Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around th...

Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two-to-three days. China's breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life ...

"A clearheaded, multidimensional tour of China's political, economic, and social landscapes." — Current History"Packed with facts and figures, but enlivened with firsthand observations. . . . An excellent introduction to China for anyone in search of solid but concise information about that complicated country." — The New York Times Book ReviewFor more than a decade, John Bryan Starr's indispensable guide has introduced un...

The world's leading economies are facing not just one but many crises. The financial meltdown may not be over, climate change threatens major global disruption, economic inequality has reached extremes not seen for a century, and government and business are widely distrusted. At the same time, many people regret the consumerism and social corrosion of modern life. What these crises have in common, Diane Coyle argues, is a reckless disregard for the future--especially in the way the economy...

Since the financial crisis of 2008, many of us have had to reexamine our beliefs about markets and globalization. How integrated should economies really be? How much regulation is right?Many people fuse these two dimensions of choice into one, either favoring both globalization and deregulation-or opposing both of them.It doesn’t have to be that way.In World 3.0, award-winning author and economist Pankaj Ghemawat reveals the folly in both of these responses...

We know everything and nothing about China. We know that China is changing so fast that the maps in Shanghai need to be redrawn every two weeks. We know that China has brought 300 million people from agricultural backwardness into modernity in just thirty years, and that its impact on the global economy is growing at unprecedented speed. We have an image of China as a dictatorship; a nationalist empire that threatens its neighbors and global peace.But how many people know about the...

A new edition of a book that takes a comprehensive look at the ways economic processes affect global environmental outcomes.This comprehensive and accessible book fills the need for a political economy view of global environmental politics, focusing on the ways international economic processes affect environmental outcomes. It examines the main actors and forces shaping global environmental management, particularly in the developing world. Moving beyond the usual e...

China's spectacular economic growth over the past two decades has dramatically depleted the country's natural resources and produced skyrocketing rates of pollution. Environmental degradation in China has also contributed to significant public health problems, mass migration, economic loss, and social unrest. In The River Runs Black, Elizabeth C. Economy examines China's growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country's future development.

Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented, and popularly written refutation of the idea that "overpopulation" is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions.No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for the layperson and environmental scholars alike.

China’s cities are home to 10 percent of the world’s population today. They display unprecedented dynamism under the country’s surging economic power. Their remarkable transformation builds on immense traditions, having lived through feudal dynasties, semicolonialism, and socialist commands. Studying them offers a lens into both the complex character of the changing city and the Chinese economy, society, and environment.This text is anchored in the spatial sciences to offer a compr...

Countries worldwide are struggling to imitate the industrial prowess of the East Asian pacesetters, but growth accelerations have proven remarkably transient. Building a portfolio of tradable goods and services and steadily raising the level of investment in these activities, has generally defied the best policy efforts - in particular, bringing investment ratios on par with East Asian averages has presented the greatest challenge. Hence the search is on for growth recipes not so tightly boun...

Rising superpower China duly anointed a new generation of leaders led by Xi Jinping at the Communist Party's 18th National Congress held in November 2012. While the conclave itself passed off with smoothly choreographed efficiency, the months leading up to this once-a-decade transition were anything but orderly. Intense factional wrangling behind the scenes was accompanied by scandals very much in public view. In the most spectacular furore the political aspirations of Communist aristocrat...