"Report of the 91st Dahlem Workshop on Earth System Analysis for Sustainabliity, Berlin, May 25-30, 2003"--Page [ii].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. Pe…
Conventional wisdom about the environmental impact of cities holds that urbanization and environmental quality are necessarily at odds. Cities are seen to be sites of ecological disruption, consuming a disproportionate share of natural resources, producing high levels of pollution, and concentrating harmful emissions precisely where the population is most concentrated. Cities appear to be parti…
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 networked communications of urban hubs. The urban population now generates more than eighty percent of global GDP. Cit…
A new understanding of the Anthropocene that is based on mutual transformation with nature rather than control over nature. We have been told that we are living in the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. In Enlivenment , German philosopher Andreas Weber presents an alternative understanding of our relationship with nature, arguing not that humans control natur…
"We are living beyond our means, running up debts both economic and ecological, consuming the planet's resources at rates not remotely sustainable. But it's hard to imagine a different way. How can we live without cheap goods and easy credit? How can we consume without consuming the systems that support life? How can we live well and live within our means? In Treading Softly, Thomas Princen hel…
Philosophical reflections on the environment began with early philosophers' invocation of a cosmology that mixed natural and supernatural phenomena. Today, the central philosophical problem posed by the environment involves not what it can teach us about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order but rather how we can understand its workings in order to make better decisions about our own cond…
Susan Leigh Star (1954--2010) was one of the most influential science studies scholars of the last several decades. In her work, Star highlighted the messy practices of discovering science, asking hard questions about the marginalizing as well as the liberating powers of science and technology. In the landmark work Sorting Things Out, Star and Geoffrey Bowker revealed the social and ethical his…
Ecological restoration is the process of repairing human damage to ecosystems. It involves reintroducing missing plants and animals, rebuilding soils, eliminating hazardous substances, ripping up roads, and returning natural processes such as fire and flooding to places that thrive on their regular occurrence. Thousands of restoration projects take place in North America every year. In Nature b…
This systematic assessment of seven prominent initiatives - in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona - evaluates the effectiveness of ecosystem-based management at protecting the environment. The author concludes that projects that set goals based on stakeholder collaboration are less likely to result in environmental improvement.
"How Finland's nuclear waste experts discern far future Earths, and what the rest of us non-Finns and non-experts can learn from them"--OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.