Download or read book Energy and the Wealth of Nations written by Charles A.S. Hall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this updated edition of a groundbreaking text, concepts such as energy return on investment (EROI) provide powerful insights into the real balance sheets that drive our “petroleum economy.” Hall and Klitgaard explore the relation between energy and the wealth explosion of the 20th century, and the interaction of internal limits to growth found in the investment process and rising inequality with the biophysical limits posed by finite energy resources. The authors focus attention on the failure of markets to recognize or efficiently allocate diminishing resources, the economic consequences of peak oil, the high cost and relatively low EROI of finding and exploiting new oil fields, including the much ballyhooed shale plays and oil sands, and whether alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar power can meet the minimum EROI requirements needed to run society as we know it. For the past 150 years, economics has been treated as a social science in which economies are modeled as a circular flow of income between producers and consumers. In this “perpetual motion” of interactions between firms that produce and households that consume, little or no accounting is given of the flow of energy and materials from the environment and back again. In the standard economic model, energy and matter are completely recycled in these transactions, and economic activity is seemingly exempt from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As we enter the second half of the age of oil, when energy supplies and the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption are likely to constrain economic growth, this exemption should be considered illusory at best. This book is an essential read for all scientists and economists who have recognized the urgent need for a more scientific, empirical, and unified approach to economics in an energy-constrained world, and serves as an ideal teaching text for the growing number of courses, such as the authors’ own, on the role of energy in society.

Download or read book The Economy of Human Energy written by Thomas Nixon Carver and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Superorganism written by Bert Holldobler and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of "The Ants" render the extraordinary lives of the social insects--ants, bees, wasps, and termites--in this visually spectacular volume. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.

Download or read book Transitioning to a Prosperous Resilient and Carbon Free Economy written by Ken Baldwin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive manual for decision-makers and policy leaders addressing the issues around human caused climate change, which threatens communities with increasing extreme weather events, sea level rise, and declining habitability of some regions due to desertification or inundation. The book looks at both mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and adaption to changing conditions as the climate changes. It encourages the early adoption of climate change measures, showing that rapid decarbonisation and improved resilience can be achieved while maintaining prosperity. The book takes a sector-by-sector approach, starting with energy and includes cities, industry, natural resources, and agriculture, enabling practitioners to focus on actions relevant to their field. It uses case studies across a range of countries, and various industries, to illustrate the opportunities available. Blending technological insights with economics and policy, the book presents the tools decision-makers need to achieve rapid decarbonisation, whilst unlocking and maintaining productivity, profit, and growth.

Download or read book The Economy of Human Energy written by Thomas Nixon Carver and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

Download or read book The Hydrogen Economy written by Jeremy Rifkin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-08-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The road to global security," writes Jeremy Rifkin, "lies in lessening our dependence on Middle East oil and making sure that all people on Earth have access to the energy they need to sustain life. Weaning the world off oil and turning it toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world." Rifkin's international bestseller The Hydrogen Economy presents the clearest, most comprehensive case for moving ourselves away from the destructive and waning years of the oil era toward a new kind of energy regime. Hydrogen-one of the most abundant substances in the universe-holds the key, Rifkin argues, to a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable world.

Download or read book Energy and Economic Myths written by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-05-18 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy and Economic Myths: Institutional and Analytical Economic Essays is a collection of materials that deal with various issues and concerns in economics. The title aims to clarify the misconception in economics. The first part of the text deals with the issues in natural resources and the economics of production. Next, the selection tackles the problems in institutional economics. Part III covers the epistemological and methodological concerns in economics. The title also talks about economic theories. The book will be of great interest to economists and readers who want to enhance their understanding of economic concepts.

Download or read book Energy and the Wealth of Nations written by Charles A. S. Hall and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past 150 years, economics has been treated as a social science in which economies are modeled as a circular flow of income between producers and consumers. In this “perpetual motion” of interactions between firms that produce and households that consume, little or no accounting is given of the flow of energy and materials from the environment and back again. In the standard economic model, energy and matter are completely recycled in these transactions, and economic activity is seemingly exempt from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As we enter the second half of the age of oil, and as energy supplies and the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption become major issues on the world stage, this exemption appears illusory at best. In Energy and the Wealth of Nations, concepts such as energy return on investment (EROI) provide powerful insights into the real balance sheets that drive our “petroleum economy.” Hall and Klitgaard explore the relation between energy and the wealth explosion of the 20th century, the failure of markets to recognize or efficiently allocate diminishing resources, the economic consequences of peak oil, the EROI for finding and exploiting new oil fields, and whether alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar power meet the minimum EROI requirements needed to run our society as we know it. This book is an essential read for all scientists and economists who have recognized the urgent need for a more scientific, unified approach to economics in an energy-constrained world, and serves as an ideal teaching text for the growing number of courses, such as the authors’ own, on the role of energy in society.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Human Happiness written by Benjamin Radcliff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data, methods and theories of contemporary social science can be applied to resolve how political outcomes in democratic societies determine the quality of life that citizens experience. Radcliff seeks to provide an objective answer to the debate between left and right over what public policies best contribute to people leading positive and rewarding lives. Radcliff offers an empirical answer, relying on the same canons of reason and evidence required of any other issue amenable to study through social-scientific means. The analysis focuses on the consequences of three specific political issues: the welfare state and the general size of government, labor organization, and state efforts to protect workers and consumers through economic regulation. The results indicate that in each instance, the program of the Left best contributes to citizens leading more satisfying lives and, critically, that the benefits of greater happiness accrue to everyone in society, rich and poor alike.

Download or read book The Changing Body written by Roderick Floud and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and groundbreaking book presents an accessible introduction to the field of anthropometric history, surveying the causes and consequences of changes in health and mortality, diet and the disease environment in Europe and the United States since 1700. It examines how we define and measure health and nutrition as well as key issues such as whether increased longevity contributes to greater productivity or, instead, imposes burdens on society through the higher costs of healthcare and pensions. The result is a major contribution to economic and social history with important implications for today's developing world and the health trends of the future.

Download or read book The Power of Renewables written by Chinese Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-01-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States and China are the world's top two energy consumers and, as of 2010, the two largest economies. Consequently, they have a decisive role to play in the world's clean energy future. Both countries are also motivated by related goals, namely diversified energy portfolios, job creation, energy security, and pollution reduction, making renewable energy development an important strategy with wide-ranging implications. Given the size of their energy markets, any substantial progress the two countries make in advancing use of renewable energy will provide global benefits, in terms of enhanced technological understanding, reduced costs through expanded deployment, and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to conventional generation from fossil fuels. Within this context, the U.S. National Academies, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), reviewed renewable energy development and deployment in the two countries, to highlight prospects for collaboration across the research to deployment chain and to suggest strategies which would promote more rapid and economical attainment of renewable energy goals. Main findings and concerning renewable resource assessments, technology development, environmental impacts, market infrastructure, among others, are presented. Specific recommendations have been limited to those judged to be most likely to accelerate the pace of deployment, increase cost-competitiveness, or shape the future market for renewable energy. The recommendations presented here are also pragmatic and achievable.

Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

Download or read book A Humane Economy written by Wilhelm Röpke and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A Humane Economy is like a seminar on integral freedom conducted by a professor of uncommon brilliance.” —Wall Street Journal “If any person in our contemporary world is entitled to a hearing it is Wilhelm Röpke.” —New York Times A Humane Economy offers one of the most accessible and compelling explanations of how economies operate ever written. The masterwork of the great twentieth-century economist Wilhelm Röpke, this book presents a sweeping, brilliant exposition of market mechanics and moral philosophy. Röpke cuts through the jargon and statistics that make most economic writing so obscure and confusing. Over and over, the great Swiss economist stresses one simple point: you cannot separate economic principles from human behavior. Röpke’s observations are as relevant today as when they were first set forth a half century ago. He clearly demonstrates how those societies that have embraced free-market principles have achieved phenomenal economic success—and how those that cling to theories of economic centralization endure stagnation and persistent poverty. A Humane Economy shows how economic processes and government policies influence our behavior and choices—to the betterment or detriment of life in those vital and highly fragile human structures we call communities. “It is the precept of ethical and humane behavior, no less than of political wisdom,” Röpke reminds us, “to adapt economic policy to man, not man to economic policy.”

Download or read book Energy written by André Gardel and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy: Economy and Prospective emerged from the course taught by the author at the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne. It focuses on the economics and future prospects of energy. Having as much an analytical as well as a synthetic approach, the author has been struck by the confusion and superficiality reigning in this vital, complex area, and has recognized the need to link theory with practice and the present with the future. The book begins by defining the actual situation and the basic factors which will determine the evolution of energy consumption. From it will come an estimate of probable needs for the decades to come. Separate chapters discuss topics such as primary energy resources; the use that is made of them in useful energy; the transformation chains between the primary form and the useful form and the corresponding flows; and methods applied to produce this energy. This work is aimed at anyone wishing to acquire general information on the economics of energy. The author's intention is that it should correspond to that which any university student should know of the matter, and especially to that which should not be unknown to any engineer aware that he should not be just a specialist but must take his share of responsibility in the economic evolution of that part of society to which he belongs.

Download or read book Apollo s Fire written by Jay Inslee and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the authors make the case for renewable energy and renewable energy policy. Each chapter begins with an inspiring story by someone working in renewable energy or a related field.

Download or read book Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures written by Majia Nadesan and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2022-09-29 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures explores how our dominant carbon and nuclear energy assemblages shape conceptions of participation, risk, and in/securities, and how they might be reengineered to deliver justice and democratic participation in transitioning energy systems. Chapters assess the economies, geographies and politics of current and future energy landscapes, exposing how dominant assemblages (composed of technologies, strategies, knowledge and authorities) change our understanding of security and risk, and how they these shared understandings are often enacted uncritically in policy. Contributors address integral relationships across the production and government of material and human energies and the opportunities for sustainable and democratic governance. In addition, the book explores how interest groups advance idealized energy futures and energy imaginaries. The work delves into the role that states, market organizations and civil society play in envisioned energy change. It assesses how risks and security are formulated in relation to economics, politics, ecology, and human health. It concludes by integrating the relationships between alternative energies and governance strategies, including issues of centralization and decentralization, suggesting approaches to engineer democracy into decision-making about energy assemblages. - Explores descriptive and normative relationships between energy and democracy - Reviews how changing energy demand and governance threaten democracies and democratic institutions - Identifies what participative energy transformations look like when paired with energy security - Reviews what happens to social, economic and political infrastructures in the process of achieving sustainable and democratic transitions