The Light-Green Society

The Light-Green Society PDF Author: Michael Bess
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226044170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management. The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.

The Light-Green Society

The Light-Green Society PDF Author: Michael Bess
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226044170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management. The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.

Our Grandchildren Redesigned

Our Grandchildren Redesigned PDF Author: Michael Bess
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807052175
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A panoramic overview of biotechnologies that can endlessly boost human capabilities and the drastic changes these “superhuman” traits could trigger Biotechnology is moving fast. In the coming decades, advanced pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions will be used not only to heal the sick but to boost human physical and mental performance to unprecedented levels. People will have access to pills that make them stronger and faster, informatic devices will interface seamlessly with the human brain, and epigenetic modification may allow people to reshape their own physical and mental identities at will. Until recently, such major technological watersheds—like the development of metal tools or the industrialization of manufacturing—came about incrementally over centuries or longer. People and social systems had time to adapt: they gradually developed new values, norms, and habits to accommodate the transformed material conditions. But contemporary society is dangerously unprepared for the dramatic changes it is about to experience down this road on which it is already advancing at an accelerating pace. The results will no doubt be mixed. People will live longer, healthier lives, will fine-tune their own thought processes, and will generate staggeringly complex and subtle forms of knowledge and insight. But these technologies also threaten to widen the rift between rich and poor, to generate new forms of social and economic division, and to force people to engage in constant cycles of upgrades and boosts merely to keep up. Individuals who boost their traits beyond a certain threshold may acquire such extreme capabilities that they will no longer be recognized as unambiguously human. In this important and timely book, prize-winning historian Michael Bess provides a clear, nontechnical overview of cutting-edge biotechnology and paints a vivid portrait of a near-future society in which bioenhancement has become a part of everyday life. He surveys the ethical questions raised by the enhancement enterprise and explores the space for human agency in dealing with the challenges that these technologies will present. Headed your way over the coming decades: new biotechnologies that can powerfully alter your body and mind. The possibilities are tantalizing: • Rejuvenation therapies offering much longer lives (160 and even beyond) in full vigor and mental acuity • Cognitive enhancement through chemical or bioelectronic means (the rough equivalent of doubling or tripling IQ scores) • Epigenetic tools for altering some of your genetically influenced traits at any point in your lifetime (body shape, athletic ability, intelligence, personality) • Bioelectronic devices for modulating your own brain processes, including your “pleasure centers” (a potentially non-stop high) • Direct control of machines by thought, and perhaps direct communication with other people, brain-to-brain (a new dimension of sharing and intimacy) But some of the potential consequences are also alarming: • A growing rift between the biologically enhanced and those who can’t afford such modifications • A constant cycle of upgrades and boosts as the bar of “normal” rises ever higher—“Humans 95, Humans XP, Humans 8” • The fragmentation of humankind into rival “bioenhancement clusters” • A gradually blurring boundary between “person” and “product” • Extreme forms of self-modification, with some individuals no longer recognized as unambiguously human

Remaking Society

Remaking Society PDF Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780896083721
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Argues that the solution to today's global ecological crisis depends on decentralized democratic communities, ecologically safe technologies, organic agriculture, and humanly scaled industries

Beautiful China: 70 Years Since 1949 and 70 People’s Views on Eco-civilization Construction

Beautiful China: 70 Years Since 1949 and 70 People’s Views on Eco-civilization Construction PDF Author: Jiahua Pan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813367423
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 775

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Book Description
This book discusses and studies the basic course of ecological civilization construction in the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China and summarizes the experience and lessons. It contains 75 articles from 75 top experts and government officials in the field of ecological civilization policy-making and basic theory research in China, including Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, ecological culture, green industry economy, environmental quality, legal system, ecological security and so on, so as to provide reference for understanding and studying the progress of ecological environment protection since the founding of China.

Green Liberalism

Green Liberalism PDF Author: Marcel L. J. Wissenburg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1857288491
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This is an agenda-setting exploration of the relationship between green politics and liberal ideology. Ecological problems provide unique challenges for liberal democracies.; This challenge is examined by the author who aims to fill the gap between short-term ecological modernization and the politically infeasible longer term utopian approaches.

The Spirit of Green

The Spirit of Green PDF Author: William D. Nordhaus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691215391
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From a Nobel Prize–winning pioneer in environmental economics, an innovative account of how and why “green thinking” could cure many of the world’s most serious problems—from global warming to pandemics Solving the world’s biggest problems—from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance—requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. For carbon emissions and other environmental damage, this means ensuring that those responsible pay their full costs rather than continuing to pass them along to others, including future generations. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize–winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions. In a discussion that ranges from the history of the environmental movement to the Green New Deal, Nordhaus explains how the spirit of green thinking provides a compelling and hopeful new perspective on modern life. At the heart of green thinking is a recognition that the globalized world is shaped not by isolated individuals but rather by innumerable interactions inside and outside the economy. He shows how rethinking economic efficiency, sustainability, politics, profits, taxes, individual ethics, corporate social responsibility, finance, and more would improve the effectiveness and equity of our society. And he offers specific solutions—on how to price carbon, how to pursue low-carbon technologies, how to design an efficient tax system, and how to foster international cooperation through climate clubs. The result is a groundbreaking new vision of how we can have our environment and our economy too.

Environment and Society

Environment and Society PDF Author: Christopher Schlottmann
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479805327
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Environment and Society connects the core themes of environmental studies to the urgent issues and debates of the twenty-first century. In an era marked by climate change, rapid urbanization, and resource scarcity, environmental studies has emerged as a crucial arena of study. Assembling canonical and contemporary texts, this volume presents a systematic survey of concepts and issues central to the environment in society, such as: social mobilization on behalf of environmental objectives; the relationships between human population, economic growth and stresses on the planet’s natural resources; debates about the relative effects of collective and individual action; and unequal distribution of the social costs of environmental degradation. Organized around key themes, with each section featuring questions for debate and suggestions for further reading, the book introduces students to the history of environmental studies, and demonstrates how the field’s interdisciplinary approach uniquely engages the essential issues of the present.

Designing the Green Economy

Designing the Green Economy PDF Author: Brian Milani
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742576752
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Designing the Green Economy explores realistically, and in detail, the worldOs enormous potential for human and ecological regeneration. It also explains why this potential has been suppressed or distorted by industrial institutions_thus creating economic crisis, growing inequality, and environmental destruction. The first half of the book looks at the challenge ecological change has represented to capitalism, as well as capitalismOs repressive response: the waste economy, as expressed in postwar Fordist capitalism and current trends toward a globalized economy. But today Othe great divideO between waste and green economies can be narrowed by emerging legal, institutional, and market approaches to production and environmentalism. In Part II, Milani explores the practical and theoretical implications of fully unleashing these new productive forces to create community-based ecological economies. Milani argues that neither sustainability, social justice nor economic stability can be secured without comprehensive redesign of the economy along ecological principles. It looks at key sectors of the economy_including manufacturing, energy, and money and finance_to illustrate how this redesign can, and is, taking place through both incremental grassroots initiatives and transformative politics.

Energy Efficiency

Energy Efficiency PDF Author: Ming Yang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1447166663
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
This book discusses how energy efficiency benefits the global environment, national energy security, local pollution mitigation, natural resource conservation, and utility bill reduction. In addition, this book provides many hands-on skills and knowledge to identify and develop energy efficiency projects. The literature review shows that energy efficiency has become the first fuel in the world energy supply. With empirical analyses, this book indicates that without continued investment in energy efficiency, neither China nor the U.S. could achieve their carbon emission reduction targets that were announced on November 13, 2014 during the Beijing 2014 APEC meeting. The authors argue that energy efficiency will become the first tool to mitigate climate change. These include (1) identifying energy efficiency barriers, (2) developing energy policies, (3) investing in energy efficient technologies, (4) undertaking project cost-effectiveness analysis, (5) de-risking and financing energy efficiency projects; (6) developing and managing energy service companies, and (7) promoting urban transport efficiency. Two case studies in energy efficiency improvement in electrical motors and industrial boilers are also presented. This book is written for college and university students, practitioners, researchers, consultants, project developers, and policy makers who want to dedicate their professional careers in global energy efficiency improvement, climate change mitigation, local clean air initiatives, and energy bill reduction.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby PDF Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 338709275X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.