The Anthropocene

Author: Julia Adeney Thomas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150953461X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth. Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia. So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically. We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state. To do so, we must first understand what "Anthropocene" means in all its dimensions. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation. And what of the "anthropos" in the Anthropocene? While geoscience does not normally address political and ethical issues of justice and equity, or economics and culture, Anthropocene studies in the humanities and social sciences investigate the complexities of the human activity driving global change. Here the book looks at human history, both in the deep past and more recently, the politics and economics of growth spurring the Anthropocene, and potential ways of mitigating its cruel effects. Our fragile, still beautiful, planet is finite. The new realities of the Anthropocene will need our best efforts, across disciplinary divides, at effective hope and action.

Knowledge For The Anthropocene

Author: Carrillo, Francisco J.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 180088429X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
With human-induced environmental impacts disrupting human life in deeper ways and at a wider scale than anything previously experienced, this multidisciplinary book looks at the ways that current knowledge bases seem inadequate to help us deal with such realities. It offers a critical appraisal of the current knowledge infrastructure, including science, technology, innovation, education and informal knowledge systems.

City Preparedness for the Climate Crisis

Author: Carrillo, Francisco J.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800883668
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Exploring the ways that contemporary urban life takes the Holocene for granted, this multidisciplinary book warns that anthropogenic environmental impacts are on course to challenge the viability of most human settlements. It highlights how, despite increased warnings, most cities appear to be in denial of the potential impending catastrophes and remain ill-prepared to handle major disruptions.

Extreme Events and Climate Change

Author: Federico Castillo
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119413621
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
An authoritative volume focusing on multidisciplinary methods to estimate the impacts of climate-related extreme events to society As the intensity and frequency of extreme events related to climate change continue to increase, there is an urgent need for clear and cohesive analysis that integrates both climatological and socioeconomic impacts. Extreme Events and Climate Change provides a timely, multidisciplinary examination of the impacts of extreme weather under a warming climate. Offering wide-ranging coverage of the methods and analysis that relate changes in extreme events to their societal impacts, this volume helps readers understand and overcome the methodological challenges associated with extreme event analysis. Contributions from leading experts from across disciplines describe the theoretical requirements for analyzing the complex interactions between meteorological phenomena and the resulting outcomes, discuss new approaches for analyzing the impacts of extreme events on society, and illustrate how empirical and theoretical concepts merge to form a unified plan that enables informed decision making. Throughout the text, innovative frameworks allow readers to find solutions to the modeling and statistical challenges encountered when analyzing extreme events. Designed for researchers and policy makers alike, this important resource: Discusses topics central to understanding how extreme weather changes as the climate warms Provides coverage of analysis methods that relate changes in extreme events to their societal impacts Reviews significant theoretical and modeling advances in the physical aspects of climate science Presents a comprehensive view of state of the science, including new ways of using data from different sources Extreme Events and Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach is an indispensable volume for students, researchers, scientists, and practitioners in fields such as hazard and risk analysis, climate change, atmospheric and ocean sciences, hydrology, geography, agricultural science, and environmental and space science.

Will Big Business Destroy Our Planet?

Author: Peter Dauvergne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509524045
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
Walmart. Coca-Cola. BP. Toyota. The world economy runs on the profits of transnational corporations. Politicians need their backing. Non-profit organizations rely on their philanthropy. People look to their brands for meaning. And their power continues to rise. Can these companies, as so many are now hoping, provide the solutions to end the mounting global environmental crisis? Absolutely, the CEOs of big business are telling us: the commitment to corporate social responsibility will ensure it happens voluntarily. Peter Dauvergne challenges this claim, arguing instead that corporations are still doing far more to destroy than protect our planet. Trusting big business to lead sustainability is, he cautions, unwise — perhaps even catastrophic. Planetary sustainability will require reining in the power of big business, starting now.

The Metamorphosis of the World

Author: Ulrich Beck
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745690254
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
We live in a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. It is not just changing: it is metamorphosing. Change implies that some things change but other things remain the same capitalism changes, but some aspects of capitalism remain as they always were. Metamorphosis implies a much more radical transformation in which the old certainties of modern society are falling away and something quite new is emerging. To grasp this metamorphosis of the world it is necessary to explore the new beginnings, to focus on what is emerging from the old and seek to grasp future structures and norms in the turmoil of the present. Take climate change: much of the debate about climate change has focused on whether or not it is really happening, and if it is, what we can do to stop or contain it. But this emphasis on solutions blinds us to the fact that climate change is an agent of metamorphosis. It has already altered our way of being in the world the way we live in the world, think about the world and seek to act upon the world through our actions and politics. Rising sea levels are creating new landscapes of inequality drawing new world maps whose key lines are not traditional boundaries between nation-states but elevations above sea level. It is creating an entirely different way of conceptualizing the world and our chances of survival within it. The theory of metamorphosis goes beyond theory of world risk society: it is not about the negative side effects of goods but the positive side effects of bads. They produce normative horizons of common goods and propel us beyond the national frame towards a cosmopolitan outlook.

Politics and the Anthropocene

Author: Duncan Kelly
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9781509534203
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Anthropocene has become central to understanding the intimate connections between human life and the natural environment, but it has fractured our sense of time and possibility. What implications does that fracturing have for how we should think about politics in these new times? In this cutting-edge intervention, Duncan Kelly considers how this new geological era could shape our future by engaging with the recent past of our political thinking. If politics remains a short-term affair governed by electoral cycles, could an Anthropocenic sense of time, value and prosperity be built into it, altering long-established views about abundance, energy and growth? Is the Anthropocene so disruptive that it is no more than a harbinger of ecological doom, or can modern politics adapt by rethinking older debates about states, territories, and populations? Kelly rejects both pessimistic fatalism about humanity’s demise, and an optimistic fatalism that makes the Anthropocene into a problem too big for politics, best left to the market or technology to solve. His skilful defence of the potential for democratic politics to negotiate this challenge is an indispensable guide to the ideas that matter most to understanding this epochal transformation.

Digital Humanities

Author: David M. Berry
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745697690
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
As the twenty-first century unfolds, computers challenge the way in which we think about culture, society and what it is to be human: areas traditionally explored by the humanities. In a world of automation, Big Data, algorithms, Google searches, digital archives, real-time streams and social networks, our use of culture has been changing dramatically. The digital humanities give us powerful theories, methods and tools for exploring new ways of being in a digital age. Berry and Fagerjord provide a compelling guide, exploring the history, intellectual work, key arguments and ideas of this emerging discipline. They also offer an important critique, suggesting ways in which the humanities can be enriched through computing, but also how cultural critique can transform the digital humanities. Digital Humanities will be an essential book for students and researchers in this new field but also related areas, such as media and communications, digital media, sociology, informatics, and the humanities more broadly.

Can Science Make Sense of Life?

Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509522743
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 110

Book Description
Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes. Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

Energy Security

Author: Roland Dannreuther
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509520945
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
Many of the richest energy-producing regions of the world are wrought with conflict and billions of the world's poorest suffer the daily insecurity of energy poverty. All the while our planet is increasingly under pressure because of our continued dependence on fossil fuels. It is easy to see why energy security has become one of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century. In this book, Roland Dannreuther offers a new and comprehensive approach to understanding energy security. Drawing on the latest research, he treats energy security as a value that is continually in dynamic conflict with other core values, such as economic prosperity and sustainability. The different physical properties of the key energy resources – coal, oil, gas, nuclear and renewables – are of course critical for the differing manifestations of energy insecurity. But it is the social, economic and political contexts, developed over time and place, which are essential for a fuller appreciation of contemporary energy challenges. In highlighting the history and politics of energy security and the critical role played by power and justice in framing these debates, this incisive and cutting-edge analysis is a go-to introduction for students grappling with the complexities of energy security today.