational essays address development of U.S. environmental policies, the federal agencies and public and private organizations that frame and administer environmental policies, and the challenges of balancing conservation and preservation against economic development, the ongoing debates related to turning environmental concerns into environmental management, and the role of the U.S. in international organizations that facilitate global environmental governance. Key Features: 30 essays by leading conservationists and scholars in the field investigate the fundamental political, social, and economic processes and forces driving policy decisions about the protection and future of the environment. Essential themes traced through the chapters include natural resource allocation and preservation, human health, rights of indigenous peoples, benefits of recycling, economic and other policy areas impacted by responses to green concerns, international cooperation, and immediate and long-term costs associated with environmental policy. The essays explore the impact made by key environmental policymakers, presidents, and politicians, as well as the topical issues that have influenced U.S. environmental public policy from the colonial period to the present day. A summary of regulatory agencies for environmental policy, a selected bibliography, and a thorough index are included. This must-have reference for political science and public policy students who seek to understand the forces that U.S. environmental policy is suitable for academic, public, high school, government, and professional libraries.

Socio-Metabolic Perspectives on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems
Socio-Metabolic Perspectives on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems

Author: Eva Fraňková

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 3319692364

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This book delves into diverse local food systems and critically assesses their ecological and societal benefits and trade-offs, their limits and opportunities for improving sustainability of food production, and framework conditions which either hinder or promote their development. More and more people with gradually meat heavier diets will demand growth in food production, whilst our increasingly industrialized and globalized agri-food system has already caused serious sustainability problems in the past. This calls for a change in the way we produce, distribute and consume food. A re-emerging debate on food security and food sovereignty seems to support this quest. But what are the promising alternatives to mainstream developments? Such a discussion regarding sustainability of local food systems requires a sound systemic understanding and thus invites a socio-metabolic reading of local cases by analyzing the nexus between material and energy flows as well as land and time use. This approach is needed to complement the so far mostly qualitatively-based local food studies. Applying socio-metabolic approaches to local food systems fosters a better understanding of promises and pitfalls for sustainable pathways in the future.

21st-Century Narratives of World History
21st-Century Narratives of World History

Author: R. Charles Weller

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-06

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 3319620789

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This book makes a unique and timely contribution to world/global historical studies and related fields. It places essential world historical frameworks by top scholars in the field today in clear, direct relation to and conversation with one other, offering them opportunity to enrich, elucidate and, at times, challenge one another. It thereby aims to: (1) offer world historians opportunity to critically reflect upon and refine their essential interpretational frameworks, (2) facilitate more effective and nuanced teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom, (3) provide accessible world historical contexts for specialized areas of historical as well as other fields of research in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and (4) promote comparative historiographical critique which (a) helps identify continuing research questions for the field of world history in particular, as well as (b) further global peace and dialogue in relation to varying views of our ever-increasingly interconnected, interdependent, multicultural, and globalized world and its shared though diverse and sometimes contested history.

Sustainability: The Basics
Sustainability: The Basics

Author: Peter Jacques

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 131764932X

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Sustainability is concerned with the issues around the ongoing and mutual preservation of both society and the environment. It is a widely used term and supposed goal for many governments but it is also easily misunderstood. Sustainability: The Basics offers an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to the concept, and discusses key questions such as: How do we decide who or what should be sustained? How can we ensure that the world’s resources are distributed fairly? What lessons can we learn from the collapse of previous civilizations? Sustainability studies is in a position to ask some of the most interesting questions about human purpose, identity, modernity, ethics, and the nature of "progress". This book is an ideal starting point for anyone who wants to know more about we can ‘hold up’ civilization, humanity, and the world we live in.

تاريخ الطاقة والحضارة
تاريخ الطاقة والحضارة

Author: فاكلاف سميل

Publisher: دائرة الثقافة والسياحة – أبوظبي، مركز أبوظبي للغة العربية، مشروع كلمة للترجمة

Published: 1900-01-01

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 9948369270

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كتاب تاريخ الطاقة والحضارة إسهام كبير في استعراض تاريخ الطاقة بأشكالها كافة وصورها وأثرها في الحضارة الإنسانية منذ أقدم العصور حتى يومنا هذا.

Power Density
Power Density

Author: Vaclav Smil

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0262326930

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The first systematic, quantitative appraisal of power density, offering detailed reviews of power densities of renewable energy flows, fossil fuels, and all common energy uses. “There's no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.” —Bill Gates In this book, Vaclav Smil argues that power density is a key determinant of the nature and dynamics of energy systems. Any understanding of complex energy systems must rely on quantitative measures of many fundamental variables. Power density—the rate of energy flux per unit of area—is an important but largely overlooked measure. Smil provides the first systematic, quantitative appraisal of power density, offering detailed reviews of the power densities of renewable energy flows, fossil fuels, thermal electricity generation, and all common energy uses. Smil shows that careful quantification, critical appraisals, and revealing comparisons of power densities make possible a deeper understanding of the ways we harness, convert, and use energies. Conscientious assessment of power densities, he argues, proves particularly revealing when contrasting the fossil fuel–based energy system with renewable energy conversions. Smil explains that modern civilization has evolved as a direct expression of the high power densities of fossil fuel extraction. He argues that our inevitable (and desirable) move to new energy arrangements involving conversions of lower-density renewable energy sources will require our society—currently dominated by megacities and concentrated industrial production—to undergo a profound spatial restructuring of its energy system.

Environmental Health in the 21st Century [2 volumes]
Environmental Health in the 21st Century [2 volumes]

Author: Richard V. Crume

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 818

ISBN-13:

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This concisely written and easy-to-read resource provides information on emerging issues and valuable historical context that enables students to better understand a broad range of environmental health topics, from pollution to infectious diseases, natural disasters, and waste management. As technology enables better insight into the world we live in, we are increasingly aware of environmental health concerns and risks, from contaminated air and water to infectious diseases and light and noise pollution. Because the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our environment, everyone should be informed about issues in environmental health. Environmental Health in the 21st Century: From Air Pollution to Zoonotic Diseases presents hundreds of encyclopedic entries written by expert researchers and practitioners, a history of environmental health, and interviews with subject experts that broadly survey the field of environmental health. The set covers myriad subjects in environmental health, including all types of environmental pollution; the spread of communicable diseases and other issues in the health sciences; waste management practices; the effects of climate change on human health; children's environmental health concerns; environmental health problems unique to the urban environment; and emerging threats such as the Zika virus and hospital-acquired infections. Readers will learn about steps they can take to reduce their environmental risk, understand the effects of key international treaties and conventions and the contributions of key figures in environmental health, and also reflect on potential solutions for global challenges in environmental pollution, health sciences, energy and climate, waste management, and the built environment. No other book on the market today addresses the environmental health field in such a comprehensive manner, with the latest information provided by expert practitioners, all packed into two concise volumes.