Inspired Sustainability
Author: Lothes Biviano, Erin
Publisher:
Published: 2016-04-13
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 1608336301
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Lothes Biviano, Erin
Publisher:
Published: 2016-04-13
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 1608336301
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Erin Lothes Biviano
Publisher:
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781626981638
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In Inspired Sustainability, Lothes, a professor at the College of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey, analyzes the insights of activists and scholars who are deeply committed to environmental sustainability. Their insights illuminate the positive experiences and effective processes that empower community leaders to engage others and move past these conflicts. She combines empirically-based focus group data with interdisciplinary research and theological analysis. Inspired Sustainability's most important accomplishment is a unique analysis of the barriers to sustainable decision-making, including the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional conflicts inherent in confronting climate change. Lothes' focus groups show that scientific literacy, a commitment to social justice, awareness of global interdependencies, and the support of working in small communities foster new interpretations of traditional worldviews. These new interpretations are powered by an awareness of their complicity in a morally globalized world, and the possibility of consciously choosing to live in just and sustainable ways.
Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2009-09-22
Total Pages: 410
ISBN-13: 0393337197
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Provides alternative solutions to such global problems as population control, emerging water shortages, eroding soil, and global warming, outlining a detailed survival strategy for the civilization of the future.
Author: Patricia DeMarco
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2017-10-24
Total Pages: 247
ISBN-13: 0822983001
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Pittsburgh has a rich history of social consciousness in calls for justice and equity. Today, the movement for more sustainable practices is rising in Pittsburgh. Against a backdrop of Marcellus shale gas development, initiatives emerge for a sustainable and resilient response to the climate change and pollution challenges of the twenty-first century. People, institutions, communities, and corporations in Pittsburgh are leading the way to a more sustainable future. Examining the experience of a single city, with vast social and political complexities and a long industrial history, allows a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities inherent in adapting to change throughout the world. The case studies in this book respond to ethical challenges and give specific examples of successful ways forward. Choices include transforming the energy system, restoring infertile ground, and preventing pollution through green chemistry. Inspired by the pioneering voice of Rachel Carson, this is a book about empowerment and hope.
Author: Rebecca Prince-Ruiz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2020-12-08
Total Pages: 365
ISBN-13: 0231552726
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In July 2011, Rebecca Prince-Ruiz challenged herself to go plastic free for the whole month. Starting with a small group of people in the city of Perth, the Plastic Free July movement has grown into a 250-million strong community across 177 countries, empowering people to reduce single-use plastic consumption and create a cleaner future. This book explores how one of the world’s leading environmental campaigns took off and shares lessons from its success. From narrating marine-debris research expeditions to tracking what actually happens to our waste to sharing insights from behavioral research, it speaks to the massive scale of the plastic waste problem and how we can tackle it together. Interweaving interviews from participants, activists, and experts, Plastic Free tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people have created change in their homes, communities, workplaces, schools, businesses, and beyond. It is easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of global environmental problems and wonder what difference our own actions could possibly make. Plastic Free offers hope for the future through the stories of those who have taken on what looked like an insurmountable challenge and succeeded in innovative and practical ways, one step—and one piece of plastic—at a time.
Author: Janine M. Benyus
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-08-11
Total Pages: 324
ISBN-13: 0061958921
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.
Author: J. Webster K. Hindson
Publisher: Optimus Education eBooks
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 177
ISBN-13: 1907567372
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Jurgen Schmandt
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2010-10-11
Total Pages: 193
ISBN-13: 1603442170
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An energy tycoon, real estate developer, and philanthropist, George P. Mitchell is also an idealist, a big thinker who gave his time and fortune to the study of sustainability long before it became a household word. Jurgen Schmandt, who has worked for Mitchell for many years, explains and traces the idea of a sustainable society, from its origin in the eighteenth-century concept of the "commons" to its twentieth-century iteration in the 1987 United Nations report "Our Common Future." He then chronicles Mitchell’s commitment to this idea from the early 1960s, when the focus was on population growth, to today, when climate change and global warming dominate the debate. Mitchell advanced his belief that humankind could create "a balance between economic and ecological well-being" by organizing and hosting conferences, awarding prizes, supporting scholars and scientists, and funding research and publications. He did it at the Aspen Institute, at The Woodlands Conferences, at the National Academy of Sciences, at the Mitchell Center for Sustainable Development, and at the Houston Advanced Research Center. (Paradoxically, he did not always do it in his own energy company.) Documenting one important man’s engagement with one important idea, Schmandt has preserved a significant episode in the ongoing quest to create societies that are "capable of reaching and then sustaining a decent quality of life for their citizens."
Author: Pamela Matson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-03-29
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 1400881218
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An essential guide to sustainable development for students and practitioners Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and an invaluable resource for anyone working in this fast-growing field, Pursuing Sustainability also features case studies, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading. Provides a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action Draws on the latest cutting-edge science and practices Serves as the ideal companion text to more narrowly focused courses Utilizes interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives Illustrates concepts with a core set of case studies used throughout the book Written by world authorities on sustainability An online illustration package is available to professors
Author: Thaddeus R. Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-12-05
Total Pages: 137
ISBN-13: 1135960178
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The growing urgency, complexity and "wickedness" of sustainability problems—from climate change and biodiversity loss to ecosystem degradation and persistent poverty and inequality—present fundamental challenges to scientific knowledge production and its use. While there is little doubt that science has a crucial role to play in our ability to pursue sustainability goals, critical questions remain as to how to most effectively organize research and connect it to actions that advance social and natural wellbeing. Drawing on interviews with leading sustainability scientists, this book examines how researchers in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of sustainability science are attempting to define sustainability, establish research agendas, and link the knowledge they produce to societal action. Pairing these insights with case studies of innovative sustainability research centres, the book reformulates the sustainability science research agenda and its relationship to decision-making and social action. It repositions the field as a "science of design" that aims to enrich public reasoning and deliberation while also working to generate social and technological innovations for a more sustainable future. This timely book gives students, researchers and practitioners a valuable and unique analysis of the emergence of sustainability science, and both the opportunities and barriers faced by scientific efforts to contribute to social action.