Download or read book The Pragmatic Ecologist written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Among the Pigeons written by John L. Read and published by Wakefield Press. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last century, global domestic cat numbers rocketed past 200 million, along with a surge in cat diseases and numbers of feral cats and sick, injured and malnourished cats. Cat shelters are overflowing. Hundreds of thousands of cats are euthanised every year by despondent animal welfare workers. Misplaced sentimentality, sometimes promoted by corporate greed of cat food companies, has exacerbated this situation through promoting irresponsible feeding of strays. Ecologist and author John Read has travelled the world consulting cat experts and collating the most recent science. In Among the Pigeons he balances the allure of indoor cats with the animal welfare, human health, and conservation issues they create when allowed to roam. But he also presents solutions, from breeding ideal indoor pet cats to development of humane and targeted tools to control feral cats. In striking parallel to the repercussions of human-induced climate change, warnings about the damage wrought by free-ranging cats have been largely denied or overlooked. But we ignore these issues at our peril. For our own mental health and endangered wildlife worldwide, time is running out.
Download or read book Environmental Pragmatism written by Eric Katz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues. This concise, well-focused collection is the first comprehensive presentation of environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical approach to environmental thought and policy.
Download or read book Society and the Environment written by Michael Carolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society and the Environment examines today's environmental controversies within a socio-organizational context. After outlining the contours of 'pragmatic environmentalism', Carolan considers the pressures that exist where ecology and society collide, such as population growth and its associated increased demands for food and energy. He also investigates how various ecological issues, such as climate change, are affecting our very own personal health. Finally, he drills into the social/structural dynamics (including political economy and the international legal system) that create ongoing momentum for environmental ills. This interdisciplinary text features a three-part structure in each chapter that covers 'fast facts' about the issue at hand, examines its wide-ranging implications, and offers balanced consideration of possible real-world solutions. New to this edition are 'Movement Matters' boxes, which showcase grassroots movements that have affected legislation. Discussion questions and key terms enhance the text's usefulness, making Society and the Environment the perfect learning tool for courses on environmental sociology.
Download or read book Earthly Politics written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-03-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.
Download or read book Eco pragmatism written by Daniel A. Farber and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eco-pragmatism takes on the most critical controversies in environmental law today: how to weigh economic costs against environmental quality and human life, how to assess the long time horizons of environmental problems, and how to make appropriate decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty about the scope (or even the existence) of environmental problems. Farber discusses whether (and how) we should "discount" the values of future environmental benefits, how we should use economic measurements of environmental values, and how we can streamline the regulatory process to respond to rapidly changing scientific knowledge. The result is a pragmatic decision-making framework that is flexible enough to accommodate the unique challenges each case presents.
Download or read book Conservation written by Monique Borgerhoff Mulder and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 90 percent of the earth's land surface is directly affected by human infrastructure and activities, yet less than 5 percent is legally "protected" for biodiversity conservation--and even most large protected areas have people living inside their boundaries. In all but a small fraction of the earth's land area, then, conservation and people must coexist. Conservation is a resource for all those who aim to reconcile biodiversity with human livelihoods. It traces the historical roots of modern conservation thought and practice, and explores current perspectives from evolutionary and community ecology, conservation biology, anthropology, political ecology, economics, and policy. The authors examine a suite of conservation strategies and perspectives from around the world, highlighting the most innovative and promising avenues for future efforts. Exploring, highlighting, and bridging gaps between the social and natural sciences as applied in the practice of conservation, this book provides a broad, practically oriented view. It is essential reading for anyone involved in the conservation process--from academic conservation biology to the management of protected areas, rural livelihood development to poverty alleviation, and from community-based natural resource management to national and global policymaking.
Download or read book Environmental Pragmatism written by Eric Katz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues. This concise, well-focused collection is the first comprehensive presentation of environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical approach to environmental thought and policy.
Download or read book Trillions written by Peter Lucas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-08-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are facing a future of unbounded complexity. Whether that complexity is harnessed to build a world that is safe, pleasant, humane and profitable, or whether it causes us to careen off a cliff into an abyss of mind-numbing junk is an open question. The challenges and opportunities--technical, business, and human--that this technological sea change will bring are without precedent. Entire industries will be born and others will be laid to ruin as our society navigates this journey. There are already many more computing devices in the world than there are people. In a few more years, their number will climb into the trillions. We put microprocessors into nearly every significant thing that we manufacture, and the cost of routine computing and storage is rapidly becoming negligible. We have literally permeated our world with computation. But more significant than mere numbers is the fact we are quickly figuring out how to make those processors communicate with each other, and with us. We are about to be faced, not with a trillion isolated devices, but with a trillion-node network: a network whose scale and complexity will dwarf that of today’s Internet. And, unlike the Internet, this will be a network not of computation that we use, but of computation that we live in. Written by the leaders of one of America’s leading pervasive computing design firms, this book gives a no-holds-barred insiders’ account of both the promise and the risks of the age of Trillions. It is also a cautionary tale of the head-in-the-sand attitude with which many of today’s thought-leaders are at present approaching these issues. Trillions is a field guide to the future--designed to help businesses and their customers prepare to prosper, in the information.
Download or read book Wild Capital written by Barbara K. Jones and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Wild Capital, Barbara Jones demonstrates that looking at nature through the lens of the marketplace is a surprisingly effective approach to protecting the environment. Showing that policy-makers and developers rarely associate wild places with monetary values, Jones argues that nature can and should be viewed as a capital asset like any other in order for environmental preservation to be a competitive alternative to development. Jones describes how the ecosystem services model, a tool that connects human well-being with the services nature provides, can play a critical role in assigning species and their habitats measurable values. She uses five highly recognizable animal species—moose, manatees, sharks, wolves, and bald eagles—as examples to show how highly valued charismatic fauna can serve as symbolic representations of entire ecosystems at risk. Through an emphasis on branding, incentives, and ecotourism, Jones advocates for channeling the social and economic power of these and other faces of nature to inspire greater environmental awareness and stewardship. Contending that many people don’t realize how fiscally pragmatic environmental initiatives can be, Jones is optimistic that by recognizing the costs of habitat destruction and diminished biodiversity, we will make better choices regarding conservation and development. In doing so, we can more readily move toward co-existence with nature and a sustainable future.
Download or read book The Truth of Ecology written by Dana Phillips and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging appraisal of environmental thought. It explores such topics as the history of ecology, radical science studies and ecology, the need for greater theoretical sophistication in ecocriticism, the dubious legacy of Thoreau, and the contradictions of contemporary nature writing.
Download or read book Society and the Environment written by Michael S Carolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without focusing entirely on what is wrong with the world around us, the third edition of Society and the Environment centers its discussion on realistic solutions to the problems that persist and examines current controversies within a socio-organizational context. After introducing “pragmatic environmentalism,” Carolan discusses the complex pressures and variables that exist where ecology and society collide, such as population growth and the concurrent increase in demands for food and energy, and transportation and its outsized influence on urban and community patterns. With further attention given to the social phenomena and structural dynamics driving today’s environmental problems, the book concludes with an important reflection on truly sustainable solutions and what constitutes meaningful social change. Each chapter in this interdisciplinary text follows a three-part structure beginning with an overview of what is wrong and why. This leads into a discussion on each issue’s wide-ranging implications and, finally, a balanced consideration of realistic solutions. Featuring updated and expanded examples, discussion points, and coverage of recent developments including the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, “booming” national economies and wealth distribution, growing global interest in environmental justice—with particular focus on the links between injustice and race and inequality—climate change, and renewable energy, this new edition remains an essential companion for courses on environmental sociology and sustainability.
Download or read book Nested Ecology written by Edward T. Wimberley and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-05-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nested Ecology provides a pragmatic and functional approach to realizing a sustainable environmental ethic. Edward T. Wimberley asserts that a practical ecological ethic must focus on human decision making within the context of larger social and environmental systems. Think of a set of mixing bowls, in which smaller bowls sit within larger ones. Wimberley sees the world in much the same way, with personal ecologies embedded in social ecologies that in turn are nested within natural ecologies. Wimberley urges a complete reconceptualization of the human place in the ecological hierarchy. Going beyond the physical realms in which people live and interact, he extends the concept of ecology to spirituality and the “ecology of the unknown.” In doing so, Wimberley defines a new environmental philosophy and a new ecological ethic.
Download or read book Integral Ecology written by Sean Esbjörn-Hargens and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dozens of real-life applications and examples of this framework currently in use are examined, including three in-depth cases studies: work with marine fisheries in Hawai'i, strategies of eco-activists to protect Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, and a study of community development in El Salvador. In addition, eighteen personal practices of transformation are provided for you to increase your own integral ecological awareness."--Jacket.
Download or read book Having Faith written by Sandra Steingraber and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant writer, first-time mother, and respected biologist, Sandra Steingraber tells the month-by-month story of her own pregnancy, weaving in the new knowledge of embryology, the intricate development of organs, the emerging architecture of the brain, and the transformation of the mother's body to nourish and protect the new life. At the same time, she shows all the hazards that we are now allowing to threaten each precious stage of development, including the breast-feeding relationship between mothers and their newborns. In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother's body is the first environment, the mediator between the toxins in our food, water, and air and her unborn child.Never before has the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby seemed so astonishingly vivid, and never before has the threat of environmental pollution to conception, pregnancy, and even to the safety of breast milk been revealed with such clarity and urgency. In Having Faith, poetry and science combine in a passionate call to action.A Merloyd Lawrence Book
Download or read book Dark Ecology written by Timothy Morton and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timothy Morton argues that ecological awareness in the present Anthropocene era takes the form of a strange loop or Möbius strip, twisted to have only one side. Deckard travels this oedipal path in Blade Runner (1982) when he learns that he might be the enemy he has been ordered to pursue. Ecological awareness takes this shape because ecological phenomena have a loop form that is also fundamental to the structure of how things are. The logistics of agricultural society resulted in global warming and hardwired dangerous ideas about life-forms into the human mind. Dark ecology puts us in an uncanny position of radical self-knowledge, illuminating our place in the biosphere and our belonging to a species in a sense that is far less obvious than we like to think. Morton explores the logical foundations of the ecological crisis, which is suffused with the melancholy and negativity of coexistence yet evolving, as we explore its loop form, into something playful, anarchic, and comedic. His work is a skilled fusion of humanities and scientific scholarship, incorporating the theories and findings of philosophy, anthropology, literature, ecology, biology, and physics. Morton hopes to reestablish our ties to nonhuman beings and to help us rediscover the playfulness and joy that can brighten the dark, strange loop we traverse.
Download or read book Ecology or Catastrophe written by Janet Biehl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murray Bookchin was not only one of the most significant and influential environmental philosophers of the twentieth century--he was also one of the most prescient. From industrial agriculture to nuclear radiation, Bookchin has been at the forefront of every major ecological issue since the very beginning, often proposing a solution before most people even recognized there was a problem. Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin is the first biography of this groundbreaking environmental and political thinker. Author Janet Biehl worked as his collaborator and copyeditor for 19 years, editing his every word. Thanks to her extensive personal history with Bookchin as well as her access to his papers and archival research, Ecology or Catastrophe offers unique insight into his personal and professional life. Founder of the social ecology movement, Bookchin first started raising environmental issues in 1952. He foresaw global warming in the 1960s and even then argued that we should look into renewable energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels. Wary of pesticides and other chemicals used in industrial agriculture, he was also an early advocate of small-scale organic farming, which has developed into the present locavore movement and the revival of organic markets. Even Occupy can trace the origins of its leaderless structure and general assemblies to the nonhierarchical organizational form Bookchin developed as a libertarian socialist. Bookchin believed that social and ecological issues were deeply intertwined. Convinced that capitalism pushes businesses to maximize profits and ignore humanist concerns, he argued that eco-crises could be resolved by a new social arrangement. His solution was Communalism, a new form of libertarian socialism that he developed. An optimist and utopian, Bookchin believed in the potentiality for human beings to use reason to solve all social and ecological problems.
