On The Nature Of Ecological Paradox
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| Author | : Michael Charles Tobias |
| Publisher | : Springer Nature |
| Total Pages | : 894 |
| Release | : 2021-05-18 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 3030645266 |
This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological–and from an insular perspective, successful–struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience. With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.
| Author | : Timothy Morton |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 262 |
| Release | : 2009-09-15 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 0674034856 |
In Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton argues that the chief stumbling block to environmental thinking is the image of nature itself. Ecological writers propose a new worldview, but their very zeal to preserve the natural world leads them away from the "nature" they revere. The problem is a symptom of the ecological catastrophe in which we are living. Morton sets out a seeming paradox: to have a properly ecological view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all. Ecology without Nature investigates our ecological assumptions in a way that is provocative and deeply engaging. Ranging widely in eighteenth-century through contemporary philosophy, culture, and history, he explores the value of art in imagining environmental projects for the future. Morton develops a fresh vocabulary for reading "environmentality" in artistic form as well as content, and traces the contexts of ecological constructs through the history of capitalism. From John Clare to John Cage, from Kierkegaard to Kristeva, from The Lord of the Rings to electronic life forms, Ecology without Nature widens our view of ecological criticism, and deepens our understanding of ecology itself. Instead of trying to use an idea of nature to heal what society has damaged, Morton sets out a radical new form of ecological criticism: "dark ecology."
| Author | : Kathleen Dean Moore |
| Publisher | : Milkweed Editions |
| Total Pages | : 267 |
| Release | : 2011-12-18 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 1571318585 |
Can the love reserved for family and friends be extended to a place? “Luminous essays” on nature and environmental stewardship (Booklist). Named one of the Top Ten Northwest Books of the Year by the Oregonian In this book, acclaimed author Kathleen Dean Moore, a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for Holdfast, reflects on how deeply the environment is entrenched in the human spirit, despite the notion that nature and humans are somehow separate. Moore’s essays, deeply felt and often funny, make connections in what can appear to be a disconnected world. Written in parable form, her stories of family and friends—of wilderness excursions with her husband and children, camping trips with students, blowing up a dam, her daughter’s arrest for protesting the war in Iraq—affirm an impulse of caring that belies the abstract division of humans from nature, of the sacred from the mundane. Underlying these wonderfully engaging stories is the author’s belief in a new ecological ethic of care, one that expands the idea of community to include the environment, and embraces the land as family. “Stands with the best tradition of nature writing.” —The Oregonian
| Author | : Eric Neumayer |
| Publisher | : Edward Elgar Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 289 |
| Release | : 2010-01-01 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1849805431 |
This third edition of an enduring and popular book has been fully updated and revised, exploring the two opposing paradigms of sustainability in an insightful and accessible way. Eric Neumayer contends that central to the debate on sustainable development is the question of whether natural capital can be substituted by other forms of capital. Proponents of weak sustainability maintain that such substitutability is possible, whilst followers of strong sustainability regard natural capital as non-substitutable. The author examines the availability of natural resources for the production of consumption goods and the environmental consequences of economic growth. He identifies the critical forms of natural capital in need of preservation given risk, uncertainty and ignorance about the future and opportunity costs of preservation. He goes on to provide a critical discussion of measures of sustainability. Indicators of weak sustainability such as Genuine Savings and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare also known as the Genuine Progress Indicator are analysed, as are indicators of strong sustainability, including ecological footprints, material flows and sustainability gaps. This book will prove essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers with an interest in ecological and environmental economics and sustainable development.
| Author | : Jonathan Silvertown |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 204 |
| Release | : 2008-11-15 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 0226757773 |
At the heart of evolution lies a bewildering paradox. Natural selection favors above all the individual that leaves the most offspring—a superorganism of sorts that Jonathan Silvertown here calls the "Darwinian demon." But if such a demon existed, this highly successful organism would populate the entire world with its own kind, beating out other species and eventually extinguishing biodiversity as we know it. Why then, if evolution favors this demon, is the world filled with so many different life forms? What keeps this Darwinian demon in check? If humankind is now the greatest threat to biodiversity on the planet, have we become the Darwinian demon? Demons in Eden considers these questions using the latest scientific discoveries from the plant world. Readers join Silvertown as he explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary novelties—and exotic plant life—have earned it the sobriquet "the Galapagos of botany." Along the way, Silvertown looks closely at the evolution of plant diversity in these locales and explains why such variety persists in light of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes. In novel and useful ways, he also investigates the current state of plant diversity on the planet to show the ever-challenging threats posed by invasive species and humans. Bringing the secret life of plants into more colorful and vivid focus than ever before, Demons in Eden is an empathic and impassioned exploration of modern plant ecology that unlocks evolutionary mysteries of the natural world.
| Author | : Md Saidul Islam |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 305 |
| Release | : 2013-06-07 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 113503625X |
Unmasking the neoliberal paradox, this book provides a robust conceptual and theoretical synthesis of development, power and the environment. With seven case studies on global challenges such as under-development, food regime, climate change, dam building, identity politics, and security vulnerability, the book offers a new framework of a "double-risk" society for the Global South. With apparent ecological and social limits to neoliberal globalization and development, the current levels of consumption are unsustainable, inequitable, and inaccessible to the majority of humans. Power has a great role to play in this global trajectory. Though power is one of most pervasive phenomena of human society, it is probably one of the least understood concepts. The growth of transnational corporations, the dominance of world-wide financial and political institutions, and the extensive influence of media that are nearly monopolized by corporate interests are key factors shaping our global society today. In the growing concentration of power in few hands, what is apparent is a non-apparent nature of power. Understanding the interplay of power in the discourse of development is a crucial matter at a time when our planet is in peril — both environmentally and socially. This book addresses this current crucial need.
| Author | : John Bellamy Foster |
| Publisher | : NYU Press |
| Total Pages | : 544 |
| Release | : 2011-11-01 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1583672192 |
Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision—if we don't alter course. In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion. Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.
| Author | : Timothy Morton |
| Publisher | : Penguin UK |
| Total Pages | : 112 |
| Release | : 2021-08-26 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 014199701X |
In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. Provocative and playful, All Art is Ecological explores the strangeness of living in an age of mass extinction, and shows us that emotions and experience are the basis for a deep philosophical engagement with ecology. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.
| Author | : Michael Rawson |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Total Pages | : 248 |
| Release | : 2021-01-01 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 0300255195 |
An examination of how Western visions of endless future growth have contributed to the global environmental crisis "This book does something that is worth doing and that no other scholarly book I know of comes close to doing: tracing the history of imagined environmental futures in the Western world."--William Meyer, Colgate University For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the earth. Michael Rawson uses a wide range of works that include Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the science fiction novels of Jules Verne, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the single-minded expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet. Rawson shows how these stories, which have long pervaded Western dreams about the future, have helped to enable an unprecedentedly abundant and technology-driven lifestyle for some while bringing the threat of environmental disaster to all. Adapting to ecological realities, he argues, hinges on the ability to create new visions of tomorrow that decouple growth from the idea of progress.
| Author | : Neil M. Maher |
| Publisher | : Rutgers University Press |
| Total Pages | : 221 |
| Release | : 2006-01-19 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 0813539226 |
Americans often think of New Jersey as an environmental nightmare. As seen from its infamous turnpike, which is how many travelers experience the Garden State, it is difficult not to be troubled by the wealth of industrial plants, belching smokestacks, and hills upon hills of landfills. Yet those living and working in New Jersey often experience a very different environment. Despite its dense population and urban growth, two-thirds of the state remains covered in farmland and forest, and New Jersey has a larger percentage of land dedicated to state parks and forestland than the average for all states. It is this ecological paradox that makes New Jersey important for understanding the relationship between Americans and their natural world. In New Jersey’s Environments, historians, policy-makers, and earth scientists use a case study approach to uncover the causes and consequences of decisions regarding land use, resources, and conservation. Nine essays consider topics ranging from solid waste and wildlife management to the effects of sprawl on natural disaster preparedness. The state is astonishingly diverse and faces more than the usual competing interests from environmentalists, citizens, and businesses. This book documents the innovations and compromises created on behalf of and in response to growing environmental concerns in New Jersey, all of which set examples on the local level for nationwide and worldwide efforts that share the goal of protecting the natural world.
