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Abundant Earth documents the loss of biodiversity underway and lays out the drivers of this destruction. It goes beyond the litany of causes—a growing population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and trade, and spreading infrastructures—to ask the question: Since it is well-understood that humanity’s expansionism is irreparably diminishing life’s richness, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? It argues that the worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use them and their places—stands in the way, for it normalizes humanity’s ongoing expansion. This worldview is an obstacle to recognizing that the conjoined strategy of scaling down the human enterprise and pulling back from expanses of land and seas is the means for addressing the ecological crisis and preempting the suffering and dislocations of both humans and nonhumans. Scaling down calls us to lower the global population within a human-rights framework, move toward deindustrializing food production, and work to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back is the project of restoring terrestrial and marine ecologies, so that life’s abundance may resurge. The book argues that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere, but will stagnate in the debased identity of nature-colonizer and decline in the predicament of vying for “natural resources.” Instead, humanity can chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship with our Earthly wild and domestic cohort, within vibrant ecologies, nestling human inhabitation inside a biodiverse, living planet.

This book presents the history and aftereffects of the fires of 1988 that swept through the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (GYE) describes the chronology of the fires, the areas burned, and the extent of fire in those regions. One of the biggest concerns of the public was how individual plants and animals fared. Thinking hierarchically, we know that the patterns seen at the community and ecosystem levels are the result of mechanistic responses at the individual and population levels. It is important to know how forest trees and grass-land species responded. Some of the greatest public concern was for large animals, particularly Elk. Elk mortality and population responses after the fires took some surprising turns. The GYE is an extremely heterogeneous environment. Plant communities provide essential habitat for the megaherbivores of the GYE as well. Although we know numbers and how the populations of these animals have changed since the fires, it is difficult to determine the mechanisms behind these changes. Using simulation models and comparing their results with reality can yield important insights as to the mechanisms governing ungulate response to fire. The sediments of Yellowstone's lakes provide an opportunity to reconstruct the vegetation and fire history of the region back to the time of late-Pleistocene deglaciation.

The American West at Risk summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United States - America's legendary, even mythical, frontier. When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few "renewable" resources. The importance of this story is that preserving lands has a central role for protecting air and water quality, and water supplies--and all support a healthy living environment. The idea that all life on earth is connected in a great chain of being, and that all life is connected to the physical earth in many obvious and subtle ways, is not some new-age fad, it is scientifically demonstrable. An understanding of earth processes, and the significance of their biological connections, is critical in shaping societal values so that national land use policies will conserve the earth and avoid the worst impacts of natural processes. These connections inevitably lead science into the murkier realms of political controversy and bureaucratic stasis. Most of the chapters in The American West at Risk focus on a human land use or activity that depletes resources and degrades environmental integrity of this resource-rich, but tender and slow-to-heal, western U.S. The activities include forest clearing for many purposes; farming and grazing; mining for aggregate, metals, and other materials; energy extraction and use; military training and weapons manufacturing and testing; road and utility transmission corridors; recreation; urbanization; and disposing of the wastes generated by everything that we do. We focus on how our land-degrading activities are connected to natural earth processes, which act to accelerate and spread the damages we inflict on the land. Visit www.theamericanwestatrisk.com to learn more about the book and its authors.

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with Søren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

The first “urban century” in history has arrived: a majority of the world's population now resides in cities and their surrounding suburbs. Urban expansion marches on, and the planning and design of future cities requires attention to such diverse issues as human migration, public health, economic restructuring, water supply, climate and sea-level change, and much more. This book draws on two decades of pioneering social and ecological studies in Baltimore to propose a new way to think about cities and their social, political, and ecological complexity that will apply in many different parts of the world. The aim is to give fresh perspectives on how to study, build, and manage cities in innovative and sustainable ways.

Rachel Carson's eloquent book Silent Spring stands as one of the most important books of the twentieth century and inspired important and long-lasting changes in environmental science and government policy. This text sets Carson's study in the context of the twentieth century, reconsiders her achievement, and analyzes its legacy in light of toxic chemical use and regulation today. The book examines the history of pesticide development alongside the evolution of the science of toxicology and tracks legislation governing exposure to chemicals across the twentieth century. It affirms the brilliance of Carson's careful scientific interpretations drawing on data from university and government toxicologists. Although Silent Spring instigated legislation that successfully terminated DDT use, other warnings were ignored. Ironically, we replaced one poison with even more toxic ones. The book concludes that we urgently need new thinking about how we evaluate and regulate pesticides in accounting for their ecological and human toll.

A lively, rich natural history of Hawaiian birds that challenges existing ideas about what constitutes biocultural nativeness and belonging, this natural history takes readers on a thousand-year journey as it explores the Hawaiian Islands' beautiful birds and a variety of topics including extinction, evolution, survival, conservationists and their work, and, most significantly, the concept of belonging. The text is built around the stories of four species: the Stumbling Moa-Nalo, the Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, the Palila, and the Japanese White-Eye. The book offers innovative ways to think about what it means to be native and proposes new definitions that apply to people as well as to birds. Being native, the book argues, is a relative state influenced by factors including the passage of time, charisma, scarcity, utility to others, short-term evolutionary processes, and changing relationships with other organisms. This book also describes how bird conservation started in Hawaiʻi, and the naturalists and environmentalists who did extraordinary work.

When are transnational networks likely to convince policymakers in developing countries to adopt potentially costly environmental regulations for the good of managing biodiversity? Since most of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in developing countries, identifying the pathways through which policymakers in these states are incentivized to engage in conservation is critical. This book argues that networks of nonstate experts are most likely to convince policymakers to address an emerging environmental problem if three conditions are met: First, network members must have a scientifically validated consensus about the cause-and-effect relationships and parameters of the problem, since a consensus about the science delegitimizes competing arguments and strengthens the authority of a network’s arguments. Second, networks must build mechanisms for socialization with policymakers in domestic regulatory agencies. Doing so promotes norms of shared ownership and responsibility for knowledge claims about conservation. Third, networks will have to make scientific arguments for conservation consonant with local environmental justice claims by communities residing in and around areas of globally important biodiversity. Networks can do so by arguing for policies that would protect biodiversity in a way that ensures continued, if environmentally sustainable, access for low-income populations that may otherwise be excluded from natural resources. If these three conditions are not met, conservation efforts are likely to face resistance from groups of local actors, policymakers, or both, who cannot reconcile global claims for biodiversity conservation with their immediate demands.

We have long recognized technology as a driving force behind much historical and cultural change. The invention of the printing press initiated the Reformation. The development of the compass ushered in the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World. The cotton gin created the conditions that led to the Civil War. Now, in Beyond Engineering, science writer Robert Pool turns the question around to examine how society shapes technology. Drawing on such disparate fields as history, economics, risk analysis, management science, sociology, and psychology, Pool illuminates the complex, often fascinating interplay between machines and society, in a book that will revolutionize how we think about technology. We tend to think that reason guides technological development, that engineering expertise alone determines the final form an invention takes. But if you look closely enough at the history of any invention, says Pool, you will find that factors unrelated to engineering seem to have an almost equal impact. In his wide-ranging volume, he traces developments in nuclear energy, automobiles, light bulbs, commercial electricity, and personal computers, to reveal that the ultimate shape of a technology often has as much to do with outside and unforeseen forces. For instance, Pool explores the reasons why steam-powered cars lost out to internal combustion engines. He shows that the Stanley Steamer was in many ways superior to the Model T--it set a land speed record in 1906 of more than 127 miles per hour, it had no transmission (and no transmission headaches), and it was simpler (one Stanley engine had only twenty-two moving parts) and quieter than a gas engine--but the steamers were killed off by factors that had little or nothing to do with their engineering merits, including the Stanley twins' lack of business acumen and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. Pool illuminates other aspects of technology as well. He traces how seemingly minor decisions made early along the path of development can have profound consequences further down the road, and perhaps most important, he argues that with the increasing complexity of our technological advances--from nuclear reactors to genetic engineering--the number of things that can go wrong multiplies, making it increasingly difficult to engineer risk out of the equation. Citing such catastrophes as Bhopal, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, the Challenger, and Chernobyl, he argues that is it time to rethink our approach to technology. The days are gone when machines were solely a product of larger-than-life inventors and hard-working engineers. Increasingly, technology will be a joint effort, with its design shaped not only by engineers and executives but also psychologists, political scientists, management theorists, risk specialists, regulators and courts, and the general public. Whether discussing bovine growth hormone, molten-salt reactors, or baboon-to-human transplants, Beyond Engineering is an engaging look at modern technology and an illuminating account of how technology and the modern world shape each other.

This book delves into the evolution of marine fisheries governance from early times to the present, showing how responsive governance works—or fails to work—in settings ranging from small-scale coastal fishing communities to international fisheries that span entire oceans. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the state of global fisheries before describing the AC/SC framework and methods used in the historical analysis. Part I examines the economic forces that disrupt problem signals, particularly the profit disconnect. It documents the expansion of fishing effort in scope and scale and shows how the industrialization of fishing created hierarchies within the industry, as those with access to capital invested in larger and larger fleets while those without such access struggled to compete in smaller niches. Part II explores how governance institutions coevolved with fisheries economics. Specifically, it shows the widening of the power disconnect as small fishing communities were eclipsed over time by larger and larger commercial operations with greater economic and political power. It also explains how problem signals are processed by decision makers in many different regions and how the set of actors and management solutions changed over time, ultimately altering the process of responsive governance. Chapter 9 concludes with an evaluation of these results, identifying pivot points that can generate earlier, more effective response, and also calls for greater attention to exogenous forces that drive the management treadmill.

Why do we age? Why cooperate? Why do so many species engage in sex? Why do the tropics have so many species? When did humans start to affect world climate? This book provides an introduction to a range of fundamental questions that have taxed evolutionary biologists and ecologists for decades. Some of the phenomena discussed are, on first reflection, simply puzzling to understand from an evolutionary perspective, whilst others have direct implications for the future of the planet. All of the questions posed have at least a partial solution, all have seen exciting breakthroughs in recent years, yet many of the explanations continue to be hotly debated. Big Questions in Ecology and Evolution is a curiosity-driven book, written in an accessible way so as to appeal to a broad audience. It is very deliberately not a formal text book, but something designed to transmit the excitement and breadth of the field by discussing a number of major questions in ecology and evolution and how they have been answered. This is a book aimed at informing and inspiring anybody with an interest in ecology and evolution. It reveals to the reader the immense scope of the field, its fundamental importance, and the exciting breakthroughs that have been made in recent years.

Phoenix, Arizona is one of America's fastest growing metropolitan regions. It is also its least sustainable one, sprawling over a thousand square miles, with a population of four and a half million, minimal rainfall, scorching heat, and an insatiable appetite for unrestrained growth and unrestricted property rights. In Bird on Fire, eminent social and cultural analyst Andrew Ross focuses on the prospects for sustainability in Phoenix--a city in the bull's eye of global warming--and also the obstacles that stand in the way. Most authors writing on sustainable cities look at places like Portland, Seattle, and New York that have excellent public transit systems and relatively high density. But Ross contends that if we can't change the game in fast-growing, low-density cities like Phoenix, the whole movement has a major problem. Drawing on interviews with 200 influential residents--from state legislators, urban planners, developers, and green business advocates to civil rights champions, energy lobbyists, solar entrepreneurs, and community activists--Ross argues that if Phoenix is ever to become sustainable, it will occur more through political and social change than through technological fixes. Ross explains how Arizona's increasingly xenophobic immigration laws, science-denying legislature, and growth-at-all-costs business ethic have perpetuated social injustice and environmental degradation. But he also highlights the positive changes happening in Phoenix, in particular the Gila River Indian Community's successful struggle to win back its water rights, potentially shifting resources away from new housing developments to producing healthy local food for the people of the Phoenix Basin. Ross argues that this victory may serve as a new model for how green democracy can work, redressing the claims of those who have been aggrieved in a way that creates long-term benefits for all. Bird on Fire offers a compelling take on one of the pressing issues of our time--finding pathways to sustainability at a time when governments are dismally failing their responsibility to address climate change.

Feeding wild birds in gardens and backyards is one of the most popular forms of interaction between humans and wild animals. Yet despite the enormous scale of this activity and the millions of people involved throughout the world, remarkably little is known about the practice or the potential implications associated with the provisioning of vast amounts of food, all of which is additional to the bird’s natural diet. Many questions arise: Does bird feeding change wildlife communities? Does it aid the spread of disease? Is it essential for the conservation of many struggling species, especially in urban areas? And why are so many people passionately engaged, and willing to spend considerable sums on this practice? This is the first book to attempt to address these and many other questions associated with this global activity, exploring many complex issues through both science and the personal experience of bird feeders themselves.

This book explains the causes of climate change and who is responsible for it. It shows that the emissions keep going up, and that nothing of substance has yet been achieved after more than two decades of effort. It is claimed that the energy sector can be converted from an overwhelmingly carbon-based one to almost zero carbon in the space of half a century, all at just a small cost, or even a profit, based on simplistic assumptions about economic growth and a new industrial revolution. The current industrial structures of all developed and most developing economies are overwhelmingly carbon-based. Decarbonizing requires the coordinated replacement of almost all of the capital stock of the world. Tackling climate change does mean lowering standard of living from its current unsustainable levels, even after the economic crisis. A border carbon tax has one other great virtue: it provides a bottom-up way of getting global action, and avoids the tortuous Kyoto-style top-down negotiations. Applying border adjustments is bound to take time and cause transitional difficulties. Carbon pricing is necessary, but it is not sufficient. By considering climate change mitigation in the context of a limited ability to pay, a very different strategy emerges. For the amounts currently spent, carbon emissions could be cut by much more in the short run, and the possibility of a series of breakthroughs could be husbanded through a major international R&D programme.

The energy mix is changing, and renewable energy is growing in importance. If you were born before 1989, you lived in a United States where no electricity was generated from either wind or solar power and very little from geothermal and biomass. By 2018, the combined generation from wind and solar had surpassed hydroelectricity. Fourteen states generated more than 10% of their electricity from wind and three generated more than 30%. And bioethanol, produced from corn grain, made up 10% of the US gasoline market. Changes have also occurred in the nonrenewable energy mix. Coal, which was responsible for 53% of the US electricity generation in 1998 is now only 28%, as natural gas has taken the leadership role, surpassing coal in 2015 as the primary energy for producing electricity. Similarly, the world did not see any electricity generation from wind until 1985 and none from solar until 1989. Now solar plus wind generate 7% of the worldwide electricity. The worldwide demand for all energy types is also increasing rapidly, as energy usage has increased 84% over the last twenty years. This book makes a systematic comparison of twelve different energy types to help understand the driving forces for this changing energy mix. Twelve common criteria are used to provide tools to make these comparisons, such as proven reserves, the levelized cost for each energy type, energy balances, environmental issues, and the energy footprint. Proven reserves are also projected for each renewable energy type.

Thousands of synthetic chemicals are used to make our clothing, cosmetics, household products and electronic devices. However, many of these chemicals are hazardous and potentially dangerous to our health and the environment. For fifty years, the conventional approach to hazardous chemicals has focused on regulation, barriers, and control. Today, there is a growing international interest in going beyond a singular focus on toxic and hazardous chemicals and developing broader policies for managing all chemicals. This book proposes a new strategy for chemical management based on changing chemical production and consumption systems. Reviewing the many initiatives now on-going in the product and chemical markets, in industry, and in science, Chemicals without Harm offers a strategy based on characterizing, classifying and prioritizing chemicals, identifying and adopting safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals, and promoting the research and innovation needed to develop those alternatives.

Citizen science enlists members of the public to make and record useful observations, such as counting birds in their backyards. The large numbers of volunteers who participate in such projects collect valuable research data, which create an enormous body of scientific data on a vast geographic scale. In return, such projects aim to increase participants' connections to science, place, and nature. In this book, experts from a variety of disciplines share their experiences of creating and implementing successful citizen science projects, primarily those that use massive data sets gathered by citizen scientists to better understand the impact of environmental change. The book addresses basic aspects of how to conduct citizen science projects, as well as the nuances of creating a robust digital infrastructure and recruiting a large participant base. An overview of the types of environmental research approaches and techniques demonstrates how to make use of large data sets arising from citizen science projects. A final section focuses on citizen science's impacts and its broad connections to understanding the human dimensions and educational aspects of public participation. The book teaches teams of program developers and researchers how to cross the bridge from success at public engagement to using citizen science data to understand patterns and trends or to test hypotheses about how ecological processes respond to change at large geographic scales.

This book begins with the question of why PlaNYC2030—New York City’s municipal, long-term sustainability plan, launched during the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration—had a robust urban forestry agenda, but lacked an urban agriculture agenda. PlaNYC launched the MillionTreesNYC campaign, investing over $400 million in city funds and leveraging a public-private partnership to plant one million trees citywide. Meanwhile, despite NYC having a long tradition of community gardening and burgeoning interest in local food systems, the plan contained no mention of community gardens or urban farms. In contrasting the top-down, centralized investment in the urban forest with the dispersed and decentralized social movement around urban agriculture, the book describes the ways in which political, discursive, and material processes intertwine to construct nature in the city. Urban greening unfolds through the strategic interplay of actors, the deployment of different narrative frames, and the mobilizing and manipulation of the physical environment—including other living, non-human entities. Understanding how and why the sustainability agenda is set and implemented provides crucial lessons to scholars, policymakers, and activists alike as they engage in the greening of cities.

In communities across the country and around the world, people are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments that have been affected by crisis, disinvestment, or disaster. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and heal themselves. In Civic Ecology, Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball offer stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, along with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding and studying it as a growing international phenomenon. Krasny and Tidball draw on research in social capital and collective efficacy, ecosystem services, social learning, governance, and social-ecological systems, and other findings in the social and ecological sciences to investigate how people, practices, and communities interact. Along the way, they chronicle local environmental stewards who have undertaken such tasks as beautifying blocks in the Bronx, clearing trash from the Iranian countryside, and working with traumatized veterans to conserve nature and recreate community. Krasny and Tidball argue that humans’ innate love of nature and attachment to place compels them to restore nature and places that are threatened, destroyed, or lost. At the same time, they report, nature and community exert a healing and restorative power on their stewards.