Download or read book Sustaining Earth written by D.J.R. Angell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much do we understand about the nature and possible consequences of environmental threats? How are individuals, industry and governments facing up to the destructive potential of ecological degradation? In Sustaining Earth, leading scientists describe and explain the principal environmental threats and their implications. Eminent statesmen, environmentalists and industrialists assess the world's response to these threats in the context of the recommendations of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) and the concept of sustainable development.
Download or read book Sustaining the Earth written by George Tyler Miller and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is to help instructors achieve three important goals: first, to explain to their students the basics of earth science, including how life on the earth has survived for billions of years; second, to help students to use this scientific foundation in order to understand the multiple environmental problems that we face and to evaluate possible solutions to them; and third, to inspire their students to make a difference in how we treat the earth on which our lives and economies depend, and thus make a difference in how we treat ourselves and our descendants.
Download or read book Earth System Analysis for Sustainability written by Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the complete story of the inseparably intertwined evolution of life and matter on earth, focussing on four major topics. It analyzes the driving forces behind global change and uses this knowledge to propose principles for global stewardship.
Download or read book Sustaining Earth s Energy Resources written by Ann Heinrichs and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides comprehensive information on Earth's sources of renewable and nonrenewable energy, how they are used, their benefits and disadvantages, their interrelationships with the natural world, and the future of Earth's sources of energy.
Download or read book Earth at Risk written by Claude Henry and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-19 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are squandering our planet’s natural capital—its biodiversity, water and soil, and climate stability—at a blistering pace. Major changes must be made to steer our planet and people away from our current, doomed course. Though technology has been one of the drivers of the current trend of unsustainable development, it is also one of the essential tools for remedying it. Earth at Risk maps out the necessary transition to sustainability, detailing the innovations in science and technology, along with law, institutional design, and economics, that can and must be put to use to avert environmental catastrophe. Claude Henry and Laurence Tubiana begin with a measure of the costs of ecological damage—the erosion of biodiversity; air, water, and soil pollution; and the wide-reaching effects of climate change—and then consider the solutions that are either now available or close on the horizon and that may lead to a more sustainable global trajectory. What community-driven or market-based tools can be used to promote sustainable development? How can renewable energy and energy storage advances help us decrease our use of fossil fuels? How can we substitute agroecology for the damaging chemical methods of industrialized agriculture? Is international agreement on climate goals possible? Building on the experience of the most significant climate negotiation of the decade, Earth at Risk shows what a world organized along the principles of sustainability could look like, no matter how optimistic it may seem at the present moment. Though formidable obstacles remain to the realization of this significant transition, Henry and Tubiana present the case for collective initiatives and change that build momentum for implementation and action.
Download or read book Sustainable Food Production written by Shahid Naeem and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Industrial agriculture is responsible for widespread environmental degradation and undermines the pursuit of human well-being. With a projected global population of 10 billion by 2050, it is urgent for humanity to achieve a more sustainable approach to farming and food systems. This concise text offers an overview of the key issues in sustainable food production for all readers interested in the ecology and environmental impacts of agriculture. It details the ecological foundations of farming and food systems, showing how knowledge from the natural and social sciences can be used to create sustainable alternatives to the industrial production methods used today. Beginning with a discussion of the role of agriculture in human development, the primer examines how twentieth-century farming methods are environmentally and socially unsustainable, contributing to global change and perpetuating inequalities. The authors explain the principles of environmental sustainability and explore how these principles can be put into practice in agrifood systems. They emphasize the importance of human well-being and insist on the centrality of social and environmental equity and justice. Sustainable Food Production is a compelling guide to how we can improve our ability to feed each other today and preserve the ability of our planet to do so tomorrow. Appropriate for a range of courses in the natural and social sciences, it provides a comprehensive yet accessible framework for achieving agricultural sustainability in the Anthropocene.
Download or read book Sustainable Building with Earth written by Horst Schroeder and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an insightful overview of the current state of earth building. The author approaches the subject from the perspective of the building material’s life cycle, featuring in-depth explanations of the cycle's individual steps: extraction and classification of construction soil; production of earth building materials and earthen structures; planning, construction and renovation of earth buildings; and demolition and recycling of earthen structures. This unique resource provides examples of sophisticated earth building projects and illustrates the diverse applications of earth as a building material. Compared to conventional mineral building materials, earth possesses particularly positive ecological qualities such as its energy balance and recyclability. Architects, engineers, students, manufacturers and distributors of building materials, building contractors, building biologists, public authorities and preservationists will benefit from this book’s ample coverage of restoring, optimizing and building with this material of the past, present and future.
Download or read book Sustaining Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth s Climate written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-01-20 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ocean is an integral component of the Earth's climate system. It covers about 70% of the Earth's surface and acts as its primary reservoir of heat and carbon, absorbing over 90% of the surplus heat and about 30% of the carbon dioxide associated with human activities, and receiving close to 100% of fresh water lost from land ice. With the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, the Earth's climate is now changing more rapidly than at any time since the advent of human societies. Society will increasingly face complex decisions about how to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change such as droughts, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, species loss, changes to growing seasons, and stronger and possibly more frequent storms. Observations play a foundational role in documenting the state and variability of components of the climate system and facilitating climate prediction and scenario development. Regular and consistent collection of ocean observations over decades to centuries would monitor the Earth's main reservoirs of heat, carbon dioxide, and water and provides a critical record of long-term change and variability over multiple time scales. Sustained high-quality observations are also needed to test and improve climate models, which provide insights into the future climate system. Sustaining Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth's Climate considers processes for identifying priority ocean observations that will improve understanding of the Earth's climate processes, and the challenges associated with sustaining these observations over long timeframes.
Download or read book Strategies for Sustainability of the Earth System written by Peter A. Wilderer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume builds on an international workshop held in 2019, inspired by James Lovelock's "The Revenge of Gaia - Why the Earth Is Fighting Back, and How We Can Still Save Humanity". It, therefore, understands the Gaia concept as an umbrella term for the living world that planet Earth is hosting for nearly 4 billion years. Humankind has intervened in this ecosystem since its emergence on the planet about 2.5 million years ago, often with painful consequences for itself. In its reactions, the Earth system follows only the laws of nature. Consequently, humanity needs to develop strategies for a sustainable Earth system. This volume presents a unique trans- and interdisciplinary variety of approaches to this challenge, offering philosophical considerations as well as practical medical research. It addresses a broad knowledgeable and general audience in environmental management, public administration, and higher education alike.
Download or read book Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth and the Environment for a Sustainable Future written by David C. Gosselin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Earth and Environment for a Sustainable Future presents the outcomes of the InTeGrate project, a community effort funded by the National Science Foundation to improve Earth literacy and build a workforce prepared to tackle environmental and resource issues. The InTeGrate community is built around the shared goal of supporting interdisciplinary learning about Earth across the undergraduate curriculum, focusing on the grand challenges facing society and the important role that the geosciences play in addressing these grand challenges. The chapters in this book explicitly illustrate the intimate relationship between geoscience and sustainability that is often opaque to students. The authors of these chapters are faculty members, administrators, program directors, and researchers from institutions across the country who have collectively envisioned, implemented, and evaluated effective change in their classrooms, programs, institutions, and beyond. This book provides guidance to anyone interested in implementing change—on scales ranging from a single course to an entire program—by infusing sustainability across the curriculum, broadening access to Earth and environmental sciences, and assessing the impacts of those changes.
Download or read book Can Business Save the Earth written by Michael Lenox and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly, business leaders are tasked with developing new products, services, and business models that minimize environmental impact while driving economic growth. It's a tall order—and a call that is only getting louder. In Can Business Save the Earth?, Michael Lenox and Aaron Chatterji explain just how the private sector can help. Many believe that markets will inevitably demand sustainable practices and force them to emerge. But Lenox and Chatterji see it differently. Based on more than a decade of research and work with companies, they argue that a bright green future is only possible with dramatic innovation across multiple sectors at the same time. To achieve this, a broader ecosystem of players—including inventors, executives, customers, investors, activists, and governments—all must play a role. The book outlines how and the extent to which each group can serve as a driver of green growth. Then, Lenox and Chatterji identify where economic incentives currently exist, or could exist with institutional change, and ultimately address the larger question of how far well-coordinated efforts can take us in addressing the current environmental crisis.
Download or read book Tao of Sustainability written by Gregory Ripley and published by Three Pine Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the crux of our current environmental crisis lies humanity's perceived separation from nature. We simply will not take care of the natural world if we do not believe we are an integral part of it. In Tao of Sustainability the author presents the traditional Daoist path of self-cultivation as a framework for bringing humans back into a sustainable relationship with the Earth. Tao of Sustainability also explores how our health, both mental and physical, is impacted by nature, drawing on research in the fields of Green Exercise, Nature and Forest Medicine, and Ecopsychology. Part philosophy, part meditation manual, part nature awareness guide, Tao of Sustainability offers numerous pathways towards reconnecting with nature and the Dao through mind, body, and spirit. Drawing from a variety of disciplines and traditions, from Daoism to Stoicism, Ecopsychology to Buddhist mind training, the visual arts to movement (tai chi, qigong)--this book provides numerous ways to reconnect with the natural world.
Download or read book Sustaining Life on Earth written by Colin Lionel Soskolne and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As global warming, famine, and environmental catastrophes have become daily news items, achieving a sustainable environment to maintain the future of life on Earth has become a global concern. Sustaining Life on Earth is an important contribution toward assessing such problems and making the Earth hospitable to life for generations to come. With an interdisciplinary team of international scholars, this masterfully edited collection approaches the problems facing sustainability from a perspective of global governance. To date, powerful economic forces have misguided decision-making processes in favor of short-term gain rather than long-term sustainability. As global awareness has increased and individual citizens have begun to alter their lifestyles to be more environmentally conscious, it is also necessary for governing bodies to take these concerns seriously. Sustaining Life on Earth makes the case that, for all the recent neo-liberal emphasis on the autonomous individual, humanity has collective problems, and it is only through collective action that solutions will be found. It shows that the global community is beginning to acknowledge the interdependencies among population, affluence, and technology. In the book, analysts from many disciplines advance solutions that could shift us away from growth-bound status quo development approaches toward more ecologically responsible and socially equitable ways of living. They suggest ways to move forward that would ensure health and well-being for all in both present and future generations. While success necessarily entails many changes at all levels, the book highlights one soft-law instrument that reflects many of the values and principles necessary to set humanity onto a sustainable path: The Earth Charter of 2002. Sustaining Life on Earth is a ground-breaking contribution to the burgeoning study of sustainability. Designed for a general non-specialist readership in the first year of university or beyond, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the impacts of global change on human well-being and the ecosphere, including people in environmental NGOs and those working in public policy.
Download or read book Strongly Sustainable Societies written by Karl Johan Bonnedahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The response of the international community to the pressing socio-ecological problems has been framed around the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The ecological pressure, however, has continued to rise and mainstream sustainability discourse has proven to be problematic. It contains an instrumental view of the world, a strong focus on technological solutions, and the premise that natural and human-made ‘capitals’ are substitutable. This trajectory, which is referred to as ‘weak sustainability’, reproduces inequalities, denies intrinsic values in nature, and jeopardises the wellbeing of humans as well as other beings. Based on the assumptions of strong sustainability, this edited book presents practical and theoretical alternatives to today’s unsustainable societies. It investigates and advances pathways for humanity that are ecologically realistic, ethically inclusive, and receptive to the task’s magnitude and urgency. The book challenges the traditional anthropocentric ethos and ontology, economic growth-dogma, and programmes of ecological modernisation. It discusses options with examples on different levels of analysis, from the individual to the global, addressing the economic system, key sectors of society, alternative lifestyles, and experiences of local communities. Examining key topics including human–nature relations and wealth and justice, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental and development studies, ecological economics, environmental governance and policy, sustainable business, and sustainability science.
Download or read book The Earth Charter in Action written by Peter Blaze Corcoran and published by Kit Pub. This book was released on 2005 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by Mikhail Gorbachev, Wangari Maathai, Leonardo Boff, Jane Goodall, Ruud Lubbers, and other authors on various aspects of the Earth Charter.
Download or read book On a Sustainable Future of the Earth s Natural Resources written by Mu. Ramkumar and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a Sustainable Future of the Earth’s Natural Resources is divided into three sections, with individual chapters contributed by experts on diff erent facets of the earth sciences, natural resources management and related issues. The first section focuses on the status of Earth’s resources; land, water, biota and atmosphere. Reviews on the rate of exploitation and the need to conserve these resources for future sustenance are also covered in this section. Th e following section includes chapters elucidating environmental, ecological, climatological and anthropological pressures on sustained nourishment with the Earth’s resources. The last section describes management practices, issues and perspectives on sociological, legal, administrative, ICT and strategic efforts that need to be implemented in order to sustain our natural resources. This book covers a broad spectrum of the Earth’s resources and sustenance, offering a comprehensive perspective on their past, present and future.
Download or read book Treasures of the Earth written by Saleem H. Ali and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Would the world be a better place if human societies were somehow able to curb their desires for material goods? Saleem Ali's pioneering book links human wants and needs by providing a natural history of consumption and materialism with scientific detail and humanistic nuance. It argues that simply disavowing consumption of materials is not likely to help in planning for a resource-scarce future, given global inequality, development imperatives, and our goals for a democratic global society. Rather than suppress the creativity and desire to discover that is often embedded in the exploration and production of material goods--which he calls the treasure impulse--Ali proposes a new environmental paradigm, one that accepts our need to consume treasure for cultural and developmental reasons, but warns of our concomitant need to conserve. In evaluating the impact of treasure consumption on resource-rich countries, he argues that there is a way to consume responsibly and alleviate global poverty.
