Download or read book How to Think Seriously about the Planet written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In How to Think Seriously About the Planet, Roger Scruton rejects the popular left-wing view that international capitalism, consumerism, and over-exploitation of natural resources are the chief threats to the planet. Such a view necessitates top-down interventions, which Scruton contends are ineffective unless rooted in small-scale practical reasoning. Rather than entrusting the environment to unwieldy NGOs and international committees, Scruton argues, we must assume personal responsibility and foster local control over our environment."--Back cover.
Download or read book Green Philosophy written by Roger Scruton and published by Atlantic Books Ltd. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The environment has long been the undisputed territory of the political Left, which has seen the principal threats to the earth as issuing from international capitalism, consumerism and the over-exploitation of natural resources. In Green Philosophy, Scruton argues that conservatism is far better suited to tackle environmental problems than either liberalism or socialism. He shows that rather than entrusting the environment to unwieldy NGOs and international committees, we must assume personal responsibility and foster local sovereignty. People must be empowered to take charge of their environment, to care for it as a home, and to affirm themselves through the kind of local associations that have been the traditional goal of conservative politics. Our common future is by no means assured, but as Roger Scruton clearly demonstrates in this important book, there is a path that we can take which could ensure the future safety of our planet and our species.
Download or read book How to Think Seriously About the Planet written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The environment has long been the undisputed territory of the political Left, which casts international capitalism, consumerism, and the over-exploitation of natural resources as the principle threats to the planet, and sees top-down interventions as the most effective solution. In How to Think Seriously About the Planet, Roger Scruton rejects this view and offers a fresh approach to tackling the most important political problem of our time. The environmental movement, he contends, is philosophically confused and has unrealistic agendas. Its sights are directed at the largescale events and the confrontation between international politics and multinational business. But Scruton argues that no large-scale environmental project, however well-intentioned, will succeed if it is not rooted in small-scale practical reasoning. Seeing things on a large scale promotes top-down solutions, managed by unaccountable bureaucracies that fail to assess local conditions and are rife with unintended consequences. Scruton argues for the greater efficacy of local initiatives over global schemes, civil association over political activism, and small-scale institutions of friendship over regulatory hyper-vigilance. And he suggests that conservatism is far better suited to solving environmental problems than either liberalism or socialism. Rather than entrusting the environment to unwieldy NGOs and international committees, we must assume personal responsibility and foster local control. People must be empowered to take charge of their environment, to care for it as they would a home, and to involve themselves through the kind of local associations that have been the traditional goal of conservative politics. Our common future is by no means assured, but as Roger Scruton clearly demonstrates in this important book, there is a path that can ensure the future safety of our planet and our species.
Download or read book Stop Saving the Planet An Environmentalist Manifesto written by Jenny Price and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Pithy, funny, exasperated, and informed…You cannot read a more important hundred pages than Stop Saving the Planet!" —Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands We’ve been "saving the planet" for decades!…And environmental crises just get worse. All this hybrid driving and LEED building and carbon trading seems to accomplish little to nothing—and low-income communities continue to suffer the worst consequences. Why aren’t we cleaning up the toxic messes and rolling back climate change? And why do so many Americans hate environmentalists? Jenny Price says Enough already! with this short, fun, fierce manifesto for an environmentalism that is hugely more effective, a whole lot fairer, and infinitely less righteous. She challenges you, corporate sustainability officers, and the EPA to think and act completely anew—and to start right now—to ensure a truly habitable future.
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book What s Really Happening to Our Planet written by Tony Juniper and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An easy-to-understand overview of the state of our planet and its future, using eye-opening and accessible charts, graphs, and infographics. By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion. What's Really Happening to Our Planet? uses a graphic approach to chart the dramatic explosion of the human population and consumption and its impact on the planet. Based on unmatched scientific data, What's Really Happening to Our Planet? brings together major areas of public concern, such as deforestation, climate change, water shortages, and inequality. Easy-to-reference charts and infographics illustrate key findings, while clear, jargon-free text explains the science behind the figures. In addition to charting global trends and showing how they are connected, this book articulates how we can live more sustainably in the future. What's Really Happening to Our Planet? is a new and heart-stopping analysis of the latest chapter in human history and offers a fresh perspective on our future.
Download or read book Don t Even Think About It written by George Marshall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The director of the Climate Outreach and Information Network explores the psychological mechanism that enables people to ignore the dangers of climate change, using sidebars, cartoons and engaging stories from his years of research to reveal how humans are wired to primarily respond to visible threats.
Download or read book The Uninhabitable Earth written by David Wallace-Wells and published by Tim Duggan Books. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books
Download or read book How to Unf ck the Planet a Little Bit Each Day written by Jo Stewart and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this climate crisis, it's easy to feel helpless. This book offers practical choices and changes we can make to start unf*cking the climate. Global warming, plastic pollution, deforestation, species loss, and rising inequality got you down? Then take your very valid concerns and channel them into action with this proactive guide to saving the planet, one day at a time. Small changes in the way we eat, shop, recycle, and commute really can change the world. From planting bee-friendly blooms in your backyard, to making your own body scrub from coffee grounds, and investing your spare cash into clean energy programs, there are many ways to lessen your impact on the planet. By incorporating small changes into your daily life, you - yes you! - can, and will, make the world a better place.
Download or read book What If We Stopped Pretending written by Jonathan Franzen and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climate change is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.
Download or read book Apocalypse Never written by Michael Shellenberger and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.
Download or read book Planet Earth Is Blue written by Nicole Panteleakos and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tender and illuminating. A beautiful debut." --Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me A heartrending and hopeful story about a nonverbal girl and her passion for space exploration, for fans of See You in the Cosmos, Mockingbird, and The Thing About Jellyfish. Twelve-year-old Nova is eagerly awaiting the launch of the space shuttle Challenger--it's the first time a teacher is going into space, and kids across America will watch the event on live TV in their classrooms. Nova and her big sister, Bridget, share a love of astronomy and the space program. They planned to watch the launch together. But Bridget has disappeared, and Nova is in a new foster home. While foster families and teachers dismiss Nova as severely autistic and nonverbal, Bridget understands how intelligent and special Nova is, and all that she can't express. As the liftoff draws closer, Nova's new foster family and teachers begin to see her potential, and for the first time, she is making friends without Bridget. But every day, she's counting down to the launch, and to the moment when she'll see Bridget again. Because as Bridget said, "No matter what, I'll be there. I promise."
Download or read book Uncivilisation written by Paul Kingsnorth and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Story of More written by Hope Jahren and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. “Hope Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet?" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction). “Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming—from superstorms to rising sea levels—and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren’s inimitable voice, The Story of More is “a superb account of the deadly struggle between humanity and what may prove the only life-bearing planet within ten light years" (E. O. Wilson).
Download or read book What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming written by Per Espen Stoknes and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Today, about 98 percent of scientists affirm that climate change is human made, and about 2 percent still question it. Despite that overwhelming majority, though, about half the population of rich countries, like ours, choose to believe the 2 percent. And, paradoxically, this large camp of deniers grows even larger as more and more alarming proof of climate change has cropped up over the last decades. This disconnect has both climate scientists and activists scratching their heads, growing anxious, and responding, usually, by repeating more facts to 'win' the argument. But, the more climate facts pile up, the greater the resistance to them grows, and the harder it becomes to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead. Is humanity up to the task? It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and climate expert Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples, he shows how to retell the story of climate change and apply communication strategies more fit for the task."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Climate Shock written by Gernot Wagner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How knowing the extreme risks of climate change can help us prepare for an uncertain future If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future—why not our planet? In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance—as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale. With a new preface addressing recent developments Wagner and Weitzman demonstrate that climate change can and should be dealt with—and what could happen if we don't do so—tackling the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.
Download or read book Wild Souls written by Emma Marris and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award * Winner of the 2022 Science in Society Journalism Award (Books) * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize “Thoughtful, insightful, and wise, Wild Souls is a landmark work.”--Ed Yong, author of An Immense World "Fascinating . . . hands-on philosophy, put to test in the real world . . . Marris believes that our idea of wildness--our obsession with purity--is misguided. No animal remains untouched by human hands . . . the science isn't the hard part. The real challenge is the ethics, the act of imagining our appropriate place in that world." --Outside Magazine From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with--and responsibilities toward--the planet's wild animals. Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions. Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe--from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature-and our place within it.
