Challenge of Global Warming examines the causes and effects of global climate change.
The earnest warnings of an impending "solid waste crisis" that permeated the 1980s provided the impetus for the widespread adoption of municipal recycling programs. Since that time America has witnessed a remarkable rise in public participation in recycling activities, including curbside collection, drop-off centers, and commercial and office programs. Recently, however, a backlash against these programs has developed. A vocal group of "anti-recyclers" has appeared, arguing that recycling is not an economically efficient strategy for addressing waste management problems.
In Why Do We Recycle? Frank Ackerman examines the arguments for and against recycling, focusing on the debate surrounding the use of economic mechanisms to determine the value of recycling. Based on previously unpublished research conducted by the Tellus Institute, a nonprofit environmental research group in Boston, Massachusetts, Ackerman presents an alternative view of the theory of market incentives, challenging the notion that setting appropriate prices and allowing unfettered competition will result in the most efficient level of recycling. Among the topics he considers are:
Backed by empirical data and replete with specific examples, the book offers valuable guidance for municipal planners, environmental managers, and policymakers responsible for establishing and implementing recycling programs. It is also an accessible introduction to the subject for faculty, students, and concerned citizens interested in the social, economic, and ethical underpinnings of recycling efforts.
What are the ends of economic activity? According to neoclassical theory, efficient interaction of the profit-maximizing "ideal producer" and the utility-maximizing "ideal consumer" will eventually lead to some sort of social optimum. But is that social optimum the same as human well-being? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals addresses that issue, considering such questions as:
Human Well-Being and Economic Goals brings together more than 75 concise summaries of the most significant literature in the field that consider issues of present and future individual and social welfare, national development, consumption, and equity. Like its predecessors in the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series, it takes a multidisciplinary approach to economic concerns, examining their sociological, philosophical, and psychological aspects and implications as well as their economic underpinnings.
Human Well-Being and Economic Goals provides a powerful introduction to the current and historical writings that examine the concept of human well-being in ways that can help us to set goals for economic activity and judge its success. It is a valuable summary and overview for students, economists, and social scientists concerned with these issues.
Renewable Resource Policy is a comprehensive volume covering the history, laws, and important national policies that affect renewable resource management. The author traces the history of renewable natural resource policy and management in the United States, describes the major federal agencies and their functions, and examines the evolution of the primary resource policy areas.
The book provides valuable insight into the often neglected legal, administrative, and bureaucratic aspect of natural resource management. It is a definitive and essential source of information covering all facets of renewable resource policy that brings together a remarkable range of information in a coherent, integrated form.
This volume explores the issues associated with the complex subject of water quality protection in an assessment of the successes and failures of the Clean Water Act over the past twenty years. In addition to examining traditional indicators of water quality, the authors consider how health concerns of the public have been addressed, and present a detailed examination of the ecological health of our waters. Taken together, these measures present a far more complete and balanced picture than raw water quality data alone.
As well as reviewing past effectiveness, the book includes specific recommendations for the reauthorization of the Act, which is to be considered by Congress in 1995. This balanced and insightful account will surely shape the debate among legislative and policy experts and citizen activists at all levels who are concerned with issues of water quality.
The structure of most virgin forests in the western United States reflects a past disturbance history that includes forest fire. James K. Agee, an expert in the emergent field of fire ecology, analyzes the ecological role of fire in the creation and maintenance of natural western forests, focusing primarily on forest stand development patterns. His discussion of the natural fire environment and the environmental effects of fire is applicable to a wide range of temperate forests.
The Earth's biological, chemical, and physical systems are increasingly shaped by the activities of one species-ours. In our decisions about everything from manufacturing technologies to restaurant menus, the health of the planet has become a product of human choice. Environmentalism, however, has largely failed to adapt to this new reality.
Reconstructing Earth offers seven essays that explore ways of developing a new, more sophisticated approach to the environment that replaces the fantasy of recovering pristine landscapes with a more grounded viewpoint that can foster a better relationship between humans and the planet. Braden Allenby, a lawyer with degrees in both engineering and environmental studies, explains the importance of technological choice, and how that factor is far more significant in shaping our environment (in ways both desirable and not) than environmental controls. Drawing on his varied background and experience in both academia and the corporate world, he describes the emerging field of "earth systems engineering and management," which offers an integrated approach to understanding and managing complex human/natural systems that can serve as a basis for crafting better, more lasting solutions to widespread environmental problems.
Reconstructing Earth not only critiques dysfunctional elements of current environmentalism but establishes a foundation for future environmental management and progress, one built on an understanding of technological evolution and the cultural systems that support modern technologies. Taken together, the essays offer an important means of developing an environmentalism that is robust and realistic enough to address the urgent realities of our planet.
Reconstructing Earth is a thought-provoking new work for anyone concerned with the past or future of environmental thought, including students and teachers of environmental studies, environmental policy, technology policy, technological evolution, or sustainability.
Wild Forests presents a coherent review of the scientific and policy issues surrounding biological diversity in the context of contemporary public forest management. The authors examine past and current practices of forest management and provide a comprehensive overview of known and suspected threats to diversity.
In addition to discussing general ecological principles, the authors evaluate specific approaches to forest management that have been proposed to ameliorate diversity losses. They present one such policy -- the Dominant Use Zoning Model incorporating an integrated network of "Diversity Maintenance Areas" -- and describe their attempts to persuade the U.S. Forest Service to adopt such a policy in Wisconsin.
Drawing on experience in the field, in negotiations, and in court, the authors analyze the ways in which federal agencies are coping with the mandates of conservation biology and suggest reforms that could better address these important issues. Throughout, they argue that wild or unengineered conditions are those that are most likely to foster a return to the species richness that we once enjoyed.
Before the transition in forestry can be made from conventional approaches of the past century to the ecosystem approach of the next, a consensus must be reached on the meaning of "sustainable forestry." Defining Sustainable Forestry presents the results of a national conference convened by The Wilderness Society, American Forests, and the World Resources Institute to help establish a common framework upon which to guide the future development of forestry.
In most communities, land use regulations are based on a limited model that allows for only one end result: the production of more and more suburbia, composed of endless subdivisions and shopping centers, that ultimately covers every bit of countryside with "improvements." Fortunately, sensible alternatives to this approach do exist, and methods of developing land while at the same time conserving natural areas are available.
In Conservation Design for Subdivisions, Randall G. Arendt explores better ways of designing new residential developments than we have typically seen in our communities. He presents a practical handbook for residential developers, site designers, local officials, and landowners that explains how to implement new ideas about land-use planning and environmental protection. Abundantly illustrated with site plans (many of them in color), floor plans, photographs, and renditions of houses and landscapes, it describes a series of simple and straightforward techniques that allows for land-conserving development.
The author proposes a step-by-step approach to conserving natural areas by rearranging density on each development parcel as it is being planned so that only half (or less) of the buildable land is turned into houselots and streets. Homes are built in a less land-consumptive manner that allows the balance of property to be permanently protected and added to an interconnected network of green spaces and green corridors. Included in the volume are model zoning and subdivision ordinance provisions that can help citizens and local officials implement these innovative design ideas.
Growing Greener is an illustrated workbook that presents a new look at designing subdivisions while preserving green space and creating open space networks. Randall Arendt explains how to design residential developments that maximize land conservation without reducing overall building density, thus avoiding the political and legal problems often associated with "down-zoning."
The author offers a three-pronged strategy for shaping growth around a community's special natural and cultural features, demonstrating ways of establishing or modifying the municipal comprehensive plan, zoning ordinance, and subdivision ordinance to include a strong conservation focus. Open space protection becomes the central organizing principle for new residential development, and the open space that is protected is laid out to form an interconnected system of protected lands running across a community.
The book offers:
In addition, Growing Greener includes eleven case studies of actual conservation developments in nine states, and two exercises suitable for group participation. Case studies include: Ringfield, Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania; The Fields of St. Croix, City of Lake Elmo, Minnesota; Prairie Crossing, Grayslake, Illinois; The Meadows at Dolly Gordon Brook, York, Maine; Farmcolony, Standsville, Virginia; The Ranch at Roaring Fork, Carbondale, Colorado; and others.
Growing Greener builds upon and expands the basic ideas presented in Arendt's earlier work Conservation Design for Subdivisions, broadening the scope to include more detailed sections on the comprehensive planning process and information on how zoning ordinances can be updated to incorporate the concept of conservation design. It is the first practical publication to explain in detail how resource-conserving development techniques can be put into practice by municipal officials, residential developers, and site designers, and it offers a simple and straightforward approach to balancing opportunities for developers and conservationists.
Shaped by fire for thousands of years, the forests of the western United States are as adapted to periodic fires as they are to the region's soils and climate. Our widespread practice of ignoring the vital role of fire is costly in both ecological and economic terms, with consequences including the decline of important fire-dependent tree and undergrowth species, increasing density and stagnation of forests, epidemics of insects and diseases, and the high potential for severe wildfires.
Flames in Our Forest explains those problems and presents viable solutions to them. It explores the underlying historical and ecological reasons for the problems associated with our attempts to exclude fire and examines how some of the benefits of natural fire can be restored Chapters consider:
Flames in Our Forest presents a new picture of the role of fire in maintaining forests, describes the options available for restoring the historical effects of fires, and considers the implications of not doing so. It will help readers appreciate the importance of fire in forests and gives a nontechnical overview of the scientific knowledge and tools available for sustaining western forests by mimicking and restoring the effects of natural fire regimes.
The magnificent stands of old-growth trees that characterize the forests of western North America depend on periodic fires for their creation or survival. Deprived of that essential disturbance process eventually they die, leaving an overcrowded growth of smaller trees vulnerable to intense blazes and epidemics of insects and disease.
In Mimicking Nature's Fire, forest ecologists Stephen Arno and Carl Fiedler present practical solutions to the pervasive problem of deteriorating forest conditions in western North America. Advocating a new direction in forest management, they explore the promise of "restoration forestry" -- an ecologically based approach that seeks to establish forest structures in which fire can once again serve as a beneficial process rather than as a destructive aberration.
The book begins with an overview of fundamentals: why traditional forestry tried to exclude fire from forests, why that attempt failed, and why foresters and ecologists now recognize the need for management based on how natural ecosystems operate. Subsequent chapters consider: how fire's historic role provides a foundation for designing restoration strategies; why a hands-off approach will not return forests to their historical condition; how management goals influence the strategies used in restoration forestry.
The second part of the book presents case studies of restoration projects in the western United States and Canada, representing different forest types, different historic fire regimes, and contrasting management goals. For each project, the authors describe why and how the project is being conducted, profile forest conditions, and describe methods of treatment. They also report what has been accomplished, identify obstacles to restoration, and offer their candid but understanding evaluation. Mimicking Nature's Fire concludes by placing restoration forestry in the broad context of conserving forests worldwide and outlining factors critical for its success.
Not by Timber Alone presents the findings of the Harvard Institute for International Development study, commissioned by the International Tropical Timber Organization, that examined the economic value of tropical hardwood forests as productive living systems and the potential for their multiple use management.
Climate change poses a huge threat to the West. The current mountain pine beetle epidemic with over 50 million acres of dying trees in western North America has created a powerful “teachable moment” across the region.
A primary goal of the Forests At Risk symposium was to reframe the nation’s climate change dialogue by making the issue both personal and real to many who may not appreciate its connection to the immediate world around them. While some may have difficulty relating to rising sea levels, falling water tables, imperiled polar bears and melting glaciers in far-off places, they are still shocked by the sight of vast dying forests around their homes. The Forests At Risk symposium explored the statement by Andy Jacobson, a carbon cycle scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, that “this is the kind of feedback we're all very worried about in the carbon cycle ... a warming planet leading to, in this case, an insect outbreak that increases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which can increase warming.”
The overwhelming scientific consensus holds that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind today. We have a soberingly short time in which to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases if we are to preserve our quality of life and environment. In addition to the global urgency, the American West is deeply dependent on the health of its forests, mountains and streams for both its quality of life and its economy. Put simply, if global warming shortens our winters, diminishes our recreation, and unleashes wildfires, diseases and insect epidemics that devastate our forests, the regional damage would be incalculable.
NOW is the perfect time to learn more in this ebook. The Forests At Risk symposium represented the first substantial public forum focused directly on the connection between climate change and forest health in the American West. In the wake of millions of acres of pine beetle devastation across our continent, this is the ideal moment to highlight the climate change connection and focus on the question of what happens when our forests transform from carbon sinks into carbon sources.
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