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This work challenges the spiritualism prevalent in the modern Green movement, pointing toward a method that offers more lasting sustainable solutions to the ecological crisis. Marx's writings on agriculture, soil ecology, philosophical naturalism and evolutionary theory are outlined.

In this systematic account of aesthetics in relation to the natural environment, Emily Brady provides critical understanding of what aesthetic appreciation of nature involves and develops her own distinctive aesthetic theory.

This is a reissue of an influential work with acute observations on the English urban landscape. "Townscape" is the art of giving visual coherence and organization to the jumble of buildings, streets and space that make up the urban environment.

From its earliest origins to the present day, Oliver Rackham describes the endlessly changing character of Britain's countryside.

aeo A lively, accessible introduction to the history of nature and the environment. aeo An outline of the major understandings of a naturea in the western world since classical times from nature as higher authority to its more recent meaning of a threatened form of life.

Western industrialism has achieved miracles, promoting unprecedented levels of prosperity and raising millions around the world out of poverty. Industrial capitalism is now diffusing throughout the East. Japan, the four Tigers (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong) and China are all incorporating themselves into the global industrial world. India, Brazil and many others are expected to follow the same course. But as China, India and other industrializing giants grow, they confront an inconvenient truth: they cannot rely on the Western industrial development model of fossil-fueled energy systems (resource throughput rather than circularity and generic finance) because these methods cause extreme spoliation of the environment and raise energy security, resource security and global warming concerns.By necessity, a new approach to environmentally conscious development is already emerging in the East, with China leading the way in building a green industry at scale. As opposed to Western zero-growth advocates and free-market environmentalists, it can be argued that a more sustainable capitalism is being developed in China - to counter black developmental model based on coal. This new 'green growth' model of development, being perfected in China and now being emulated in India, Brazil, South Africa (and eventually by industrializing countries elsewhere), as well as by advanced industrial countries such as Germany, looks to become the new norm in the twenty-first century. Its core advantages are the energy security and resource security that are generated.The British scientist James Lovelock has done the world an enormous service by formulating the theory of a 'living earth' named Gaia, where life self-regulates itself and the planet by keeping the atmospheric environment more or less constant, and likewise the environment of the oceans. In China's Green Shift, Global Green Shift, Mathews proposes a way in which Gaia (a product of the processes of the earth) can be complemented by Ceres (our own creation of a renewable energy and circular economy system). Can these two concepts of how the earth works, represented by two powerful deities, be reconciled? While Lovelock is pessimistic, asserting that Gaia will look after herself and that if we survive at all it is likely to be as a greatly diminished industrial civilization, numbering no more than one billion people, Mathews argues in this book why he believes this prognosis to be mistaken. Mathews maintains that the changes that 'we' are driving, as a species, represent a viable way forward. They give us a chance of reconciling economy with ecology - or Ceres with Gaia.

10 years on from the first, groundbreaking, Planet Earth, we use the most incredible advances in technology and scientific discovery to bring you the most exciting and immersive picture of our world's wildlife yet. With over 250 breathtaking photographs and stills from the BBC Natural History Unit's spectacular footage, this is an extraordinary new look at the complex life of some of the most amazing places on Planet Earth. Each chapter reveals an environment some never-before-seen, some astonishingly familiar defined by a unique set of rules required for survival. From the most desolate desert to the depths of the jungle, from blistering heat and freezing cold to perpetual darkness and deadly UV, discover how a whole host of creatures have adapted to life in the most extreme conditions. And how they compete with one another to become the largest, the fastest, the most poisonous, or most devious - all in a bid to survive. Planet Earth II includes the first in-depth look at the urban environment, and the surprising range of behaviours occurring right under our noses, as well as some previously untouched island worlds. Filmed with remarkable 5k and infra-red technology, these are the challenges, the confrontations, and the triumphs of some of the most extraordinary creatures in the natural world, told from their perspective. This is our planet, as you have never seen it before.

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Climate Change is a clear, simple and enlightening introduction to one of the most important issues facing our world today.From HRH The Prince of Wales, environmentalist Tony Juniper and climate scientist Dr Emily Shuckburgh, it explains the history, dangers and challenges of global warming and explores possible solutions with which to reduce its impact. You'll learn about the causes and consequences of climate disruption; heatwaves, floods and other extreme weather; disappearing wildlife; acid oceans; the benefits of limiting warming; sustainable farming, new clean technologies and the circular economy.Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.Other books currently available in the Ladybird Expert series include: Quantum Mechanics EvolutionFor an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

Dirt, soil, call it what you want-it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are-and have long been-using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil-as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

The Ice is a compilation of more about ice than you knew you wanted to know, yet sheer compelling significance holds attention page by page. . . . Pyne conveys a view of Antarctica that interweaves physical science with humanistic inquiry and perception. His audacity as well as his presentation warrant admiration, for the implications of The Ice are vast.New York Times Book Review

Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and been awarded a polar medal and an OBE. He has been an elite soldier, an athlete, a mountaineer, an explorer, a bestselling author and nearly replaced Sean Connery as James Bond.In his autobiography he describes how he led expeditions all over the world and became the first person to travel to both poles on land. He tells of how he discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman and attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole - the expedition that cost him several fingers, and very nearly his life. His most recent challenge was scaling the north face of the Eiger, one of the most awesome mountaineering challenges in the world. Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes OBE, 3rd Baronet, looks back on a life lived at the very limits of human endeavour.'Even readers with a broadly low tolerance for macho heroism will find themselves gripped . . . compelling' - Time Out

Capitalism is killing the planet, and the preservation of a natural environment favorable to human life requires a radical alternative. In this new collection of essays, long time revolutionary and environmental activist Michael Lwy offers a vision of ecosocialist transformation. This vision combines an understanding of the destructive logic of the capitalist system with an appreciation for ongoing struggles, particularly in Latin America.

The safe, clean, and convenient way to compost all your food scraps. Bokashi is Japanese for "e;fermented organic matter."e; Bokashi composting is a safe, quick, and convenient way to compost in your kitchen, garage, or apartment, using a specific group of microorganisms to anaerobically ferment all food waste (including meat and dairy). Since the process takes place in a closed system, insects and smell are controlled, making it ideal for urban or business settings. The process is very fast, with compost usually ready to be integrated into your soil or garden in around two weeks. While bokashi has enjoyed great popularity in many parts of the world, it is still relatively unknown in North America. From scraps to soil, Bokashi Composting is the complete, step-by-step, do-it-yourself guide to this amazing process, with comprehensive information covering: Background-the history, development and scientific basis of the technique Getting started-composting with commercially available products or homemade systems Making your own-system plans and bokashi bran recipes using common materials and locally sourced ingredients Growing-improving your soil with fermented compost and bokashi juice. This essential guide is a must-read for gardeners, homeowners, apartment dwellers, traditional composters, and anyone who wants a safe, simple, and convenient way to keep kitchen waste out of the landfill.

Ann Cleeves' bestselling series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. In this gloriously illustrated companion to her novels, Ann Cleeves takes readers through a year on Shetland, learning about its past, meeting its people, celebrating its festivals and seeing how the flora and fauna of the islands changes with the seasons.An archipelago of more than a hundred islands, it is the one of the most remote places in the United Kingdom. Its fifteen hundred miles of shore mean that wherever one stands, there is a view of the sea. It has sheltered voes and beaches and dramatically exposed cliffs, lush meadows full of wild flowers in the summer and bleak hilltops where only the hardiest of plants will grow. It is a place where traditions are valued and celebrated, but new technologies and ways of working are also embraced. Whether it is the drama of the Viking fire festival of Up Helly Aa in winter, or the piercing blue and hot pink of spring flowers on the clifftops, the long, white nights of midsummer or the fierce gales and high tides of autumn, Shetland is vividly captured in all its bleak and special beauty.

During his three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s and '80s, architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner transformed his city into a global model of the sustainable and livable community. From the pioneering Bus Rapid Transit system to parks designed to catch runoff and reduce flooding and the creation of pedestrian-only zones, Lerner has been the driving force behind a hof innovative urban projects. In more than forty years of work in cities around the globe, Lerner has found that changes to a community don't need to be large-scale and expensive to have a transformative impact-in fact, one block, park, or a single person can have an outsized effect on life in the surrounding city.In Urban Acupuncture, Lerner celebrates these "e;pinpricks"e; of urbanism-projects, people, and initiatives from around the world that ripple through their communities to uplift city life. With meditative and descriptive prose, Lerner brings readers around the world to streets and neighborhoods where urban acupuncture has been practiced best, from the bustling La Boqueria market in Barcelona to the revitalization of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. Through this journey, Lerner invites us to re-examine the true building blocks of vibrant communities-the tree-lined avenues, night vendors, and songs and traditions that connect us to our cities and to one another.Urban Acupuncture is the first of Jaime Lerner's visionary work to be published in English. It is a love letter to the elements that make a street hum with life or a neighborhood feel like home, penned by one of the world's msuccessful advocates for sustainable and livable urbanism.

Landscape ecology has emerged in the past decade as an important and useful tool for land-use planners and landscape architects. While professionals and scholars have begun to incorporate aspects of this new field into their work, there remains a need for a summary of key principles and how they might be applied in design and planning.This volume fills that need. It is a concise handbook that lists and illustrates key principles in the field, presenting specific examples of how the principles can be applied in a range of scales and diverse types of landscapes around the world.Chapters cover: patches -- size, number, and location edges and boundaries corridors and connectivity mosaics summaries of case studies from around the world

Grass Productivity is a prodigiously documented textbook of scientific information concerning every aspect of managem"e;where the cow and grass meet."e; Andre Voisin's "e;rational grazing"e; method maximizes productivity in both grass and cattle operations.

"e;Cities are green"e; is becoming a common refrain. But Calthorpe argues that a more comprehensive understanding of urbanism at the regional scale provides a better platform to address climate change. In this groundbreaking new work, he shows how such regionally scaled urbanism can be combined with green technology to achieve not only needed reductions in carbon emissions but other critical economies and lifestyle benefits. Rather than just providing another checklist of new energy sources or one dimensional land use alternatives, he combines them into comprehensive national growth scenarios for 2050 and documents their potential impacts. In so doing he powerfully demonstrates that it will take an integrated approach of land use transformation, policy changes, and innovative technology to transition to a low carbon economy.To accomplish this Calthorpe synthesizes thirty years of experience, starting with his ground breaking work in sustainable community design in the 1980s following through to his currleadership in transit-oriented design, regional planning, and land use policy. Peter Calthorpe shows us what is possible using real world examples of innovative design strategies and forward-thinking policies that are already changing the way we live.This provocative and engaging work emerges from Calthorpe's belief that, just as the last fifty years produced massive changes in our culture, economy and environment, the next fifty will generate changes of an even more profound nature. The book, enhanced by its superb four-color graphics, is a call to action and a road map for moving forward.

'The book that redefined travel writing' Guardian Bruce Chatwin sets off on a journey through South America in this wistful classic travel book With its unique, roving structure and beautiful descriptions, In Patagonia offers an original take on the age-old adventure tale. Bruce Chatwin s journey to a remote country in search of a strange beast brings along with it a cast of fascinating characters. Their stories delay him on the road, but will have you tearing through to the book s end. It is hard to pin down what makes In Patagonia so unique, but, in the end, it is Chatwin s brilliant personality that makes it what it is His form of travel was not about getting from A to B. It was about internal landscapes Sunday Times

An epic guide to the most intrepid mountaineers in historyWritten in association with the Royal Geographical Society and The Alpine Club, Mountaineers tells the story of the pioneers who first conquered the giddy heights of our planet. Full of great tales of endurance and perseverance, more than 100 of the top mountaineers are profiled, from Hannibal to Hillary. Share in their triumphs and tragedies from the comfort of your living room as journal extracts and never-before-seen photographs and maps from the unpublished archives of the RGS and The Alpine Club help recreate history's greatest ascents.Mountaineers introduces you to a host of intriguing characters, from the Brits who insisted on hauling cases of vintage champagne up to Everest base camp in 1924, to the Italian Duke of the Abruzzi who took 10 iron bedsteads up Alaska's Malaspina glacier. Along the way you'll also find out about the important scientific discoveries that have shaped the course of human history and enjoy accounts of great bravery, fellowship and good humour in the face of adversity, all making Mountaineers a fascinating read for anyone with a spirit of adventure.

Have the world in your hands with these compact, affordable, illustrated natural history guidesFrom malachite to meteorites, leaf through Nature Guide Rocks and Minerals, a beautiful guide profiling the world's specimens. Part of a new generation of compact natural history guides, Rocks and Minerals is packed full of stunning images that reveal intricate details and unique characteristics of the rocks and minerals featured. Expertly written and including examples from across the globe, these guides will give you knowledge of the natural world at your fingertips.With a detailed introduction on identifying and classifying minerals and clear sections on each type of rock and mineral, Nature Guide Rocks and Minerals is the ideal identification guide.

Starting with a simple question - 'Which way am I looking?' - Tristan Gooley blends natural science, myth, folklore and the history of travel to introduce you to the rare and ancient art of finding your way using nature's own sign-posts, from the feel of a rock to the look of the moon.With Tristan's help, you'll learn why some trees grow the way they do and how they can help you find your way in the countryside. You'll discover how it's possible to find North simply by looking at a puddle and how natural signs can be used to navigate on the open ocean and in the heart of the city. Wonderfully detailed and full of fascinating stories, this is a glorious exploration of the rediscovered art of natural navigation.The Natural Navigator Pocket Guide is a user-friendly, practical book and the beautiful illustrations are a useful tool to help travellers on their instrument-free journey.

This new book brings together Doreen Massey's key writings on three areas central to a range of disciplines. In addition, the author reflects on the development of these ideas and outlines her current position on these important issues. The book is organized around the three themes of space, place and gender. It traces the development of ideas about the social nature of space and place and the relation of both to issues of gender and debates within feminism. It is debates in these areas which have been crucial in bringing geography to the centre of social sciences thinking in recent years, and this book includes writings that have been fundamental to that process. Beginning with the economy and social structures of production, it develops a wider notion of spatiality as the product of intersecting social relations. In turn this has lead to conceptions of 'place' as essentially open and hybrid, always provisional and contested. These themes intersect with much current thinking about identity within both feminism and cultural studies. Each of the themes is preceded by a section which reflects on the development of ideas and sets out the context of their production. The introduction assesses the current state of play and argues for the close relationship of new thinking on each of these themes. This book will be of interest to students in geography, social theory, women's studies and cultural studies.

The extraordinary tale of the father of modern geology. Hidden behind velvet curtains above a stairway in a house in London's Piccadilly is an enormous and beautiful hand-coloured map - the first geological map of anywhere in the world. Its maker was a farmer's son named William Smith. Born in 1769 his life was beset by troubles: he was imprisoned for debt, turned out of his home, his work was plagiarised, his wife went insane and the scientific establishment shunned him. It was not until 1829, when a Yorkshire aristocrat recognised his genius, that he was returned to London in triumph: The Map That Changed the World is his story.

One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) sought to explain the geological state of the modern Earth by considering the long-term effects of observable natural phenomena. Written with clarity and a dazzling intellectual passion, it is both a seminal work of modern geology and a compelling precursor to Darwinism, exploring the evidence for radical changes in climate and geography across the ages and speculating on the progressive development of life. A profound influence on Darwin, Principles of Geology also captured the imagination of contemporaries such as Melville, Emerson, Tennyson and George Eliot, transforming science with its depiction of the powerful forces that shape the natural world.

"e;Not since Darwin has an author so lifted the science of ecology with insight and delightful imagery"e; - Richard Dawkins In this book a master scientist tells the great story of how life on earth evolved. E.O. Wilson eloquently describes how the species of the world became diverse, and why the threat to this diversity today is beyond the scope of anything we have known before. In an extensive new foreword for this edition, Professor Wilson addresses the explosion of the field of conservation biology and takes a clear-eyed look at the work still to be done.

Simon Winchester's brilliant chronicle of the destruction of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 charts the birth of our modern world. He tells the story of the unrecognized genius who beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution; of Samuel Morse, his code and how rubber allowed the world to talk; of Alfred Wegener, the crack-pot German explorer and father of geology. In breathtaking detail he describes how one island and its inhabitants were blasted out of existence and how colonial society was turned upside-down in a cataclysm whose echoes are still felt to this day.

James Lovelock described his previous book, The Revenge of Gaia, as 'a wake-up call for humanity'. Stark though it was in many respects, in The Vanishing Face of Gaia Lovelock says that even though the weather seems cooler and pollution lessens as the recession bites, the environmental problems we will face in the twenty-first century are even more terrifying than he previously realised. The Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps are melting very quickly, and water shortages and natural disasters are more common occurrences than at any time in recent history. The civilisations of many countries will be jeopardised and life as we know it severely disrupted.Almost all predictions of the likely rate of climate change have been based on estimates which professional observers in the real worldnow show are consistently underestimating the true rate of change. As a global community we continue to be fixated by conventional 'green' ideas which we believe will help save our world. Lovelock argues that only Gaia theory, which he originated over forty years ago, can really help us understand the crisis fully. The root problem is that there are too many people and animals for the Earth to carry. And there is in fact only one possible procedure which might bring a permanent cure for climate change, but we are unlikely to adopt it.'Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves' says Lovelock, so we must adapt as best we can and try to ensure that enough of us survive to allow a more capable species to evolve from us. There could hardly be a more important message for humankind. James Lovelock has been an active and accurate observer of the Earth environment since the 1960s and was the first to find CFCs and other gases accumulating in the air. His Gaia theory provides insight into climate change in the coming century.This is his final warning.