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During the last 20 years, the American public has become increasingly aware of environmental problems and resource scarcities. This study focuses on the rapid emergence of an ecological social paradigm, which appears to be replacing the technological social paradigm that has dominated American culture throughout most of the 20th century.
In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.
Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.
A network of educational reformers reports on projects that are equipping today's children with the tools of ecological consciousness and systems thinking that will help humankind live more sustainably on the Earth tomorrow.
A tour-de-force reconceiving the interrelationship between science, industry, culture, and politics from the coeditor of The Case Against the Global EconomyFirst published in 1992, The Way is Edward Goldsmith's magnum opus. In it, he proposes that the stability and integrity of humans depend on the preservation of the balance of natural systems surrounding the individual -- family, community, society, ecosystem, and the ecosphere itself. Portraying life processes and ecological thinking as holistic, Goldsmith calls for a paradigm shift away from the reductionist approach of modern science.The basic belief in the whole was at the heart of the worldview of primal, earth-oriented societies, as manifested by the Tao of the ancient Chinese, the R'ta of Vedic India, the Asha of the Avestas, and the Sedeq of the tribal Hebrews. "The Way" was the path taken to maintain the critical order of the cosmos. Echoing the way of traditional cultures, Goldsmith presents an all-embracing, coherent worldview that promotes more harmonious and sustainable practices capable of satisfying real biological, social, ecological, and spiritual needs.Revised to include a glossary, index, bibliographic notes, and several updated chapters, this is a major work by one of our boldest and most promising thinkers.
The focus of this book is on changes in the human situation wrought by unprecedented changes in science-based technology and expanding populations. Increasing scientific information concerning these changes and their consequences is beginning to alter people's perceptions, thus providing a rational basis for a worldwide environmental movement. This movement - complex and differentiated - works through political and educational means to establish new social priorities consistent with scientific findings and the sustainability of life on Earth. The success of this effort would signify a new phase of social development. The thesis of this book is that human-made changes in the condition of the Earth, accompanied by the changing attitudes and values implicit in the environmental movement, constitute an historical discontinuity. The present era represents a transition between the assumptions and conditions that have hitherto characterized the modern world, and those of the post-modern world that is emerging. Science and technology, so vividly symbolized in the view from outer space, are fundamentally changing our traditional beliefs about human opportunities and limitations - and these changes are slowly being reflected in international policies and laws. If humanity today succeeds in establishing a sustainable relationship to Earth, a higher level of civilisation will have been achieved. This thought-provoking view will interest students and professionals in the science and politics of the environment.
Environmental Winds challenges the notion that globalized social formations emerged solely in the Global North prior to impacting the Global South. Instead, such formations have been constituted, transformed, and propelled through diverse, site-specific social interactions that complicate and defy divisions between 'global' and 'local.' The book brings the reader into the lives of Chinese scientists, officials, villagers, and expatriate conservationists who were caught up in environmental trends over the past 25 years. Hathaway reveals how global environmentalism has been enacted and altered in China, often with unanticipated effects, such as the rise of indigenous rights, or the reconfiguration of human/animal relationships, fostering what rural villagers refer to as “the revenge of wild elephants.”
What it means for global sustainability when environmentalism is dominated by the concerns of the affluent—eco-business, eco-consumption, wilderness preservation. Over the last fifty years, environmentalism has emerged as a clear counterforce to the environmental destruction caused by industrialization, colonialism, and globalization. Activists and policymakers have fought hard to make the earth a better place to live. But has the environmental movement actually brought about meaningful progress toward global sustainability? Signs of global “unsustainability” are everywhere, from decreasing biodiversity to scarcity of fresh water to steadily rising greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, as Peter Dauvergne points out in this provocative book, the environmental movement is increasingly dominated by the environmentalism of the rich—diverted into eco-business, eco-consumption, wilderness preservation, energy efficiency, and recycling. While it's good that, for example, Barbie dolls' packaging no longer depletes Indonesian rainforest, and that Toyota Highlanders are available as hybrids, none of this gets at the source of the current sustainability crisis. More eco-products can just mean more corporate profits, consumption, and waste. Dauvergne examines extraction booms that leave developing countries poor and environmentally devastated—with the ruination of the South Pacific island of Nauru a case in point; the struggles against consumption inequities of courageous activists like Bruno Manser, who worked with indigenous people to try to save the rainforests of Borneo; and the manufacturing of vast markets for nondurable goods—for example, convincing parents in China that disposable diapers made for healthier and smarter babies. Dauvergne reveals why a global political economy of ever more—more growth, more sales, more consumption—is swamping environmental gains. Environmentalism of the rich does little to bring about the sweeping institutional change necessary to make progress toward global sustainability.
Describes an environmental research team's plan for a global economy.
Can we reach a future that is both environmentally and socially sustainable? Many issues characterise global developments at the end of the twentieth century: globalization of the economy, unemployment, social problems, environmental pollution, resource waste, ecological destruction. Earth at a Crossroads offers a holistic systems view of the development of human society within the natural environment on which it depends for support. The book stresses the dynamic nature of interconnected feedback processes, traces possible future paths of societal development and their impacts, determines their sustainability, and points at necessary changes. Two alternative visions of the future are presented: a Path A resulting from continuation of current trends, and a contrasting Path B that would result from adhering to principles of sustainability and protection of the natural system in the interests of future generations. This book will become an important reference in the discussion of global society's path into the next millennium.