Saving Nature Under Socialism


Book Description

When East Germany collapsed in 1989–1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. The communist dictatorship, however, had sought to confront environmental issues since at least the 1960s. Through an analysis of official and oppositional sources, Saving Nature Under Socialism complicates attitudes toward the environment in East Germany by tracing both domestic and transnational engagement with nature and pollution. The communist dictatorship limited opportunities for protest, so officials and activists looked abroad to countries such as Poland and West Germany for inspiration and support. Julia Ault outlines the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and shows how East Germans responded to local degradation as well as to an international moment of environmental reckoning in the 1970s and 1980s. The example of East Germany thus challenges and broadens our understanding of the 'greening' of post-war Europe, and illuminates a larger, central European understanding of connection across the Iron Curtain.




The Conservation Revolution


Book Description

A post-capitalist manifesto for conservation Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates about the rise of the Anthropocene and the current ‘sixth extinction’ crisis demonstrate an urgent need and desire to move beyond mainstream approaches. Yet the conservation community is deeply divided over where to go from here. Some want to place ‘half earth’ into protected areas. Others want to move away from parks to focus on unexpected and ‘new’ natures. Many believe conservation requires full integration into capitalist production processes. Building a razor-sharp critique of current conservation proposals and their contradictions, Büscher and Fletcher argue that the Anthropocene challenge demands something bigger, better and bolder. Something truly revolutionary. They propose convivial conservation as the way forward. This approach goes beyond protected areas and faith in markets to incorporate the needs of humans and nonhumans within integrated and just landscapes. Theoretically astute and practically relevant, The Conservation Revolution offers a manifesto for conservation in the twenty-first century—a clarion call that cannot be ignored.




Rambunctious Garden


Book Description

"Some of the material in this book appeared previously, in a different form, in the journal Nature"--T.p. verso.




Saving Nature's Legacy


Book Description

Biological diversity is considered one of today’s most urgent environmental concerns, yet the term was first coined only twenty-five years ago. Why did the concept of biological diversity so quickly capture public attention and emerge as a banner issue for the environmental movement? In this book, Timothy J. Farnham explores for the first time the historical roots of biological diversity, tracing the evolution of the term as well as the history of the conservation traditions that contributed to its rapid acceptance and popularity. Biological diversity is understood today as consisting of three components--species diversity, genetic diversity, and ecosystem diversity. Farnham finds that these three tiers coincided with three earlier, disparate conservation traditions that converged when the cause of preserving biological diversity was articulated. He tells the stories of these different historical foundations, recounts how the term came into the environmental lexicon, and shows how the evolution of the idea of biological diversity reflects an evolution of American attitudes toward the natural world.




Saving Earth


Book Description

A timely and inspiring nonfiction guide for middle grade readers about the history of our fight against climate change, and how young people today are rising to action. Inspired by Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth: A Recent History, the acclaimed book that grew out of an August 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine solely dedicated to it, Saving Earth tells the human story of the climate change conversation from the recent past into the present day. It wrestles with the long shadow of our failures, what might be ahead for today’s generation, and crucial questions of how we understand the world we live in—and how we can work together to change the outlook for the better. Written by acclaimed author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and enlivened with illustrations from Tim Foley, and filled with the voices of climate activists from the past and present, this book is both a call to action and a riveting dramatic history. A Junior Library Guild Selection




The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth


Book Description

Take a globe-circling tour of our endangered planet with conservation biologist Stuart Pimmwho is taking stock and keeping score. We use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply. We consume 42 percent of the world's plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants 100 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that the human impact on our planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement. Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the "science" in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts," checking the numbers gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. Pimm explains the numerical results in lucid prose. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where those numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet. With Pimm as our indomitable guide, we travel from the volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawaii to the boreal forests of Siberia. We see a blue whale off the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the blue oceans are slowly turning to barren deserts. We go birdwatching high up in the leafy canopy of the Amazon, from which we can see the hundreds of smoke plumes busily working at deforestation. At times, the view looks rather grim. But Pimm is no Cassandra; he never preaches or scolds. Ever optimistic, this book presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction. "[T]his book is unashamedly optimistic. It is a celebration of our spectacular and fascinating world. I have made no attempt to restrain my joy as I encounter its natural history and its peoples. By the time you read the Epilogue you will know that our world is not doomed, it is not fatally wounded, but neither is it healthy. It needs attention. . . ." Stuart Pimm, from the Prologue




Working with Nature


Book Description

From cocoa farming in Ghana to the orchards of Kent and the desert badlands of Pakistan, taking a practical approach to sustaining the landscape can mean the difference between prosperity and ruin. Working with Nature is the story of a lifetime of work, often in extreme environments, to harvest nature and protect it - in effect, gardening on a global scale. It is also a memoir of encounters with larger-than-life characters such as William Bunting, the gun-toting saviour of Yorkshire's peatlands and the aristocratic gardener Vita Sackville-West, examining their idiosyncratic approaches to conservation. Jeremy Purseglove explains clearly and convincingly why it's not a good idea to extract as many resources as possible, whether it's the demand for palm oil currently denuding the forests of Borneo, cottonfield irrigation draining the Aral Sea, or monocrops spreading across Britain. The pioneer of engineering projects to preserve nature and landscape, first in Britain and then around the world, he offers fresh insights and solutions at each step.




Saving Nature


Book Description

Environmentalism has moved into the center of the most influential social movements in late modernity. From preserving pre-industrial landscapes, advocating the intrinsic value of nature, and protecting ecosystems against overexploitation, it has developed into a worldview, ethos, and practice, that is radically shifting the frontiers of politics, economics, and ethics. Saving Nature approaches environmentalism as a belief system. The book explores the impact of environmentalism on faith communities and vice versa, and analyzes how environmental worldviews, values, attitudes, and discourses affect religion. By drawing on sources in the sociology of religion and environmental sociology, it sheds light on the religious dimensions of environmentalism. It locates the quick growth of environmentalism in the history of allegedly secular modernity and interprets environmentalism in the context of modernity's re-sacralization. (Series: Studies in Religion and the Environment/Studien zur Religion und Umwelt - Vol. 4)




Last Child in the Woods


Book Description

The Book That Launched an International Movement Fans of The Anxious Generation will adore Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller. “An absolute must-read for parents.” —The Boston Globe “It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” reports a fourth grader. But it’s not only computers, television, and video games that are keeping kids inside. It’s also their parents’ fears of traffic, strangers, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus; their schools’ emphasis on more and more homework; their structured schedules; and their lack of access to natural areas. Local governments, neighborhood associations, and even organizations devoted to the outdoors are placing legal and regulatory constraints on many wild spaces, sometimes making natural play a crime. As children’s connections to nature diminish and the social, psychological, and spiritual implications become apparent, new research shows that nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that childhood experiences in nature stimulate creativity. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers, and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply—and find the joy of family connectedness in the process. Included in this edition: A Field Guide with 100 Practical Actions We Can Take Discussion Points for Book Groups, Classrooms, and Communities Additional Notes by the Author New and Updated Research from the U.S. and Abroad




Getting to Green


Book Description

“Regardless of your place on the political spectrum, there is much to admire in this book, which reminds us that the stewardship of nature is an obligation shared by all Americans.” —U.S. Senator Angus S. King Jr. The Green movement in America has lost its way. Pew polling reveals that the environment is one of the two things about which Republicans and Democrats disagree most. Congress has not passed a landmark piece of environmental legislation for a quarter-century. As atmospheric CO2 continues its relentless climb, even environmental insiders have pronounced “the death of environmentalism.” In Getting to Green, Frederic C. Rich argues that meaningful progress on urgent environmental issues can be made only on a bipartisan basis. Rich reminds us of American conservation’s conservative roots and of the bipartisan political consensus that had Republican congressmen voting for, and Richard Nixon signing, the most important environmental legislation of the 1970s. He argues that faithfulness to conservative principles requires the GOP to support environmental protection, while at the same time he criticizes the Green movement for having drifted too far to the left and too often appearing hostile to business and economic growth. With a clear-eyed understanding of past failures and a realistic view of the future, Getting to Green argues that progress on environmental issues is within reach. The key is encouraging Greens and conservatives to work together in the space where their values overlap—what the book calls “Center Green.” Center Green takes as its model the hugely successful national land trust movement, which has retained vigorous bipartisan support. Rich’s program is pragmatic and non-ideological. It is rooted in the way America is, not in a utopian vision of what it could become. It measures policy not by whether it is the optimum solution but by the two-part test of whether it would make a meaningful contribution to an environmental problem and whether it is achievable politically. Application of the Center Green approach moves us away from some of the harmful orthodoxies of mainstream environmentalism and results in practical and actionable positions on climate change, energy policy, and other crucial issues. This is how we get to Green.