Resetting the Compass: Australia's Journey Towards Sustainability Updated Edition sets out Australia's environmental problems in their global context and explains what is now needed to fix them. It also illustrates how ecological sustainability can be achieved together with economic, social and cultural sustainability. The book examines the pressures on our environment from population growth, consumption patterns and technological change. The specific actions needed to deal with each of the p...

Sometime this century, after 4 billion years, some of Earth's regulatory systems will pass from control through evolution by natural selection, to control by human intelligence. Will humanity rise to the challenge?This landmark essay by Tim Flannery is about sustainability, our search for it in the twenty-first century, and the impact it might have on the environmental threats that confront us today. Flannery discusses in detail three potential solutions to the most pressing of the...

Human beings and industrial-based society are changing the composition of our planet’s atmosphere and causing it to warm at an unnatural and oftentimes astonishingly rapid rate. Much of that warmth is being absorbed by water, which as a result is moving through the global hydrological cycle faster and in unprecedented ways. A warmer atmosphere carries more water vapour, which means that as temperatures continue to rise, storms will become more intense, last longer and cause more damage to ...

Substantially updated for the second edition, this engaging and innovative introduction to the environment and society uses key theoretical approaches to explore familiar objects.Features substantial revisions and updates for the second edition, including new chapters on E waste, mosquitoes and uranium, improved maps and graphics, new exercises, shorter theory chapters, and refocused sections on environmental solutionsDiscusses topics such as population and scarcity...

This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth’s environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with environmental threats around the world.

It is widely accepted in the scientific community that climate change is a reality, and that changes are happening with increasing rapidity. In this second edition, leading climate researcher Barrie Pittock revisits the effects that global warming is having on our planet, in light of ever-evolving scientific research. Presenting all sides of the arguments about the science and possible remedies, Pittock examines the latest analyses of climate change, such as new and alarming observations rega...

At Copenhagen in December 2009, the international community agreed to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change. However climate scientists agree that current national emissions targets collectively will still not achieve this goal. Instead, the ‘ambition gap’ between climate science and climate policy is likely to lead to average global warming of around four degrees Celsius by or before 2100. If a ‘Four Degree World’ is t...

'Refreshingly fluent narrative, brimming full of stories and metaphors'Tim O'Riordan, University of East Anglia, UK'A great balance between storytelling and analysis which points to the critical need for gaining control over resources'Jacqueline Ashby, CIAT, Colombia'Full of supporting evidence and clear arguments'Norman Uphoff, Cornell University, US'A wonderful book, put together with such vision and passion'Mark Ritchie, Institute of A...

Providing an up-to-date synthesis of all knowledge relevant to the climate change issue, this book ranges from the basic science documenting the need for policy action to the technologies, economic instruments and political strategies that can be employed in response to climate change. Ethical and cultural issues constraining the societal response to climate change are also discussed. This book provides a handbook for those who want to understand and contribute to meeting this challenge. I...

This powerful book shows us that we are in deep denial about the magnitude of the global environmental challenges and resource constraints facing the world. Despite growing scientific consensus on major environmental threats as well as resource depletion, societies are largely continuing with business as usual, at best attempting to tinker at the margins of the problems. The authors argue that regardless of whether governments respond to the economic crisis through additional stimulus pack...

We are destroying our natural environment at a constantly increasing pace, and in so doing undermining the preconditions of our own existence. Why is this so? This book reveals that our ecologically disruptive behaviour is in fact rooted in our very nature as a species. Drawing on evolution theory, biology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, environmental science and history, this book explains the ecological predicament of humankind by placing it in the context of the first scientific ...

"Understanding Environmental Issues provides an excellent foundation for developing critical thinking about contemporary environmental concerns and the ways in which these are debated, represented and managed. The book should achieve its aim of stimulating students to engage with how ideas of sustainability and environmental justice can be applied both in policy and in practical action."- Gordon Walker, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University...