Climate Change And The Future Of Sustainability

A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world's leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability Sustainability has emerged as a global priority over the past several years. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals through the United Nations have highlighted the need to address critical challenges such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the United States, partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future. This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book's forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. The book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.

Other research dimensions discussed in the book are drawn from Brazil, Hawaii, England, Australia and New Zealand.

This bold and important new book presents current and emerging thinking on the social dimensions of climate change. Using clear language and powerful examples, it introduces key concepts and frameworks for understanding the multifaceted connections between climate and society. Robin Leichenko and Karen O’Brien frame climate change as a social issue that calls for integrative approaches to research, policy, and action. They explore dominant and relevant discourses on the social drivers and impacts of climate change, highlighting the important roles that worldviews and beliefs play in shaping responses to climate challenges. Situating climate change within the context of a rapidly changing world, the book demonstrates how dynamic political, economic, and environmental contexts amplify risks yet also present opportunities for transformative responses. Aimed at undergraduate students and others concerned with a critical challenge of our time, this informative and engaging book empowers readers with a range of possibilities for equitable and sustainable transformations in a changing climate.

'This book could not be more timely — published after a year that saw the costliest slew of weather disasters in history along with one of the deadliest pandemic, the emergence and spread of which is linked to climate change ... This book will be a valuable resource for scientists, policy makers but also educators and especially a young generation of readers who want to be informed citizens shaping the right choices for their local communities but also as cosmopolitan citizens of the world.'Journal of Indian Physics AssociationThe signs of global warming can be seen everywhere — hotter summers, frequent heavy rains, prolonged droughts, more severe forest fires, fiercer storms (including snow storms) and cyclones, as well as melting polar ice caps. Our indiscriminate actions are raising the spectre of millions of climate refugees who are victims of battles for water, crops, fish, and so on. It is poignant that the poorer countries, that are the least equipped to face these calamities have contributed the least to global warming, but are the worst hit.Only a concerted effort from the entire world by a rapid transition to renewable, clean and green energy sources, while checking wastage, deforestation and pollution, and a genuine adjustment in lifestyles towards moderation can avert the Earth, the only habitable planet we know, from turning into a hothouse.

Written by 18 authors, this book on Sustainability, Climate Change and the Green Economy brings together insights at the nexus of the four key concepts embedded in its title. The book is unpacked in six parts. Part 1 is a single chapter that covers the context of the topic. Part 2 looks at the green economy and green jobs, and addresses the challenges of government coordination and socio-economic development, with emphasis on skills and immigration regimes. Part 3 reflects on sustainable development, with a focus on relearning our wants and needs, and provides critical reflection on engineering for sustainable development. Management of natural resources and wetlands makes up Part 4, which teases out issues on timber harvesting, as well as challenges and opportunities in addressing environment-economic development and growth conflicts. A critique of climate change coverage in news media, mainstreaming climate change into wildlife policies, and tourism, are matters covered in Part 5. The last part (Part 6) is another single chapter, which articulates emerging issues from the whole book and presents some policy and take-home messages. Given the growing literature in the field of sustainability, climate change and the green economy, this piece will prove a must-read for policy makers, academics, industry and civil society.

This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Renewable resources such as wind, solar, and geothermal are often perceived as being the answer to the fossil fuel crisis. Ironically, however, climate change may also negatively impact on these energy sources. All forms of renewable energy are somewhat sensitive to climate variation. This new compendium looks at the impact of renewable resources on climate change from a variety of perspectives.

A forceful call to climate change action and a pragmatic roadmap toward sustainability from the internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers. Utilizing the most up-to-the-minute data available, Tim Flannery offers a guided tour of the environmental challenges we face and their potential solutions in both the big picture and in specific detail. He explores everything from techniques for storing the carbon that dead plants release into the earth to the fragile balancing act between energy demands and food supply in India and China, from carbon-trading schemes in South America to a collaboration between a Danish wind-energy company and an automobile manufacturer that may produce a viable electric car and end the reign of big oil. Now or Never is a powerful, thought-provoking, and essential book about the most urgent issue of our time. It burns with Flannery’s characteristic mix of passion, scientific precision, and “offhand interdisciplinary brilliance” (Entertainment Weekly). “Shocking . . . [Flannery] writes for a general audience with passion and clarity.” —Jim Hansen

The first hopeful book about climate change, The Future Earth shows readers how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. The basics of climate science are easy. We know it is entirely human-caused. Which means its solutions will be similarly human-led. In The Future Earth, leading climate change advocate and weather-related journalist Eric Holthaus (“the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology”—Rolling Stone) offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists, biologists, economists, and climate change activists, it shows what the world could look like if we implemented radical solutions on the scale of the crises we face. What could happen if we reduced carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next decade? What could living in a city look like in 2030? How could the world operate in 2040, if the proposed Green New Deal created a 100 percent net carbon-free economy in the United States? This is the book for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the current state of our environment. Hopeful and prophetic, The Future Earth invites us to imagine how we can reverse the effects of climate change in our own lifetime and encourages us to enter a deeper relationship with the earth as conscientious stewards and to re-affirm our commitment to one another in our shared humanity.