Download or read book The Improving State of the World written by Indur M. Goklany and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2007-01-19 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people believe that globalization and its key components have made matters worse for humanity and the environment. Indur M. Goklany exposes this as a complete myth and challenges people to consider how much worse the world would be without them. Goklany confronts foes of globalization and demonstrates that economic growth, technological change and free trade helped to power a “cycle of progress” that in the last two centuries enabled unprecedented improvements in every objective measurement of human well-being. His analysis is accompanied by an extensive range of charts, historical data, and statistics. The Improving State of the World represents an important contribution to the environment versus development debate and collects in one volume for the first time the long-term trends in a broad array of the most significant indicators of human and environmental well-being, and their dependence on economic development and technological change. While noting that the record is more complicated on the environmental front, the author shows how innovation, increased affluence and key institutions have combined to address environmental degradation. The author notes that the early stages of development can indeed cause environmental problems, but additional development creates greater wealth allowing societies to create and afford cleaner technologies. Development becomes the solution rather than the problem.
Download or read book The Improving State of the World written by Indur M. Goklany and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2007 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on a wealth of data, Goklany shows how innovation, increases in affluence, and key institutions have combined to address environmental degradation that sometimes results from growth. The evidence on the use of cropland, trends in air pollution, and diverse experiences in water usage counters the gloomy outlook of some environmentalists. Goklany explains why the state of the world is improving and offers a realistic assessment of the sustainability of the human enterprise, setting priorities for dealing with such challenges as climate change.
Download or read book The State of Humanity written by Julian Simon and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1996-01-09 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and balanced assessment of the state of the Earth and its inhabitants at the close of the twentieth century. More than fifty scholars from all over the world present new, concise and accessible accounts of the present state of humanity and the prospects for its social and natural environment. The subjects range from deforestation, water pollution and ozone layer depletion to poverty, homelessness, mortality and murder. Each contributor considers the present situation, historical trends, likely future prospects, and the efficacy or otherwise of current activity and policy. The coverage is worldwide, with a particular emphasis on North America. The State of Humanity is a magnificent and eye-opening synthesis of cultural, social, economic and environmental perspectives. It will interest all those - including geographers, economists, sociologists and policy makers - concerned to understand some of the most pressing problems of our time.
Download or read book Global Trends 2040 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
Download or read book Seeing Like a State written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Download or read book Factfulness written by Hans Rosling and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Download or read book Miseducation written by Katie Worth and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are so many American children learning so much misinformation about climate change? Investigative reporter Katie Worth reviewed scores of textbooks, built a 50-state database, and traveled to a dozen communities to talk to children and teachers about what is being taught, and found a red-blue divide in climate education. More than one-third of young adults believe that climate change is not man-made, and science teachers who teach global warming are being contradicted by history teachers who tell children not to worry about it. Who has tried to influence what children learn, and how successful have they been? Worth connects the dots to find out how oil corporations, state legislatures, school boards, and textbook publishers sow uncertainty, confusion, and distrust about climate science. A thoroughly researched, eye-opening look at how some states do not want children to learn the facts about climate change.
Download or read book Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries written by Dean T. Jamison and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006-04-02 with total page 1449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.
Download or read book Progress written by Johan Norberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer Our world seems to be collapsing. The daily news cycle reports the deterioration: divisive politics across the Western world, racism, poverty, war, inequality, hunger. While politicians, journalists and activists from all sides talk about the damage done, Johan Norberg offers an illuminating and heartening analysis of just how far we have come in tackling the greatest problems facing humanity. In the face of fear-mongering, darkness and division, the facts are unequivocal: the golden age is now.
Download or read book The Limits of Growth written by D. H. Meadows and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What We Owe Each Other written by Minouche Shafik and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.
Download or read book Educating Students to Improve the World written by Fernando M. Reimers and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book addresses how to help students find purpose in a rapidly changing world. In a probing and visionary analysis of the field of global education Fernando Reimers explains how to lead the transformation of schools and school systems in order to more effectively prepare students to address today’s’ most urgent challenges and to invent a better future. Offering a comprehensive and multidimensional framework for designing and implementing a global education program that combines cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political perspectives the book integrates an extensive body of empirical literature on the practice of global education. It discusses several global citizenship curricula that have been adopted by schools and school networks, and ties them into an approach to lead school change into the uncharted territory of the future. Given its scope, the book will help teachers, school and district leaders tackle the change management needed in order to introduce global education, and more generally increase the relevancy of education. In addition, the book offers a “bridge” for more productive collaboration and communication between those who lead the process of educational change, and those who study and theorize this important work. At a time when the urgency of our shared global challenges calls for more understanding and collaboration and when the rapid transformation of societies requires that we help students develop a clear sense of relevancy and purpose, this book offers a way to pursue deep and sustainable change in instruction and school culture, so that students learn that nothing human is foreign and that they can find meaning in lives aligned with audacious purposes to make the world better.
Download or read book Cato Handbook for Policymakers written by Cato Institute and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2008 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers policy recommendations from Cato Institute experts on every major policy issue. Providing both in-depth analysis and concrete recommendations, the Handbook is an invaluable resource for policymakers and anyone else interested in securing liberty through limited government.
Download or read book U S Health in International Perspective written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
Download or read book States Scarcity and Civil Strife in the Developing World written by Colin H. Kahl and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several decades, civil and ethnic wars have undermined prospects for economic and political development, destabilized entire regions of the globe, and left millions dead. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World argues that demographic and environmental stress--the interactions among rapid population growth, environmental degradation, inequality, and emerging scarcities of vital natural resources--represents one important source of turmoil in today's world. Kahl contends that this type of stress places enormous strains on both societies and governments in poor countries, increasing their vulnerability to armed conflict. He identifies two pathways whereby this process unfolds: state failure and state exploitation. State failure conflicts occur when population growth, environmental degradation, and resource inequality weaken the capacity, legitimacy, and cohesion of governments, thereby expanding the opportunities and incentives for rebellion and intergroup violence. State exploitation conflicts, in contrast, occur when political leaders themselves capitalize on the opportunities arising from population pressures, natural resource scarcities, and related social grievances to instigate violence that serves their parochial interests. Drawing on a wide array of social science theory, this book argues that demographically and environmentally induced conflicts are most likely to occur in countries that are deeply split along ethnic, religious, regional, or class lines, and which have highly exclusive and discriminatory political systems. The empirical portion of the book evaluates the theoretical argument through in-depth case studies of civil strife in the Philippines, Kenya, and numerous other countries. The book concludes with an analysis of the challenges demographic and environmental change will pose to international security in the decades ahead.
Download or read book Planetary Health written by Samuel Myers and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.
Download or read book The Fourth Industrial Revolution written by Klaus Schwab and published by Currency. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wearable sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manufacturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individuals. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frameworks that advance progress.
