Shrinking the Earth

Shrinking the Earth
Author: Donald Worster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199844968

The discovery of the Americas around 1500 AD was an extraordinary watershed in human experience. It gave rise to the modern period of human ecology, a phenomenon global in scope that set in motion profound changes in almost every society on earth. This new period, which saw the depletion of the lands of the New World, proved tragic for some, triumphant for others, and powerfully affecting for all. In this work, acclaimed environmental historian Donald Worster takes a global view in his examination of the ways in which complex issues of worldwide abundance and scarcity have shaped American society and behavior over three centuries. Looking at the limits nature imposes on human ambitions, he questions whether America today is in the midst of a shift from a culture of abundance to a culture of limits--and whether American consumption has become reliant on the global South. Worster engages with key political, economic, and environmental thinkers while presenting his own interpretation of the role of capitalism and government in issues of wealth, abundance, and scarcity. Acknowledging the earth's agency throughout human history, Shrinking the Earth offers a compelling explanation of how we have arrived where we are and a hopeful way forward on a planet that is no longer as large as it once was.

Our Shrinking Planet

Our Shrinking Planet
Author: Massimo Livi Bacci
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509515879

In the space of another generation, the population of the earth will rise by 2.5 billion. Yet the real problem we face is not so much the increase in numbers as the fact that growth will be highly uneven. Whereas rich countries will see aging populations with little growth, populations in poor countries will double or even triple, having a much higher percentage of young people. Against this backdrop, demographer Massimo Livi Bacci examines the implications of this disproportionate demographic development for domestic social stability, international migration flows, the balance of power among nations and the natural environment. Covering 10,000 years of human history from the Stone Age to the present, Livi Bacci shows how the space available for every inhabitant of the planet has decreased by a factor of a thousand. The notion of limits to the world's capacity - which once seemed a remote matter - is now among the most pressing issues we face, and the need to create effective global mechanisms for sustainable development is now more urgent than ever. An indispensable book for anyone concerned with the moral and political implications of our ever more crowded planet.

Cleaning Up the Earth

Cleaning Up the Earth
Author: Precious McKenzie
Publisher: Britannica Digital Learning
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1615358765

Young readers explore various forms of pollution and how people are cleaning up the environment.

Filling the Earth with Trash

Filling the Earth with Trash
Author: Jeanne Sturm
Publisher: Britannica Digital Learning
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1615358773

Young readers will discover what happens to trash in a landfill.

Recycling Earth's Resources

Recycling Earth's Resources
Author: Barbara Webb
Publisher: Britannica Digital Learning
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 162513729X

Updated for 2020, young readers will discover what Earth's resources are and how they can help recycle them.

Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint

Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint
Author: Femida Handy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2010
Genre: Beaches
ISBN: 9781897187692

While visiting the beach, Sandy is horrified by the mess left by other visitors and starts to clean up, and a local environmentalist tells her about limiting her footprint--the effect that how she lives leaves on the environment.

Abundant Earth

Abundant Earth
Author: Eileen Crist
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022659680X

In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.

Outgrowing the Earth

Outgrowing the Earth
Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2012-04-27
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136560289

Historically, food security was the responsibility of ministries of agriculture but today that has changed: decisions made in ministries of energy may instead have the greatest effect on the food situation. Recent research reporting that a one degree Celsius rise in temperature can reduce grain yields by 10 per cent means that energy policy is now directly affecting crop production. Agriculture is a water-intensive activity and, while public attention has focused on oil depletion, it is aquifer depletion that poses the more serious threat. There are substitutes for oil, but none for water and the link between our fossil fuel addiction, climate change and food security is now clear. While population growth has slowed over the past three decades, we are still adding 76 million people per year. In a world where the historical rise in land productivity has slowed by half since 1990, eradicating hunger may depend as much on family planners as on farmers. The bottom line is that future food security depends not only on efforts within agriculture but also on energy policies that stabilize climate, a worldwide effort to raise water productivity, the evolution of land-efficient transport systems, and population policies that seek a humane balance between population and food. Outgrowing the Earth advances our thinking on food security issues that the world will be wrestling with for years to come.

A Passion for Nature

A Passion for Nature
Author: Donald Worster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199782245

Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club ever written. It is the first to be based on Muir's full private correspondence and to meet modern scholarly standards, yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, and a self-made man of wealth and political influence. The winner of numerous book awards, A Passion for Nature was also named a Best Book of 2008 by Washington Post Book World. It is the first comprehensive biography of Muir to appear in six decades.

Flattening the Earth

Flattening the Earth
Author: John P. Snyder
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1997-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226767477

Cartographers have long grappled with the impossibility of portraying the earth in two dimensions. To solve this problem, mapmakers have created map projections. This work discusses and illustrates the known map projections from before 500BC to the present, with facts on their origins and use.