Nature, Action and the Future


Book Description

Leading scholars of political thought demonstrate how the history of political ideas makes sense of environmental politics and climate change.




The Nature of the Future


Book Description

"In the seemingly mundane Northern farm of early America and the people who sought to improve its productivity and efficiency, Emily Pawley finds a world rich with innovative practices and marked by a developing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, industrial methods, and capitalism. Agricultural "improvers" became increasingly scientistic, driving tremendous increases in the range and volume of agricultural output-and transforming American conceptions of expertise, success, and exploitation. Pawley's focus on soil, fertilizer, apples, mulberries, agricultural fairs, and experimental stations shows each nominally dull subject to have been an area of intellectual ferment and sharp contestation: mercantile, epistemological, and otherwise"--




The Politics of Rights of Nature


Book Description

"On the global development of legislation, treaty negotiations, constitutional measures, and litigation resulting in legal recognition of Rights of Nature (RoN), including the cultural and political influences that determined how these legal rights were framed, the method of adoption and, importantly, the evolution of RoN enforcement through judicial decisions and growing cultural familiarity with the new legal concept"--




The Future of Nature


Book Description

This anthology provides an historical overview of the scientific ideas behind environmental prediction and how, as predictions about environmental change have been taken more seriously and widely, they have affected politics, policy, and public perception. Through an array of texts and commentaries that examine the themes of progress, population, environment, biodiversity and sustainability from a global perspective, it explores the meaning of the future in the twenty-first century. Providing access and reference points to the origins and development of key disciplines and methods, it will encourage policy makers, professionals, and students to reflect on the roots of their own theories and practices.




After Nature


Book Description

An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic




The Future of Human Nature


Book Description

Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As we begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. ‘Playing God’ is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp. In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas – the most influential philosopher and social thinker in Germany today – takes up the question of genetic engineering and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful philosophical scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. We cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings. In the concluding chapter – which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001 – Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, a tension which exploded, with such tragic violence, on September 11th.







The Future of Representative Democracy


Book Description

The Future of Representative Democracy poses important questions about representation, representative democracy and their future. Inspired by the last major investigation of the subject by Hanna Pitkin over four decades ago, this ambitious volume fills a major gap in the literature by examining the future of representative forms of democracy in terms of present-day trends and past theories of representative democracy. Aware of the pressing need for clarifying key concepts and institutional trends, the volume aims to break down barriers among disciplines and to establish an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars. The contributors emphasise that representative democracy and its future is a subject of pressing scholarly concern and public importance. Paying close attention to the unfinished, two-centuries-old relationship between democracy and representation, this book offers a fresh perspective on current problems and dilemmas of representative democracy and the possible future development of new forms of democratic representation.




Green Inside Activism for Sustainable Development


Book Description

This book considers how public sector institutions can be transformed to better support sustainable development by exploring the concept of green inside activism and its importance for institutional change. The phenomenon of inside activism has been shown to be crucial for green policy change and this book focuses on public officials as green inside activists, committed to green values and engaged in social movement, acting strategically from inside public administration to change public policy and institutions in line with such value commitment. The book theorizes how green inside activism can contribute to a more sustainable development through institutional change. This theorizing builds on and relates to highly relevant theoretical arguments in the existing literature. The authors also consider the legitimacy of inside activism and how it can be reconciled with democratic ideals. This innovative work will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, political science and environmental politics.




Planetary Health


Book Description

Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.