Featured Books & eBooks - Sustainability Concepts & Issues
Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation by ISBN: 9781680921533Publication Date: 2018With "Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation," first and second-year college students are introduced to this expanding new field, comprehensively exploring the essential concepts from every branch of knowledge—including engineering and the applied arts, natural and social sciences, and the humanities. As sustainability is a multi-disciplinary area of study, the text is the product of multiple authors drawn from the diverse faculty of the University of Illinois: each chapter is written by a recognized expert in the field.
The Nature of Sustainability: Seeking the Physics & Patterns That Underlie Sustainability by ISBN: 9781943359394Publication Date: 2016We're good at fixing most problems. We repair the leaky faucet with a wrench, inflate the flat tire with a pump, and brighten the room with a new paint job. We have workable and sensible solutions for the simple, daily issues. But we aren't handling the larger, more complicated problems nearly as well. How do we fix a runaway national debt, disappearing communities, an unpredictable job market, political gridlock, mass extinction, and an explosion of diseases, among others? This text examines why some systems fail and others succeed by viewing human endeavors within the terms and patterns of natural processes.
Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues (2nd Ed) by ISBN: 9780813350004Publication Date: 2016Society and the Environment examines today's environmental controversies within a socio-organizational context. After outlining the contours of 'pragmatic environmentalism', Carolan considers the pressures that exist where ecology and society collide, such as population growth and its associated increased demands for food and energy. He also investigates how various ecological issues, such as climate change, are affecting our very own personal health. Finally, he drills into the social/structural dynamics (including political economy and the international legal system) that create ongoing momentum for environmental ills. New to this edition are 'Movement Matters' boxes, which showcase grassroots movements that have affected legislation.
Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability by ISBN: 9780804784153Publication Date: 2013Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress. Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover the core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. To shift the pendulum, this book tells a new story, driven by being and caring, as opposed to having and needing, rooted in the beauty of complexity and arguing for the transformative cultural shift that we can make based on our collective wisdom and lived experiences.
Quicklist
Byrd, Rosaly. Sustainability Made Simple: Small Changes for Big Impact. (2017) - GE196 .B97
Bryfonski, Dedria (Ed.). Global Sustainability. (2016) - HC79.E5G59147
Thompson, Tamara (Ed.). What Is the Impact of Green Practices? (2016) - GE195.W49
Johansen, Bruce. Eco-Hustle!: Global Warming, Greenwashing, & Sustainability. (2015) - QC981.8.G56J6377
Boyd, David. The Optimistic Environmentalist : Progressing Towards A Greener Future. (2015) - GE170.B699
Portney, Kent. Sustainability. (2015) - HC79.E5 P66925
Alley, Richard. Earth: The Operator's Manual. (2011) - TJ163.2 .A43
Heinberg, Richard & Daniel Lerch. Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crisis. (2010) - HC79.E5 P67
Graedel, T. E. & E. van Der Voet. Linkages of Sustainability. (2010) - eBook
Maczulak, Anne. Sustainability: Building Eco-Friendly Communities. (2010) - eBook
Marshall, Natalia. Live an Eco-Friendly Life: Smart Ways to Get Green & Stay That Way. (2008) - TD171 .7.M372
Wessels, Tom. Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future. (2006) - QH541.W42
Brown, Lester. Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. (2006) - HC79.E5 B7595
Wheeler, Benjamin; Gilda Wheeler; & Wendy Church. It's All Connected: A Comprehensive Guide to Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions. (2005) - GE70 .W54
References
Berkshire Publishing Group. Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability. (2010) - GE140 .B47
Collin, Robin Morris. Encyclopedia of Sustainability. (2009) - eBook
Cuff, David & Andrew Goudie (Eds.). Oxford Companion to Global Change. (2009) - Ref GE149 .C84
The Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus by ISBN: 9781138190948Publication Date: 2016-04-05Global trends of population growth, rising living standards and the rapidly increasing urbanized world are increasing the demand on water, food and energy. Added to this is the growing threat of climate change which will have huge impacts on water and food availability. It is increasingly clear that there is no place in an interlinked world for isolated solutions aimed at just one sector. In recent years the "nexus" has emerged as a powerful concept to capture these inter-linkages of resources and is now a key feature of policy-making. This book is one of the first to provide a broad overview of both the science behind the nexus and the implications for policies and sustainable development. It brings together contributions by leading intergovernmental and governmental officials, industry, scientists and other stakeholder thinkers who are working to develop the approaches to the Nexus of water-food-energy and climate. It represents a major synthesis and state-of-the-art assessment of the Nexus by major players, in light of the adoption by the United Nations of the new Sustainable Development Goals and Targets in 2015. With a foreword by HRH the Prince of Wales
The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity by ISBN: 9781771601429Publication Date: 2016Secure supplies of water, food and energy are essential to human dignity and well-being around the globe, and their vitality is dependent on healthy ecosystems supporting thriving biodiversity. All four elements are inter-related such that actions to govern one will automatically affect the other. This relationship is known as their Nexus. In order to face the manifold challenges of increasing demand, decreasing supplies, and rapidly changing hydro-climatic conditions across all points of the Nexus, we will need transformative policy responses that encompass economy, equity, social justice, fairness, and the environment. The Climate Nexus outlines these challenges and offers a pathway to resolving them.
Beyond the Energy-Water-Food Nexus by ISBN: 9781910174470Publication Date: 2015Providing food, clean water and energy for a growing population is one of the greatest challenges facing public and private sector professionals. While there is widespread recognition of the complex feedback loops between energy, water and food, there has been less focus on viable solutions. This guide by Will Sarni, an internationally recognized thought leader on corporate water stewardship and water tech innovation, frames the key issues and challenges for business professionals, and then outlines emerging solutions which include both "soft path" and technology innovation approaches. The book includes case examples of multinational companies who are abandoning business as usual and moving beyond traditional thinking. It also highlights crucial new partnerships or "collective action initiatives" where NGOs, multinationals and the public sector come together to forge practical solutions to meet the needs of their stakeholders.
Quicklist
Henry, Robert. Plant Resources for Food, Fuel and Conservation. (2010) - eBook
Web Resources
World Economic Forum. Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus. (2011)
Making the Most of the Anthropocene: Facing the Future by Call Number: GF21 .D46ISBN: 9781421423005Publication Date: 2017Ever since Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term "Anthropocene" to describe our current era—one in which human impact on the environment has pushed Earth into an entirely new geological epoch—arguments for and against the new designation have been raging. Finally, an official working group of scientists was created to determine once and for all whether we humans have actually wrought a change so profound as to be on par with the end of the last ice age. In summer 2016, the answer came back… Yes. In Making the Most of the Anthropocene, scientist Mark Denny tackles this hard truth head-on and considers burning questions: How did we reach our present technological and ecological state? How are we going to cope with our uncertain future? Is there anything we can do about what happens next?
Facing the Anthropocene by ISBN: 9781583676103Publication Date: 2016Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. If business-as-usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable and civilization itself will be threatened. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis.
After Preservation by Call Number: GE310 .A38ISBN: 9780226259826Publication Date: 2015-03-25From John Muir to David Brower, from the creation of Yellowstone National Park to the Endangered Species Act, environmentalism in America has always had close to its core a preservationist ideal. Generations have been inspired by its ethos--to encircle nature with our protection, to keep it apart, pristine, walled against the march of human development. But we have to face the facts. Accelerating climate change, rapid urbanization, agricultural and industrial devastation, metastasizing fire regimes, and other quickening anthropogenic forces all attest to the same truth: the earth is now spinning through the age of humans. After Preservation takes stock of the ways we have tried to both preserve and exploit nature to ask a direct but profound question: what is the role of preservationism in an era of seemingly unstoppable human development, in what some have called the Anthropocene.
The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 by ISBN: 9780674545038Publication Date: 2016Since the mid-twentieth century, the accelerating pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a massive uncontrolled experiment. The Great Acceleration explains its causes and consequences, highlighting the role of energy systems, as well as trends in climate change, urbanization, and environmentalism. The period from 1945 to the present represents the most anomalous period in the history of humanity's relationship with the biosphere. We are now living in the Anthropocene.
The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us by ISBN: 9780393351644Publication Date: 2015With her celebrated blend of scientific insight, clarity, and curiosity, Diane Ackerman explores our human capacity both for destruction and for invention as we shape the future of the planet Earth. Ackerman takes us to the mind-expanding frontiers of science, exploring the fact that the "natural" and the "human" now inescapably depend on one another. In this whirlwind techno-tour she draws on fields as diverse as evolutionary robotics...nanotechnology, 3-D printing and biomimicry.
