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Sustainability or Collapse?

Author: Robert Costanza

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-01-21

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 0262515970

Scholars from a range of disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. Human history, as written traditionally, leaves out the important ecological and climate context of historical events. But the capability to integrate the history of human beings with the natural history of the Earth now exists, and we are finding that human-environmental systems are intimately linked in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. In Sustainability or Collapse?, researchers from a range of scholarly disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. The contributors focus on the human-environment interactions that have shaped historical forces since ancient times and discuss such key methodological issues as data quality. Topics highlighted include the political ecology of the Mayans; the effect of climate on the Roman Empire; the "revolutionary weather" of El Niño from 1788 to 1795; twentieth-century social, economic, and political forces in environmental change; scenarios for the future; and the accuracy of such past forecasts as The Limits to Growth.

Capitalism and Environmental Collapse

Author: Luiz Marques

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-17

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 3030475271

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This book intends to be an alert to the fact that the curve measuring environmental costs against the economic benefits of capitalism has irreversibly entered into a negative phase. The prospect of an environmental collapse has been evidenced by the sciences and the humanities since the 1960s. Today, it imposes its urgency. This collapse differs from past civilizations in that it is neither local nor just civilizational. It is global and occurs at the broadest level of the biosphere, accelerated by the convergence of different socio-environmental crises, such as: Earth energy imbalance, climate change and global warming Sea-level rise Decrease and degradation of forests Collapse of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity Floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events Degradation of soils and water resources Increase in pollution caused by fossil fuels and coal Increase in waste production and industrial intoxication The book is divided in two parts. In the first part it presents a comprehensive review of scientific data to show the already visible effects of each of the different environmental crises and its consequences to human life on Earth. In the second part, Luiz Marques critically discusses what he calls the three concentric illusions that prevent us from realizing the gravity of the current socio-environmental crises: the illusion of a sustainable capitalism, the illusion that economic growth is still capable of providing more well-being and the anthropocentric illusion. Finally, Marques argues that "fitting" back into the biosphere will only be possible if we dismantle the expansive socioeconomic gear that has shaped our societies since the 16th century by moving from a Social Contract to a Natural Contract, which takes into account the whole biosphere. According to him, the future society will be post-capitalist or it will not be a complex society, and even perhaps, we must fear, no society at all. “This book is backed up with the latest and best science and has made the complexities understandable for the average reader, all in a context of hope for the future.” - William J. Ripple, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Director of the Alliance of World Scientists, Oregon State University

Surviving Collapse

Author: Christina Ergas

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-08-16

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0197544096

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As major environmental crises loom, Christina Ergas makes the argument in Surviving Collapse that one possible way forward is a radical sustainable development that turns the focus from monetary gain to social and ecological regeneration and transformation. Employing qualitative and cross-national comparative methods, Ergas examines two alternative, community-scale, socioecological models of development: the first is a grassroots urban ecovillage in the Pacific Northwest, United States, while the second is a government-subsidized, but cooperatively run, urban farm in Havana, Cuba. While neither are panaceas, they prioritize social and ecological efficiency and subsume economic rationality towards those ends. Featuring cases that not only allow us to synthesize their strengths but evaluate their weaknesses, Surviving Collapse reveals a multitude of varied paths toward reaching radical urban sustainability and empowers us all to imagine, and possibly build, more resilient futures.

Collapse

Author: Jared Diamond

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2013-03-21

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 0141976969

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From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times

The Discourses of Environmental Collapse

Author: Alison E. Vogelaar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 131544142X

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In recent years, ‘environmental collapse’ has become an important way of framing and imagining environmental change and destruction, referencing issues such as climate change, species extinction and deteriorating ecosystems. Given its pervasiveness across disciplines and spheres, this edited volume articulates environmental collapse as a discursive phenomenon worthy of sustained critical attention. Building upon contemporary conversations in the fields of archaeology and the natural sciences, this volume coalesces, explores and critically evaluates the diverse array of literatures and imaginaries that constitute environmental collapse. The volume is divided into three sections— Doc- Collapse, Pop Collapse and Craft Collapse —that independently explore distinct modes of representing, and implicit attitudes toward, environmental collapse from the lenses of diverse fields of study including climate science and policy, cinema and photo journalism. Bringing together a broad range of topics and authors, this volume will be of great interest to scholars of environmental communication and environmental humanities.

China's Engine of Environmental Collapse

Author: Richard Smith (Ph. D.)

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781786806635

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"As the world hurtles towards environmental oblivion, China is leading the charge. The nation's CO2 emissions are more than twice those of the US with a GDP just two-thirds as large. China leads the world in renewable energy yet it is building new coal-fired power plants faster than renewables. The country's lakes, rivers, and farmlands are severely polluted yet China's police state can't suppress pollution, even from its own industries. This is the first book to explain these contradictions. Richard Smith explains how the country's bureaucratic rulers are driven by nationalist-industrialist tendencies that are even more powerful than the drive for profit under 'normal' capitalism. In their race to overtake the US they must prioritise hyper-growth over the environment, even if this ends in climate collapse and eco-suicide. Smith contends that nothing short of drastic shutdowns and the scaling back of polluting industries, especially in China and the US, will suffice to slash greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent climate catastrophe."--

Understanding Collapse

Author: Guy D. Middleton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-26

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 110715149X

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In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

The Blueprint

Author: Daniel Rirdan

Publisher: Daniel Rirdan

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 1470135884

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From climate change to land degradation to fossil fuel shortages, we are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. This book offers a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives.--Inside front cover.

Collapsing Gracefully: Making a Built Environment that is Fit for the Future

Author: Emilio Garcia

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-24

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3030777839

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This innovative book investigates the concept of collapse in terms of our built environment, exploring the future transition of modern cities towards scenarios very different from the current promises of progress and development. This is not a book about the end of the world and hopeless apocalyptic scenarios. It is about understanding change in how and where we live. Collapse is inevitable, but in the built environment collapse could imply a manageable situation, an opportunity for change or a devastating reality. Collapsing gracefully means that there might be better ways to coexist with collapse if we learn more about it and commit to rebuild our civilisations in ways that avoid its worst effects. This book uses a wide range of practical examples to study critical changes in the built environment, to contextualise and visualise what collapse looks like, to see if it is possible to buffer its effects in places already collapsing and to propose ways to develop greater resilience. The book challenges all agents and institutions in modern cities, their designers and planners as well as their residents and users to think differently about built environment so as to ease our coexistence with collapse and not contribute to its causes. .

Beyond the Limits

Author: Donella Hager Meadows

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780930031626

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