Shrinking the Earth

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

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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

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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.

Shrinking the Earth

Shrinking the Earth
Author: Donald Worster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190265035

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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.

Cleaning Up the Earth

Cleaning Up the Earth
Author: Precious McKenzie
Publisher: Britannica Digital Learning
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1625137249

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Updated for 2020, young readers explore various forms of pollution and how people are cleaning up the environment.

This Shrinking Land

This Shrinking Land
Author: Duck Robert Duck
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2019-07-29
Genre: Climatic changes
ISBN: 1474467857

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'The oceans are the graveyards of the lands.' Lands become eaten away by the action of the seas, and it is no surprise to find that most of the world's shorelines are in a state of erosion. The fringes of Britain, its cliffs and beaches, are shrinking, disappearing into the surrounding sea as a result of coastal flooding, erosion and landsliding. Is climate change speeding up the process; are our homes, our villages and towns, at risk? This book examines how the British coast is changing and why - and what is being done to protect this island nation. Are we doing enough? Should we abandon vulnerable towns and villages to the seas as our forebears did and relocate coastal settlements inland? These are some of the difficult and potentially emotive questions that this book explores. Blending contemporary earth science and societal themes with historical and cultural records, and a hint of myth and romance for good measure, This Shrinking Land is a fascinating study of what we must learn from the past in order to manage the future of Britain's coasts. With more than 100 illustrations, most of them in colour, this is a stunning book.

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

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

Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint

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

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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

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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.

The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth
Author: David Wallace-Wells
Publisher: Tim Duggan Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 052557672X

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

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

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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.