Ecology And The Politics Of Scarcity Revisited

In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth‘s limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book‘s more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate.

In this fourth edition Neal Riemer and Douglas W. Simon again seek to introduce students to the challenging discipline of political science by highliting six cardinal features. The editors strongly believe that their unique and comprehensive approach, employing those six features, can best equip students of political science to stay abreast of the ever-changing, and ever-challenging, world of politics. First and most important Riemer and Simon affirm the importance of addressing the three main concerns of political science: political and philosophy and ethics, empirical/behavioral political science, and public policy. Second, the authors reaffirm their normative preference for politics as a civilizing enterprise, one that enables people in the political community live better, to grow robustly in mind and spirit, and to find creative fulfillment. The fourth cardinal feature requires to recognize realistically the ever-chaning nature of politics and the tasks of assessing and responding to changing values. The sixth cardinal feature of The New World of Politics is understanding the importance of keeping the future in mind--not only the immediate future, but the long-range future. This book seeks to introduce students to political science as a discipline intimately involved with ethics, emprical social scientific inquiry, and public policy. Neal Riemer and Douglas W. Simon are endeavoring to help students respond to those future problems with understanding and wisdom. A Collegiate Press book

Farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books, making his name a household word among environmentalists. From his Kentucky farm, Berry preaches and practices stewardship of the land as he seeks to defend the value and traditions of farm life in an industrial capitalist society. A central figure in the greening of American agrarianism, Berry has been an advocate of small farming and traditional values who has tirelessly reminded readers that sustainable agriculture is more than a catchphrase. Kimberly Smith now reveals the depth of his ideas and their relevance for American social and political theory. Berry's central teaching focuses on the fragility of our natural and social worlds; Smith's timely book revisits the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities. Hers is the first book to explore the implications of this central tenet and other key aspects of Berry's thought, as well as his overall contribution to environmental theory and politics. Smith shows how the many strands of Berry's thought can be woven together into a coherent agrarian philosophy. Focusing on his relationship to the American agrarian and environmental traditions, she examines how Berry's ecological agrarianism derives from the concept of "grace," or living in concert with nature and society. Along the way, she defends his social theory against accusations of utopianism, shows how his moral theory subverts the notion of rugged individualism usually associated with farming, and reviews his political theory's argument for decentralized democracy. By assessing Berry's reformulation of democratic agrarianism, Smith goes beyond any previous critiques of his writing, and her exploration of Berry's moral vision shows that such vision is more relevant as America continues to move further away from its agrarian past.

The Challenge of Politics introduces students to the fundamental questions of political science. With a distinctive normative approach that portrays politics as a potentially humanizing enterprise, authors Neal Riemer, Douglas W. Simon and Joseph Romance equip readers to recognize major forms of government, evaluate research findings, and understand how policy issues directly affect people’s lives. This comprehensive text balances classic and contemporary political theory with current events and empirical study. The Fifth Edition is fully revised to reflect recent national and international developments, including a new chapter on American Politics and Government.

Scarcity is considered a ubiquitous feature of the human condition. It underpins much of modern economics and is widely used as an explanation for social organisation, social conflict and the resource crunch confronting humanity's survival on the planet. It is made out to be an all-pervasive fact of our lives - be it of housing, food, water or oil. But has the conception of scarcity been politicized, naturalized, and universalized in academic and policy debates? Has overhasty recourse to scarcity evoked a standard set of market, institutional and technological solutions which have blocked out political contestations, overlooking access as a legitimate focus for academic debates as well as policies and interventions? Theoretical and empirical chapters by leading academics and scholar-activists grapple with these issues by questioning scarcity's taken-for-granted nature. They examine scarcity debates across three of the most important resources - food, water and energy - and their implications for theory, institutional arrangements, policy responses and innovation systems. The book looks at how scarcity has emerged as a totalizing discourse in both the North and South. The 'scare' of scarcity has led to scarcity emerging as a political strategy for powerful groups. Aggregate numbers and physical quantities are trusted, while local knowledges and experiences of scarcity that identify problems more accurately and specifically are ignored. Science and technology are expected to provide 'solutions', but such expectations embody a multitude of unexamined assumptions about the nature of the 'problem', about the technologies and about the institutional arrangements put forward as a 'fix.' Through this examination the authors demonstrate that scarcity is not a natural condition: the problem lies in how we see scarcity and the ways in which it is socially generated.

Political correctness, idealizing the oppressed, and an affinity for authoritarian and charismatic leaders are all parts of what Ellis calls "the dark side of the left."