Ignoring Nature No More

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226925331
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Book Description
For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act. In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive. This collection of diverse essays is the first book devoted to compassionate conservation, a growing global movement that translates discussions and concerns about the well-being of individuals, species, populations, and ecosystems into action. Written by leading scholars in a host of disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, political science, and philosophy, as well as by locals doing fieldwork in their own countries, the essays combine the most creative aspects of the current science of animal conservation with analyses of important psychological and sociocultural issues that encourage or vex stewardship. The contributors tackle topics including the costs and benefits of conservation, behavioral biology, media coverage of animal welfare, conservation psychology, and scales of conservation from the local to the global. Taken together, the essays make a strong case for why we must replace our habits of domination and exploitation with compassionate conservation if we are to make the world a better place for nonhuman and human animals alike.

Science Be Dammed

Author: Eric Kuhn
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816540055
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Science Be Dammed is an alarming reminder of the high stakes in the management—and perils in the mismanagement—of water in the western United States. It seems deceptively simple: even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning by decision-makers throughout the twentieth century, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made the least sustainable and most dangerous long-term decisions. Arguing that the science of the early twentieth century can shed new light on the mistakes at the heart of the over-allocation of the Colorado River, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck delve into rarely reported early studies, showing that scientists warned as early as the 1920s that there was not enough water for the farms and cities boosters wanted to build. Contrary to a common myth that the authors of the Colorado River Compact did the best they could with limited information, Kuhn and Fleck show that development boosters selectively chose the information needed to support their dreams, ignoring inconvenient science that suggested a more cautious approach. Today water managers are struggling to come to terms with the mistakes of the past. Focused on both science and policy, Kuhn and Fleck unravel the tangled web that has constructed the current crisis. With key decisions being made now, including negotiations for rules governing how the Colorado River water will be used after 2026, Science Be Dammed offers a clear-eyed path forward by looking back. Understanding how mistakes were made is crucial to understanding our contemporary problems. Science Be Dammed offers important lessons in the age of climate change about the necessity of seeking out the best science to support the decisions we make.

Rights of Nature in Europe

Author: Jenny García Ruales
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040013015
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
This book addresses the recognition of the Rights of Nature (RoN) in Europe, examining their conceptualisation and implementation. RoN refers to a diverse set of legal developments that seek to redefine Nature's status within the law, gradually emerging as a novel template for environmental protection. Countries like Ecuador and New Zealand, each with distinct histories and ways of dwelling in the world, have pioneered a new era in environmental governance by legally acknowledging rights or personhood for nature, ecosystems, and more-than-human populations. In recent years, Europe has witnessed growing interest in RoN, with academic, legislative, and political initiatives gaining momentum. A significant development is the September 2022 passage of a law in the Spanish Parliament, granting legal personhood and rights to the Mar Menor, a saltwater lagoon severely affected by environmental degradation. Given the diversity in interpretations and articulations of ‘Rights of Nature’, this edited volume argues that their arrival in Europe fosters different kinds of interactions across distinct areas of law, knowledge, practices, and societal domains. The book employs a multidisciplinary approach, exploring these interactions in law and policy, anthropology, Indigenous worldviews and jurisprudence, philosophy, spiritual traditions, critical theory, animal communication, psychology, and social work. This book is tailored for scholars in law, political science, environmental studies, anthropology and cultural studies; as well as legal practitioners, NGOs, activists and policy-makers interested in ecology and environmental protection.

Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial

Author: Tomaž Grušovnik
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793610479
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
The staggering rate of environmental pollution and animal abuse despite constant efforts to educate the public and raise awareness challenges the prevailing belief that the absence of serious action is a consequence of a poorly informed public. In recent decades alternative explanations of social and political inaction have emerged, including denialism. Challenging the information-deficit model, denialism proposes that people actively avoid unpleasant information that threatens their established worldviews, lifestyles, and identities. Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial: Averting Our Gaze analyzes how people avoid awareness of climate change, environmental pollution, animal abuse, and the animal industrial complex. The contributors examine the theory of denialism in regards to environmental pollution and animal abuse through a range of disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural history and law.

Nature Conservation in Southern Africa

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004385118
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Nature conservation in southern Africa has always been characterised by an interplay between Capital, specific understandings of Morality, and forms of Militarism, that are all dependent upon the shared subservience and marginalization of animals and certain groups of people in society. Although the subjectivity of people has been rendered visible in earlier publications on histories of conservation in southern Africa, the subjectivity of animals is hardly ever seriously considered or explicitly dealt with. In this edited volume the subjectivity and sentience of animals is explicitly included. The contributors argue that the shared human and animal marginalisation and agency in nature conservation in southern Africa (and beyond) could and should be further explored under the label of ‘sentient conservation’. Contributors are Malcolm Draper, Vupenyu Dzingirai, Jan-Bart Gewald, Michael Glover, Paul Hebinck, Tariro Kamuti, Lindiwe Mangwanya, Albert Manhamo, Dhoya Snijders, Marja Spierenburg, Sandra Swart, Harry Wels.

Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608682196
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
In 2009, Marc Bekoff was asked to write on animal emotions for Psychology Today. Some 500 popular, jargon-free essays later, the field of anthrozoology — the study of human-animal relationships — has grown exponentially, as have scientific data showing how smart and emotional nonhuman animals are. Here Bekoff offers selected essays that showcase the fascinating cognitive abilities of other animals as well as their empathy, compassion, grief, humor, joy, and love. Humpback whales protect gray whales from orca attacks, combat dogs and other animals suffer from PTSD, and chickens, rats, and mice display empathy. This collection is both an updated sequel to Bekoff’s popular book The Emotional Lives of Animals and a call to begin the important work of “rewilding” ourselves and changing the way we treat other animals.

After the Death of Nature

Author: Kenneth Worthy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351582909
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Carolyn Merchant’s foundational 1980 book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution established her as a pioneering researcher of human-nature relations. Her subsequent groundbreaking writing in a dozen books and over one hundred peer-reviewed articles have only fortified her position as one of the most influential scholars of the environment. This book examines and builds upon her decades-long legacy of innovative environmental thought and her critical responses to modern mechanistic and patriarchal conceptions of nature and women as well as her systematic taxonomies of environmental thought and action. Seventeen scholars and activists assess, praise, criticize, and extend Merchant’s work to arrive at a better and more complete understanding of the human place in nature today and the potential for healthier and more just relations with nature and among people in the future. Their contributions offer personal observations of Merchant’s influence on the teaching, research, and careers of other environmentalists.

Nature and Ethics Across Geographical, Rhetorical and Human Borders

Author: Katharine Dow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135133347X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
How we dispose of our rubbish, choose the foods we buy, enjoy art, relate to our families, and think about ourselves are just a few of the ways that ideas about nature shape our everyday ethical decisions. Nature and ‘natural facts’ have long been used to make sense of why we act a certain way. Nature is a concept with great power: when we describe something as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, it has a moral force and political consequences. We see this in moral panics about genetically modified foods, the spread of government-enforced waste recycling schemes, concerns about assisted reproductive technologies. Our ideas about what is natural shape our ethical thinking, in terms of how people live (or want to live) their lives, but also in guiding our sense of morality, justice and truth. The idea of naturalness is essential to grasping Anglo-American cultures. Throughout history and in different places, nature has had different forms, meanings, and moral valences. It is a knowable fact, but at the same time almost a divine principle that is ultimately unfathomable. Yet with the rise of new technologies, there is increasing uncertainty about what we claim to be natural, who we are, how we are related to each other, and how we should live. This book examines the how ideas about nature and ethics overlap and separate across cultural, species, geographic, and moral boundaries. It compares the varied ways in which nature and ideas of naturalness pervade all aspects of people’s lives, from family relationships, to the production and consumption of food, to ideas about scientific truth. In a world of increasing uncertainty, nature remains a powerful concept: the ultimate reference point, invested with profound moral authority to guide our ethical behaviour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnos.

Culture and Conservation

Author: Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317937295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
Today, there is growing interest in conservation and anthropologists have an important role to play in helping conservation succeed for the sake of humanity and for the sake of other species. Equally important, however, is the fact that we, as the species that causes extinctions, have a moral responsibility to those whose evolutionary unfolding and very future we threaten. This volume is an examination of the relationship between conservation and the social sciences, particularly anthropology. It calls for increased collaboration between anthropologists, conservationists and environmental scientists, and advocates for a shift towards an environmentally focused perspective that embraces not only cultural values and human rights, but also the intrinsic value and rights to life of nonhuman species. This book demonstrates that cultural and biological diversity are intimately interlinked, and equally threatened by the industrialism that endangers the planet's life-giving processes. The consideration of ecological data, as well as an expansion of ethics that embraces more than one species, is essential to a well-rounded understanding of the connections between human behavior and environmental wellbeing. This book gives students and researchers in anthropology, conservation, environmental ethics and across the social sciences an invaluable insight into how innovative and intensive new interdisciplinary approaches, questions, ethics and subject pools can close the gap between culture and conservation.

Don't Even Think About It

Author: George Marshall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 163286102X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
The director of the Climate Outreach and Information Network explores the psychological mechanism that enables people to ignore the dangers of climate change, using sidebars, cartoons and engaging stories from his years of research to reveal how humans are wired to primarily respond to visible threats.