""In Prime Movers, Smil's passion for the Cinderellas of civilization focuses on the diesel engines and gas turbines that power ocean vessels and wide-body jets. These engines have made ocean shipping and intercontinental air travel so cheap that they have changed the face of ou…
This book brings together the methods, models and formulae used for estimating air pollution concentrations in urban areas. From the Foreword The visible effects of pollution in most cities in the developed countries have been reduced dramatically in the past thirty years. This …
Earth System Analysis for Sustainability uses an integrated systems approach to provide a panoramic view of planetary dynamics since the inception of life some four billion years ago and to identify principles for responsible management of the global environment in the future. P…
A proposal for a new global approach for fisheries focused on reducing fishing capacity and providing incentives for long-term sustainability.
This book argues that the environmental justice movement has also begun to transform science and engineering. The chapters present case studies of technical experts' encounters with environmental justice and activists and issues.
An examination of the global trade and traffic in discarded electronics that reframes the question of the "right" thing to do with e-waste. The prevailing storyline about the problem of electronic waste frames e-waste as generated by consumers in developed countries and dumped o…
A unified framework for analyzing urban sustainability in terms of cities' inflows and outflows of matter and energy. Urbanization and globalization have shaped the last hundred years. These two dominant trends are mutually reinforcing: globalization links countries through the …
An argument that the perception of arid lands as wastelands is politically motivated and that these landscapes are variable, biodiverse ecosystems, whose inhabitants must be empowered.
Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, philosophy, politics, and technology.
After nearly a quarter century of international negotiations on climate change, we stand at a crossroads. A new set of agreements is likely to fail to prevent the global climate's destabilization. Islands and coastlines face inundation, and widespread drought, flooding, and fami…
An argument that America's addiction to crude oil has driven a foreign policy of intervention and exploitation hidden behind a facade of liberal internationalism.
Prominent scholars and practitioners in the field of global environmental politics consider the ecological and political realities of life on the new earth, and probe the field's deepest and most enduring questions at a time of increasing environmental stress. Arranged in comple…
Contributions by prominent scholars examining the intersections of environmental philosophy and philosophy of technology.
Most people acknowledge the profound importance of sustainability, but few can define it. We are ethically bound to live sustainably for the sake of future generations, but what does that mean? In this book Randall Curren, a philosopher, and Ellen Metzger, a scientist, clarify n…
The story behind the reckless promotion of economic growth despite its disastrous consequences for life on the planet.
An integrated approach to ethics that covers interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment (including animals), and the ethics of the built environment, and enables us to offer sensible and defensible answers to the widest possible range of eth.
This study provides an overview of the development of German environmentalism from the late nineteenth century to the present. Looking at Germany in an international context, it discusses the full range of environmental issues and how it evolved from a concern about pollution an…
Before Fukushima, the most notorious large-scale nuclear accident the world had seen was Chernobyl in 1986. The fallout from Chernobyl covered vast areas in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Europe. Belarus, at the time a Soviet republic, suffered heavily: nearly a quarter …
"In this book, Clapperton Mavhunga views technology in Africa from an African perspective. Technology in his account is not something always brought in from outside, but is also something that ordinary people understand, make, and practice through their everyday innovations or c…
"In this book, Clapperton Mavhunga views technology in Africa from an African perspective. Technology in his account is not something always brought in from outside, but is also something that ordinary people understand, make, and practice through their everyday innovations or c…
