Sustainability Or Collapse

Author : Robert Costanza,Lisa J. Graumlich,Will Steffen
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 518 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2011-01-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262515979

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Sustainability or Collapse? by Robert Costanza,Lisa J. Graumlich,Will Steffen Pdf

Scholars from a range of disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. Human history, as written traditionally, leaves out the important ecological and climate context of historical events. But the capability to integrate the history of human beings with the natural history of the Earth now exists, and we are finding that human-environmental systems are intimately linked in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. In Sustainability or Collapse?, researchers from a range of scholarly disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. The contributors focus on the human-environment interactions that have shaped historical forces since ancient times and discuss such key methodological issues as data quality. Topics highlighted include the political ecology of the Mayans; the effect of climate on the Roman Empire; the "revolutionary weather" of El Niño from 1788 to 1795; twentieth-century social, economic, and political forces in environmental change; scenarios for the future; and the accuracy of such past forecasts as The Limits to Growth.

Author : Richard Smith (Ph. D.)
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
ISBN : 1786806630

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China's Engine of Environmental Collapse by Richard Smith (Ph. D.) Pdf

"As the world hurtles towards environmental oblivion, China is leading the charge. The nation's CO2 emissions are more than twice those of the US with a GDP just two-thirds as large. China leads the world in renewable energy yet it is building new coal-fired power plants faster than renewables. The country's lakes, rivers, and farmlands are severely polluted yet China's police state can't suppress pollution, even from its own industries. This is the first book to explain these contradictions. Richard Smith explains how the country's bureaucratic rulers are driven by nationalist-industrialist tendencies that are even more powerful than the drive for profit under 'normal' capitalism. In their race to overtake the US they must prioritise hyper-growth over the environment, even if this ends in climate collapse and eco-suicide. Smith contends that nothing short of drastic shutdowns and the scaling back of polluting industries, especially in China and the US, will suffice to slash greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent climate catastrophe."--

Author : Luiz Marques
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 463 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2020-08-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030475277

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Capitalism and Environmental Collapse by Luiz Marques Pdf

This book intends to be an alert to the fact that the curve measuring environmental costs against the economic benefits of capitalism has irreversibly entered into a negative phase. The prospect of an environmental collapse has been evidenced by the sciences and the humanities since the 1960s. Today, it imposes its urgency. This collapse differs from past civilizations in that it is neither local nor just civilizational. It is global and occurs at the broadest level of the biosphere, accelerated by the convergence of different socio-environmental crises, such as: Earth energy imbalance, climate change and global warming Sea-level rise Decrease and degradation of forests Collapse of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity Floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events Degradation of soils and water resources Increase in pollution caused by fossil fuels and coal Increase in waste production and industrial intoxication The book is divided in two parts. In the first part it presents a comprehensive review of scientific data to show the already visible effects of each of the different environmental crises and its consequences to human life on Earth. In the second part, Luiz Marques critically discusses what he calls the three concentric illusions that prevent us from realizing the gravity of the current socio-environmental crises: the illusion of a sustainable capitalism, the illusion that economic growth is still capable of providing more well-being and the anthropocentric illusion. Finally, Marques argues that "fitting" back into the biosphere will only be possible if we dismantle the expansive socioeconomic gear that has shaped our societies since the 16th century by moving from a Social Contract to a Natural Contract, which takes into account the whole biosphere. According to him, the future society will be post-capitalist or it will not be a complex society, and even perhaps, we must fear, no society at all. “This book is backed up with the latest and best science and has made the complexities understandable for the average reader, all in a context of hope for the future.” - William J. Ripple, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Director of the Alliance of World Scientists, Oregon State University

Author : Christina Ergas
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2021-08-16
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780197544099

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Surviving Collapse by Christina Ergas Pdf

As major environmental crises loom, Christina Ergas makes the argument in Surviving Collapse that one possible way forward is a radical sustainable development that turns the focus from monetary gain to social and ecological regeneration and transformation. Employing qualitative and cross-national comparative methods, Ergas examines two alternative, community-scale, socioecological models of development: the first is a grassroots urban ecovillage in the Pacific Northwest, United States, while the second is a government-subsidized, but cooperatively run, urban farm in Havana, Cuba. While neither are panaceas, they prioritize social and ecological efficiency and subsume economic rationality towards those ends. Featuring cases that not only allow us to synthesize their strengths but evaluate their weaknesses, Surviving Collapse reveals a multitude of varied paths toward reaching radical urban sustainability and empowers us all to imagine, and possibly build, more resilient futures.

Author : Alison E. Vogelaar,Brack W. Hale,Alexandra Peat
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-22
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781315441429

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The Discourses of Environmental Collapse by Alison E. Vogelaar,Brack W. Hale,Alexandra Peat Pdf

In recent years, ‘environmental collapse’ has become an important way of framing and imagining environmental change and destruction, referencing issues such as climate change, species extinction and deteriorating ecosystems. Given its pervasiveness across disciplines and spheres, this edited volume articulates environmental collapse as a discursive phenomenon worthy of sustained critical attention. Building upon contemporary conversations in the fields of archaeology and the natural sciences, this volume coalesces, explores and critically evaluates the diverse array of literatures and imaginaries that constitute environmental collapse. The volume is divided into three sections— Doc- Collapse, Pop Collapse and Craft Collapse —that independently explore distinct modes of representing, and implicit attitudes toward, environmental collapse from the lenses of diverse fields of study including climate science and policy, cinema and photo journalism. Bringing together a broad range of topics and authors, this volume will be of great interest to scholars of environmental communication and environmental humanities.

Author : Daniel Rirdan
Publisher : Daniel Rirdan
Page : 495 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781470135881

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The Blueprint by Daniel Rirdan Pdf

From climate change to land degradation to fossil fuel shortages, we are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. This book offers a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives.--Inside front cover.

Author : Jared Diamond
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 608 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141976969

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Collapse by Jared Diamond Pdf

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times

Author : Christina Ergas
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Climate change mitigation
ISBN : 0197544134

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Surviving Collapse by Christina Ergas Pdf

As environmental crises loom, 'Surviving Collapse' makes an argument for radical changes in the ways in which people live to avoid a dystopian future. To foster readers' imagination, Christina Ergas reveals real utopian stories that counter climate apocalypse narratives. Two eco-communities offer examples of alternative futures with small environmental footprints and more egalitarian social practices. They model solutions to the interconnected problems of rising social inequalities and environmental degradation. Each case engages in community-oriented practices, direct democracy, and ecological agricultural forms that attend to whole ecosystems. These practitioners recognize the value of whole biotic communities, human and nonhuman, and practice reciprocity.

Author : Guy D. Middleton
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 463 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107151499

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Understanding Collapse by Guy D. Middleton Pdf

In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

Author : Dean Bavington
Publisher : UBC Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2011-01-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780774859509

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Managed Annihilation by Dean Bavington Pdf

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, many pointed to failures in management, such as uncontrolled harvesting, as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state-managed and still, two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered and has been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

Author : Donella Hager Meadows
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Economic development
ISBN : 0930031628

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Beyond the Limits by Donella Hager Meadows Pdf

Author : Emilio Garcia,Brenda Vale,Robert Vale
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-07-24
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9783030777838

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Collapsing Gracefully: Making a Built Environment that is Fit for the Future by Emilio Garcia,Brenda Vale,Robert Vale Pdf

This innovative book investigates the concept of collapse in terms of our built environment, exploring the future transition of modern cities towards scenarios very different from the current promises of progress and development. This is not a book about the end of the world and hopeless apocalyptic scenarios. It is about understanding change in how and where we live. Collapse is inevitable, but in the built environment collapse could imply a manageable situation, an opportunity for change or a devastating reality. Collapsing gracefully means that there might be better ways to coexist with collapse if we learn more about it and commit to rebuild our civilisations in ways that avoid its worst effects. This book uses a wide range of practical examples to study critical changes in the built environment, to contextualise and visualise what collapse looks like, to see if it is possible to buffer its effects in places already collapsing and to propose ways to develop greater resilience. The book challenges all agents and institutions in modern cities, their designers and planners as well as their residents and users to think differently about built environment so as to ease our coexistence with collapse and not contribute to its causes. .

Author : Patricia A. McAnany,Norman Yoffee
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521515726

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Questioning Collapse by Patricia A. McAnany,Norman Yoffee Pdf

Questioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies - past and present - collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from Chaco Canyon in the American southwest, the crisis and resilience of Lowland Maya kingship, and other societies that purportedly "collapsed." Collectively, these essays demonstrate that resilience in the face of societal crises, rather than collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the earliest civilizations to the present. Scrutinizing the notion that Euro-American colonial triumphs were an accident of geography, Questioning Collapse also critically examines the complex historical relationship between race and political labels of societal "success" and "failure."

Author : Jennifer Wells
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-10
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781136215315

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Complexity and Sustainability by Jennifer Wells Pdf

Complex dynamic system studies have been studied explicitly in the natural sciences, and most only implicitly throughout other fields. Yet much great social theory and philosophy is in fact based in complexity, and important concepts like postmodernism, risk, and collapse all stem from complexity. Six key terms are explored: nonlinearity, feedbacks, thresholds, hierarchies, emergence and self-organization, and dozens of related principles are discussed, with a focus on uncertainty, risk, vulnerability, learning, strategy, resilience, collapse and sustainability. The book surveys the role of these complexity principles in the natural sciences, social theory, transdisciplinary discourse, philosophy, and ethics, and shows how this complexity framework is a valuable lens for approaching the spectre of climate change and life in the Anthropocene.

Author : David W. Orr
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2009-09-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 0199745757

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Down to the Wire by David W. Orr Pdf

"The real fault line in American politics is not between liberals and conservatives.... It is, rather, in how we orient ourselves to the generations to come who will bear the consequences, for better and for worse, of our actions." So writes David Orr in Down to the Wire, a sober and eloquent assessment of climate destabilization and an urgent call to action. Orr describes how political negligence, an economy based on the insatiable consumption of trivial goods, and a disdain for the well-being of future generations have brought us to the tipping point that biologist Edward O. Wilson calls "the bottleneck." Due to our refusal to live within natural limits, we now face a long emergency of rising temperatures, rising sea-levels, and a host of other related problems that will increasingly undermine human civilization. Climate destabilization to which we are already committed will change everything, and to those betting on quick technological fixes or minor adjustments to the way we live now, Down to the Wire is a major wake-up call. But this is not a doomsday book. Orr offers a wide range of pragmatic, far-reaching proposals--some of which have already been adopted by the Obama administration--for how we might reconnect public policy with rigorous science, bring our economy into alignment with ecological realities, and begin to regard ourselves as planetary trustees for future generations. He offers inspiring real-life examples of people already responding to the major threat to our future. An exacting analysis of where we are in terms of climate change, how we got here, and what we must now do, Down to the Wire is essential reading for those wanting to join in the Great Work of our generation.