Download or read book Ethical Oil written by Ezra Levant and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada's "no. 1 defender of freedom of speech" and the bestselling author of Shakedown makes the timely and provocative case that when it comes to oil, ethics matter just as much as the economy and the environment. In 2009, Ezra Levant's bestselling book Shakedown revealed the corruption of Canada's human rights commissions and was declared the "most important public affairs book of the year." In Ethical Oil, Levant turns his attention to another hot-button topic: the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well. With his trademark candor, Levant asks hard-hitting questions: With the oil sands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia, and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can't live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable? In Ethical Oil, Levant exposes the hypocrisy of the West's dealings with the reprehensible regimes from which we purchase the oil that sustains our lifestyles, and offers solutions to this dilemma. Readers at all points on the political spectrum will want to read this timely and provocative new book, which is sure to spark debate.
Download or read book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels written by Alex Epstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could everything we know about fossil fuels be wrong? For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance . . . Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the risks. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally clean environment and make it dirty; they take a naturally dirty environment and make it clean. They don’t take a naturally safe climate and make it dangerous; they take a naturally dangerous climate and make it ever safer. Myth: Fossil fuels are unsustainable, so we should strive to use “renewable” solar and wind. Truth: The sun and wind are intermittent, unreliable fuels that always need backup from a reliable source of energy—usually fossil fuels. There are huge amounts of fossil fuels left, and we have plenty of time to find something cheaper. Myth: Fossil fuels are hurting the developing world. Truth: Fossil fuels are the key to improving the quality of life for billions of people in the developing world. If we withhold them, access to clean water plummets, critical medical machines like incubators become impossible to operate, and life expectancy drops significantly. Calls to “get off fossil fuels” are calls to degrade the lives of innocent people who merely want the same opportunities we enjoy in the West. Taking everything into account, including the facts about climate change, Epstein argues that “fossil fuels are easy to misunderstand and demonize, but they are absolutely good to use. And they absolutely need to be championed. . . . Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
Download or read book Oil Culture written by Ross Barrett and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 150 years since the birth of the petroleum industry oil has saturated our culture, fueling our cars and wars, our economy and policies. But just as thoroughly, culture saturates oil. So what exactly is “oil culture”? This book pursues an answer through petrocapitalism’s history in literature, film, fine art, wartime propaganda, and museum displays. Investigating cultural discourses that have taken shape around oil, these essays compose the first sustained attempt to understand how petroleum has suffused the Western imagination. The contributors to this volume examine the oil culture nexus, beginning with the whale oil culture it replaced and analyzing literature and films such as Giant, Sundown, Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Via del Petrolio, and Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw”; corporate art, museum installations, and contemporary photography; and in apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster and science fiction. By considering oil as both a natural resource and a trope, the authors show how oil’s dominance is part of culture rather than an economic or physical necessity. Oil Culture sees beyond oil capitalism to alternative modes of energy production and consumption. Contributors: Georgiana Banita, U of Bamberg; Frederick Buell, Queens College; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Melanie Doherty, Wesleyan College; Sarah Frohardt-Lane, Ripon College, Matthew T. Huber, Syracuse U; Dolly Jørgensen, Umeå U; Stephanie LeMenager, U of Oregon; Hanna Musiol, Northeastern U; Chad H. Parker, U of Louisiana at Lafayette; Ruth Salvaggio, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Heidi Scott, Florida International U; Imre Szeman, U of Alberta; Michael Watts, U of California, Berkeley; Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University; Sheena Wilson, U of Alberta; Rochelle Raineri Zuck, U of Minnesota Duluth; Catherine Zuromskis, U of New Mexico.
Download or read book Tar Sands written by Andrew Nikiforuk and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.
Download or read book The Ethical Engineer written by Robert McGinn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the ethics of practical engineering through analyses of eighteen rich case studies The Ethical Engineer explores ethical issues that arise in engineering practice, from technology transfer to privacy protection to whistle-blowing. Presenting key ethics concepts and real-life examples of engineering work, Robert McGinn illuminates the ethical dimension of engineering practice and helps students and professionals determine engineers’ context-specific ethical responsibilities. McGinn highlights the “ethics gap” in contemporary engineering—the disconnect between the meager exposure to ethical issues in engineering education and the ethical challenges frequently faced by engineers. He elaborates four “fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers” (FEREs) and uses them to shed light on the ethical dimensions of diverse case studies, including ones from emerging engineering fields. The cases range from the Union Carbide pesticide plant disaster in India to the Google Street View project. After examining the extent to which the actions of engineers in the cases align with the FEREs, McGinn recapitulates key ideas used in analyzing the cases and spells out the main lessons they suggest. He identifies technical, social, and personal factors that induce or press engineers to engage in misconduct and discusses organizational, legal, and individual resources available to those interested in ethically responsible engineering practice. Combining probing analysis and nuanced ethical evaluation of engineering conduct in its social and technical contexts, The Ethical Engineer will be invaluable to engineering students and professionals. Meets the need for engineering-related ethics study Elaborates four fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers Discusses diverse, global cases of ethical issues in established and emerging engineering fields Identifies resources and options for ethically responsible engineering practice Provides discussion questions for each case
Download or read book Next Generation Ethics written by Ali E. Abbas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaders from academia and industry offer guidance for professionals and general readers on ethical questions posed by modern technology.
Download or read book Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation written by Alexandra Palmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-04 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation explores how conservationists decide whether, and how, to undertake rehabilitation and reintroduction (R&R) when rescuing orphaned orangutans. The author demonstrates that exploring ethical dilemmas is crucial for understanding ongoing disagreements about how to help endangered wildlife in an era of anthropogenic extinction. Although R&R might appear an uncontroversial activity, there is considerable debate about how, and why, it ought to be practised. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research with orangutan conservation practitioners, this book examines how ethical trade-offs shape debates about R&R. For example, what if the orphan fails to learn how to be an orangutan again, after years in the company of humans? What if she is sent into the forest only to slowly starve? Would she have been better off in a cage? Could the huge cost of sending a rescued ape back to the wild be better spent on stopping deforestation in the first place? Or do we have a moral obligation to rescue the orphan regardless of cost? This book demonstrates that deconstructing ethical positions is crucial for understanding ongoing disagreements about how to help our endangered great ape kin and other wildlife. Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation is essential reading for those interested in conservation and animal welfare, animal studies, primatology, geography, environmental philosophy, and anthropology.
Download or read book Unsustainable Oil written by Jon Gordon and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sustainable development is, for government and industry at least, primarily a way of turning trees into lumber, tar into oil, and critique into consent; a way to defend the status quo of growth at any cost." --from the Introduction In Unsustainable Oil: Facts, Counterfacts and Fictions, Jon Gordon makes the case for re-evaluating the theoretical, political, and environmental issues around petroleum extraction. Doing so, he argues, will reinvigorate our understanding of the culture and the ethics of energy production in Canada. Rather than looking for better facts or better interpretations of the facts, Gordon challenges us to embrace the future after oil. Reading fiction can help us understand the cultural-ecological crisis that we inhabit. In Unsustainable Oil, using the lens of Alberta's bituminous sands, he asks us to consider literature's potential to open space for creative alternatives.
Download or read book Blood Oil written by Leif Wenar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sweeping book, one of today's leading political philosophers, Leif Wenar, goes behind the headlines in search of the hidden global rule that thwarts democracy and development-and that puts shoppers into business with some of today's most dangerous men.
Download or read book The Energy of Slaves written by Andrew Nikiforuk and published by Greystone Books. This book was released on 2012-08-17 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A robustly researched and smoothly written overview of the many challenges confronting our devotion to fossil fuels” from the author of Tar Sands (Quill & Quire). Ancient civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities. Nineteenth-century slaveholders viewed critics as hostilely as oil companies and governments now regard environmentalists. Yet the abolition movement had an invisible ally: coal and oil. As the world’s most versatile workers, fossil fuels replenished slavery’s ranks with combustion engines and other labor-saving tools. Since then, cheap oil has transformed politics, economics, science, agriculture, and even our concept of happiness. Many North Americans today live as extravagantly as Caribbean plantation owners. We feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion. In this provocative book, Andrew Nikiforuk, winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, argues that what we need is a radical emancipation movement that ends our master-and-slave approach to energy. We must learn to use energy on a moral, just, and truly human scale. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute “In his cautionary tale about the evils of oil . . . Nikiforuk makes his case for impending doom if we don’t mend our energy-spending ways.” —The Star “In this cogently argued book, Andrew Nikiforuk deploys a powerful metaphor. Oil dependency, he writes, is a modern form of slavery—and it’s time for a global abolition movement.” —Taras Grescoe, author of Shanghai Grand “A startling critique that should rouse us from our pipe dream of endless plenty.” —Ronald Wright, author of On Fiji Islands
Download or read book Ethical Markets written by Hazel Henderson and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With insight, clarity, warmth, and enthusiasm Hazel Henderson announces the mature presence of the green economy. Mainstream media and big business interests have sidelined its emergence and evolution to preserve the status quo. Throughout Ethical Markets Henderson weaves statistics and analysis with profiles of entrepreneurs, environmentalists, scientists, and professionals. Based on interviews conducted on her longstanding public television series, these profiles celebrate those who have led the highly successful growth of green businesses around the world. Ethical Markets is the ultimate sourcebook on today's thriving green economy.
Download or read book The New Economy of Oil written by Norman Selley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The global oil industry is an exceptionally complex one, and its importance to governments, business and society as a whole is immense...The New Economy of Oil aims to set out the challenges and choices ahead, and it makes a fascinating read.' Business News 'John Mitchell, in this excellent book, is looking at the new elements which may influence, or indeed determine, the shape of the oil industry, the behaviour of the main actors, the forces of supply and demand, and the price path.' From the Foreword by Robert Mabro, Director, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies 'The New Economy of Oil is a superior, state-of-the-art tour of a conventional scenario about the near future of the world's oil and oil economy and polity.' Society and Natural Resources In a world where international accountability is increasingly important, the oil industry faces an unprecedented series of challenges. Mitchell's main theme is that the acceptability of oil is becoming more important than its availability. The implications are enormous, given the huge current dependence on oil of so much industry and government revenue. This book is of importance to all those involved with oil - from industry professionals to competitors, commentators, investors, managers, politicians and regulators.
Download or read book The Price of Oil written by Bronwen Manby and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 1999 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempts to Import Weapons
Download or read book Energy Humanities written by Imre Szeman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-04-22 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical humanities and digital humanities before it, overcomes traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Like its predecessors, energy humanities highlights the essential contribution that the insights and methods of the human sciences can make to areas of study and analysis once thought best left to the natural sciences. This isn't a case of the humanities simply helping their cross-campus colleagues to learn the mechanics of communication so that they might better articulate their ideas. Rather, these fields of scholarship are ones that demonstrate how the scale and complexity of the issues being explored demand insights and approaches that transcend old school disciplinary boundaries. Energy Humanities : A Reader offers a carefully curated selection of the best and most influential work in energy humanities that has appeared over the past decade. To stay true to the diverse work that makes up this emergent field, selections range from anthropology and geography to philosophy, history, and cultural studies to recent energy-focused interventions in art and literature. The three readers all agree that this is an important, ground-breaking collection of work"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Educating For Ethical Survival written by Michael Schwartz and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-04 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume experienced educators discuss the task of teaching ethics to professionals, managers and others who are practically-minded; and expert contributors explore the nature of ethical survival in contemporary society and the range of organizations it encompasses.
Download or read book Groundswell written by Ezra Levant and published by Signal. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bestselling author comes a provocative exploration of the next big thing in energy--fracking--and its profound impact on geopolitics and the global economy. In a few short years, the discovery of vast reserves of until now unreachable natural gas, and the adoption of a process to get at it, have brought about a shale-gas revolution that is transforming Canada and the United States. In Groundswell, Ezra Levant looks at fracking's enemies--who they are, and what they don't want us to know--and debunks claims about contaminated groundwater, fracking chemicals, and earthquakes. And he also looks at fracking's benefits: significant job and wealth creation, lower CO2 emissions, and, most importantly, increased political freedom. With natural gas in abundance, prices fall and the stranglehold of energy companies such as Russia's Gazprom loosens. Countries such as Ukraine, Poland, France, Israel, and China have vast reserves of shale gas, and accessing it could mean a monumental shift in energy politics. In this timely and provocative book, Levant explores the promise of natural gas that fracking has made possible and provides an eye-opening look at a subject of growing international importance.
Download or read book Ethical Leadership written by Robert M. McManus and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world cries out for ethical leaders. We expect the best, but we are often left profoundly disappointed. While leadership programs may feature ethics as part of their training, the approach is often either simplistic or overly esoteric. This book addresses this scarcity of resources for training ethical leaders, providing a primer of several ethical frameworks accompanied by extended examples to help inform decision-making. The text also addresses several leadership models that claim an ethical component. By providing a consistent case analysis based on the Five Components of Leadership Model, readers benefit from a comprehensive approach to understanding ethical leadership.
