Download or read book The Coming Population Crash written by Fred Pearce and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading environmental writer looks at the unexpected effects—and possible benefits—of a shrinking population in this “fascinating and optimistic” study of our demographic future (Jon Stewart, The Daily Show). Over the last century, the world’s population quadrupled and fears of overpopulation flared, with baby booms blamed for genocide and terrorism, and overpopulation singled out as the primary factor driving global warming. Yet, surprisingly, it appears that the population explosion is past its peak—by mid-century, the world’s population will be declining for the first time in over seven hundred years. In The Coming Population Crash, veteran environmental writer Fred Pearce reveals the dynamics behind this dramatic shift and describes the environmental, social, and economic effects of our surprising demographic future.
Download or read book Peoplequake written by Fred Pearce and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wherever we look, population is the driver of the most toxic issues on the political agenda. But the population bomb is being defused. Half the world's women are having two children or fewer. Within a generation, the world's population will be falling. And we will all be getting very old. So should we welcome the return to centre stage of the tribal elders? Or is humanity facing a fate worse than environmental apocalypse? Brilliant, heretical and accessible to all, Fred Pearce takes on the matter that is fundamental to who we are and how we live, confronting our demographic demons.
Download or read book Empty Planet written by Darrell Bricker and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist and leading international social researcher make the provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different alarm. Rather than continuing to increase exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline—and in many countries, that decline has already begun. In Empty Planet, John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker find that a smaller global population will bring with it many benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States and Canada are well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism leads us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose. Praise for Empty Planet “An ambitious reimagining of our demographic future.”—The New York Times Book Review “The authors combine a mastery of social-science research with enough journalistic flair to convince fair-minded readers of a simple fact: Fertility is falling faster than most experts can readily explain, driven by persistent forces.”—The Wall Street Journal “The beauty of this book is that it links hard-to-grasp global trends to the easy to-understand individual choices being made all over the world today . . . a gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change.”—The New Statesman “John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker have written a sparkling and enlightening guide to the contemporary world of fertility as small family sizes and plunging rates of child-bearing go global.”–The Globe and Mail
Download or read book The Population Bomb written by Paul R. Ehrlich and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Coming Population Crash written by Fred Pearce and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading environmental writer looks at the unexpected effects—and possible benefits—of a shrinking, graying population Over the last century, the world’s population quadrupled and fears of overpopulation flared, with baby booms blamed for genocide and terrorism, and overpopulation singled out as the primary factor driving global warming. Yet, surprisingly, it appears that the population explosion is past its peak—by mid-century, the world’s population will be declining for the first time in over seven hundred years. In The Coming Population Crash, veteran environmental writer Fred Pearce reveals the dynamics behind this dramatic shift and describes the environmental, social, and economic effects of our surprising demographic future.
Download or read book Our Planet written by Alastair Fothergill and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a foreword by Sir David Attenborough, this is the striking photographic companion to the Emmy–winning NETFLIX original documentary series, presenting never-before-seen visuals of nature's most intriguing animals in action and the environmental change that has to be seen to be believed. With six hundred members of crew filming in fifty countries over four years, the directors that brought us the original Planet Earth and Blue Planet now take readers on a journey across all the globe’s different biological realms to present stunning visuals of nature's most intriguing animals in action, and environmental change on a scale that must be seen to be believed. Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth―from deep oceans to remote forests to ice caps―Our Planet takes nature-lovers deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways, alongside stories of the ways humans are affecting the world’s ecosystems―from the wildebeest migrations in Africa to the penguin colonies of Antarctica―this book places itself at the forefront of a global conversation as we work together to protect and preserve our planet. With a keepsake package featuring debossing and foil stamping, this groundbreaking coffee-table book reveals the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways.
Download or read book Population 10 Billion written by Danny Dorling and published by Constable. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before May 2011 the top demographics experts of the United Nations had suggested that world population would peak at 9.1 billion in 2100, and then fall to 8.5 billion people by 2150. In contrast, the 2011 revision suggested that 9.1 billion would be achieved much earlier, maybe by 2050 or before, and by 2100 there would be 10.1 billion of us. What's more, they implied that global human population might still be slightly rising in our total numbers a century from now. So what shall we do? Are there too many people on the planet? Is this the end of life as we know it? Distinguished geographer Professor Danny Dorling thinks we should not worry so much and that, whatever impending doom may be around the corner, we will deal with it when it comes. In a series of fascinating chapters he charts the rise of the human race from its origins to its end-point of population 10 billion. Thus he shows that while it took until about 1988 to reach 5 billion we reached 6 billion by 2000, 7 billion eleven years later and will reach 8 billion by 2025. By recording how we got here, Dorling is able to show us the key issues that we face in the coming decades: how we will deal with scarcity of resources; how our cities will grow and become more female; why the change that we should really prepare for is the population decline that will occur after 10 billion. Population 10 Billion is a major work by one of the world's leading geographers and will change the way you think about the future. Packed full of counter-intuitive ideas and observations, this book is a tool kit to prepare for the future and to help us ask the right questions
Download or read book The Human Tide written by Paul Morland and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling new history of the irrepressible demographic changes and mass migrations that have made and unmade nations, continents, and empires The rise and fall of the British Empire; the emergence of America as a superpower; the ebb and flow of global challenges from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia. These are the headlines of history, but they cannot be properly grasped without understanding the role that population has played. The Human Tide shows how periods of rapid population transition--a phenomenon that first emerged in the British Isles but gradually spread across the globe--shaped the course of world history. Demography--the study of population--is the key to unlocking an understanding of the world we live in and how we got here. Demographic changes explain why the Arab Spring came and went, how China rose so meteorically, and why Britain voted for Brexit and America for Donald Trump. Sweeping from Europe to the Americas, China, East Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, The Human Tide is a panoramic view of the sheer power of numbers.
Download or read book The Insect Crisis The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World written by Oliver Milman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating examination of how collapsing insect populations worldwide threaten everything from wild birds to the food on our plate. From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet’s known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world? Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it? With urgency and great clarity, Milman explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. He joins the scientists tracking the decline of insect populations across the globe, including the soaring mountains of Mexico that host an epic, yet dwindling, migration of monarch butterflies; the verdant countryside of England that has been emptied of insect life; the gargantuan fields of U.S. agriculture that have proved a killing ground for bees; and an offbeat experiment in Denmark that shows there aren’t that many bugs splattering into your car windshield these days. These losses not only further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet; they imperil everything we hold dear, from the food on our supermarket shelves to the medicines in our cabinets to the riot of nature that thrills and enlivens us. Even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story. By connecting butterfly and bee, moth and beetle from across the globe, the full scope of loss renders a portrait of a crisis that threatens to upend the workings of our collective history. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis is a wake-up call for us all.
Download or read book The Land Grabbers written by Fred Pearce and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Wall Street, Chinese billionaires, oil sheiks, and agribusiness are buying up huge tracts of land in a hungry, crowded world. An unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Fearing future food shortages or eager to profit from them, the world’s wealthiest and most acquisitive countries, corporations, and individuals have been buying and leasing vast tracts of land around the world. The scale is astounding: parcels the size of small countries are being gobbled up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of South America, and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Veteran science writer Fred Pearce spent a year circling the globe to find out who was doing the buying, whose land was being taken over, and what the effect of these massive land deals seems to be. The Land Grabbers is a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the scale and the human costs of the land grab, one of the most profound ethical, environmental, and economic issues facing the globalized world in the twenty-first century. The corporations, speculators, and governments scooping up land cheap in the developing world claim that industrial-scale farming will help local economies. But Pearce’s research reveals a far more troubling reality. While some mega-farms are ethically run, all too often poor farmers and cattle herders are evicted from ancestral lands or cut off from water sources. The good jobs promised by foreign capitalists and home governments alike fail to materialize. Hungry nations are being forced to export their food to the wealthy, and corporate potentates run fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences. Pearce’s story is populated with larger-than-life characters, from financier George Soros and industry tycoon Richard Branson, to Gulf state sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, British barons, and Burmese generals. We discover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry, what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset-stripper are doing in the backwoods of Brazil, and what plans a Saudi oil billionaire has for Ethiopia. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually live on, and live off of, the supposedly “empty” land that is being grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to ever-smaller tracts. Over the next few decades, land grabbing may matter more, to more of the planet’s people, than even climate change. It will affect who eats and who does not, who gets richer and who gets poorer, and whether agrarian societies can exist outside corporate control. It is the new battle over who owns the planet.
Download or read book Population Geography written by K. Bruce Newbold and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compact and accessible text provides a comprehensive, issue-oriented introduction to population geography. First grounding students in the fundamentals, Bruce Newbold then explains the tools and techniques commonly used to describe and understand population concepts using real-world issues and events. Drawing on both U.S. and international cases, he explores such pressing concerns as HIV/AIDS, international migration, refugee movements, fertility, mortality, resource scarcity, and conflict. Every chapter includes both methods and focus sections to provide a more in-depth discussion of the ideas and concepts developed in the book. In addition, a wide array of maps, tables, and figures illustrate and enhance the cases. Newbold highlights the geographical perspective—with its ability to provide powerful insights and bridge disparate issues—by emphasizing the roles of space and place, location, regional differences, and diffusion. Arguing that an understanding of population is essential to prepare for the future, this cogent text will provide upper-division undergraduates with a thorough grasp of the field.
Download or read book The Crash Course written by Chris Martenson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years. The world is in economic crisis, and there are no easy fixes to our predicament. Unsustainable trends in the economy, energy, and the environment have finally caught up with us and are converging on a very narrow window of time—the "Twenty-Teens." The Crash Course presents our predicament and illuminates the path ahead, so you can face the coming disruptions and thrive--without fearing the future or retreating into denial. In this book you will find solid facts and grounded reasoning presented in a calm, positive, non-partisan manner. Our money system places impossible demands upon a finite world. Exponentially rising levels of debt, based on assumptions of future economic growth to fund repayment, will shudder to a halt and then reverse. Unfortunately, our financial system does not operate in reverse. The consequences of massive deleveraging will be severe. Oil is essential for economic growth. The reality of dwindling oil supplies is now internationally recognized, yet virtually no developed nations have a Plan B. The economic risks to individuals, companies, and countries are varied and enormous. Best-case, living standards will drop steadily worldwide. Worst-case, systemic financial crises will toss the world into jarring chaos. This book is written for those who are motivated to learn about the root causes of our predicaments, protect themselves and their families, mitigate risks as much as possible, and control what effects they can. With challenge comes opportunity, and The Crash Course offers a positive vision for how to reshape our lives to be more balanced, resilient, and sustainable.
Download or read book The Limits to Growth written by Donella H. Meadows and published by Universe Pub. This book was released on 1972 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs
Download or read book When the Rivers Run Dry written by Fred Pearce and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, veteran science correspondent Fred Pearce travels to more than thirty countries to examine the current state of crucial water sources. Deftly weaving together the complicated scientific, economic, and historic dimensions of the world water crisis, he provides our most complete portrait yet of this growing danger and its ramifications for us all. "A strong-and scary-case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a "kind of cataclysm" already affecting many of the world"s great rivers." -Publishers Weekly, starred review "Oil we can replace. Water we can"t-which is why this book is both so ominous and so important." -Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
Download or read book The Death of Money written by James Rickards and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The next financial collapse will resemble nothing in history. . . . Deciding upon the best course to follow will require comprehending a minefield of risks, while poised at a crossroads, pondering the death of the dollar. The U.S. dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of World War II. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. But optimists have always said, in essence, that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government. In the last few years, however, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked, our biggest rivals—China, Russia, and the oil-producing nations of the Middle East—are doing everything possible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. The potential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation. Market collapse. Chaos. James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why money itself is now at risk and what we can all do to protect ourselves. He explains the power of converting unreliable investments into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value.
Download or read book The Last Generation written by Fred Pearce and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is not a matter of gradually increasing temperatures. New scientific findings about how our planet works show that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure, it lurches into another mode of operation. Man-made global warming is on the verge of unleashing unstoppable planetary forces. Biological and geological monsters are being woken, and they will consume us. Virtually overnight Nature's revenge will be sudden and brutal, like a climatic tsunami sweeping across the globe. No question, we are the last generation to live with any kind of climatic stability. In this impassioned report, Fred Pearce travels the world on the story to end them all. Most troubling, while visiting the places where the action may start: deep in the Amazon, high in the Arctic and among the bogs of Siberia, he uncovers the first signs that nature's revenge is already under way.
Download or read book Earth Then and Now written by Fred Pearce and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents more the three hundred photographs showing how the world has changed over the past century from industrialization, urbanization, natural disasters, war, and travel and tourism.
