313 books match the query 'Environmental policy' and 16 start with b

cover of Back to Earth: Tomorrow's Environmentalism

Back to Earth

Tomorrow's Environmentalism

Anthony Weston

Temple University Press, 1994

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cover of Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age

Bad Environmentalism

Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age

Nicole Seymour

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

Traces a tradition of ironic and irreverent environmentalism, asking us to rethink the movement’s reputation for gloom and doom

Activists today strive to educate the public about climate change, but sociologists have found that the more we know about alarming issues, the less likely we are to act. Meanwhile, environmentalists have acquired a reputation as gloom-and-doom killjoys. Bad Environmentalism identifies contemporary texts that respond to these absurdities and ironies through absurdity and irony—as well as camp, frivolity, irreverence, perversity, and playfulness. 

Nicole Seymour develops the concept of “bad environmentalism”: cultural thought that employs dissident affects and sensibilities to reflect critically on our current moment and on mainstream environmental activism. From the television show Wildboyz to the short film series Green Porno, Seymour shows that this tradition of thought is widespread—spanning animation, documentary, fiction film, performance art, poetry, prose fiction, social media, and stand-up comedy since at least 1975. Seymour argues that these texts reject self-righteousness and sentimentality, undercutting public negativity toward activism and questioning basic environmentalist assumptions: that love and reverence are required for ethical relationships with the nonhuman and that knowledge is key to addressing problems like climate change.

Funny and original, Bad Environmentalism champions the practice of alternative green politics. From drag performance to Indigenous comedy, Seymour expands our understanding of how environmental art and activism can be pleasurable, even in a time of undeniable crisis.

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cover of Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A History of Our Future

Beginning to End the Climate Crisis

A History of Our Future

Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning

Brandeis University Press, 2023

There is no planet B. Activists share how we must inform and organize ourselves to save the future.
 
“Act as though your house is on fire. Because it is.” Following Greta Thunberg, millions of young climate activists have been taking to the streets around the globe as part of the Fridays For Future movement. They demand that we “unite behind the science,” as, for too long, climate scientists have been ringing the alarm bells about rising temperatures, tipping points, and the devastating consequences of extreme weather—but politicians do nothing.
 
So how do you begin to end the climate crisis? Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning begin by telling stories. Neubauer cofounded the youth climate activist group in Germany and has become its most prominent voice. In this book she and Repenning weave in personal accounts of their evolution as climate activists with a thorough analysis of how climate change impacts their generation, and what every one of us can and must do about it. The young and old in the United States and around the world can learn valuable lessons from their European counterparts.
 
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cover of Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy

Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy

Edited by Carlo Carraro and Gilbert E. Metcalf

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Most people would agree that it makes sense to tax a company that pollutes in a way that directly reflects the amount of environmental and social damage it has done. Yet in practice, such taxes are fraught with difficulty and have far-reaching implications. A company facing a new tax may lay off workers, for example, exacerbating an unemployment problem. This volume focuses on such external issues and examines in detail the trade-offs involved in designing policies to deal with environmental problems. Reflecting the broad nature of the subject, the contributors include leading economists in the areas of public finance, industrial organization, and trade theory, as well as environmental economists. Integrating both theoretical and empirical methods, they examine environmental policy design as it relates to location decisions, compliance costs, administrative costs, effects on research and development, and international factor movements. Shedding light on an extraordinarily complex and important topic, this collection will be of interest to all those involved in designing effective environmental policy.
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cover of Betting the Earth: How We Can Still Win the Biggest Gamble of all Time

Betting the Earth

How We Can Still Win the Biggest Gamble of all Time

John Charles Kunich

Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2010

"Betting the Earth explores the uneasy parallels between our contemporary environmental challenges and our national fascination with gambling. How much should we bet on preserving biodiversity? Should we bet more on responding to climate change? where should we place each bet: on federal or state laws, on acquiring public or private preserves, on preventing environmental harms or saving places of special environmental significance? Like it or not, we must make such choices every day, and Betting the Earth helps us to understand how we do so."

Professor John Copeland Nagle, John N. Matthews Chair in Law, University of Notre Dame Law School

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cover of Beyond Sputnik: U.S. Science Policy in the Twenty-First Century

Beyond Sputnik

U.S. Science Policy in the Twenty-First Century

Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick

University of Michigan Press, 2008

Science and technology are responsible for almost every advance in our modern quality of life. Yet science isn't just about laboratories, telescopes and particle accelerators. Public policy exerts a huge impact on how the scientific community conducts its work. Beyond Sputnik is a comprehensive survey of the field for use as an introductory textbook in courses and a reference guide for legislators, scientists, journalists, and advocates seeking to understand the science policy-making process. Detailed case studies---on topics from cloning and stem cell research to homeland security and science education---offer readers the opportunity to study real instances of policymaking at work. Authors and experts Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick propose practical ways to implement sound public policy in science and technology and highlight how these policies will guide the results of scientific discovery for years to come.

Homer A. Neal is the Samuel A. Goudsmit Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Interim President Emeritus, and Vice President for Research Emeritus at the University of Michigan, and is a former member of the U.S. National Science Board.

Tobin L. Smith is Associate Vice President for Federal Relations at the Association of American Universities. He was formerly Assistant Director of the University of Michigan and MIT Washington, DC, offices.

Jennifer B. McCormick is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Ethics in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Mayo College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and is the Associate Director of the Research Ethics Resource, part of the Mayo Clinic's NIH Clinical Translational Science Award research programs.

GO BEYOND SPUTNIK ONLINE--Visit www.science-policy.net for the latest news, teaching resources, learning guides, and internship opportunities in the 21st-Century field of science policy.

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cover of Beyond Sun and Sand: Caribbean Environmentalisms

Beyond Sun and Sand

Caribbean Environmentalisms

Edited by Sherrie L. Baver and Barbara Deutsch Lynch

Rutgers University Press, 2006

Filtered through the lens of the North American and European media, the Caribbean appears to be a series of idyllic landscapes-sanctuaries designed for sailing, diving, and basking in the sun on endless white sandy beaches. Conservation literature paints a similarly enticing portrait, describing the region as a habitat for endangered coral reefs and their denizens, parrots, butterflies, turtles, snails, and a myriad of plant species.

In both versions, the image of the exotic landscape overshadows the rich island cultures that are both linguistically and politically diverse, but trapped in a global economy that offers few options for development. Popular depictions also overlook the reality that the region is fraught with environmental problems, including water and air pollution, solid waste mismanagement, destruction of ecosystems, deforestation, and the transition from agriculture to ranching.

Bringing together ten essays by social scientists and activists, Beyond Sun and Sand provides the most comprehensive exploration to date of the range of environmental issues facing the region and the social movements that have developed to deal with them. The authors consider the role that global and regional political economies play in this process and provide valuable insight into Caribbean environmentalism. Many of the essays by prominent Caribbean analysts are made available for the first time in English.
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cover of Beyond Wolves: The Politics Of Wolf Recovery And Management

Beyond Wolves

The Politics Of Wolf Recovery And Management

Martin A. Nie

University of Minnesota Press, 2003

Looks at the next stages of the controversy over wolf recovery

Since 1995, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released Canadian gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park as part of its wolf recovery program, reintroduction has been widely challenged in public forums and sensationalized in the media. This conflict has pitted western ranchers and property rights activists against environmental groups, highlighting starkly contrasting political perspectives. In this informed account, Martin A. Nie examines not only the future of wolf recovery but also the issues that will define debates around the politics of wildlife management, animal rights issues, and other flash points. The result is a revelatory look at the way the democratic process works when the subject is an environmental hot-button issue.

Examining the wolf recovery program from a policy-making perspective, Nie looks at programs in Alaska, the Lake Superior region, the Northern Rockies, the Southwest, and New England and upstate New York. He analyzes the social, political, and cultural backdrop in the areas in which wolves have been reintroduced and explores such contentious issues as the role of science in public policy; the struggle between wilderness protection, resource management, and private property; and the use of stakeholders in environmental conflicts.For Nie, the debate over wolf recovery is above all a value-based political conflict that should take place in a more inclusive, participatory, and representative democratic arena. Wolves, Nie writes, are an important indicator species both biologically and politically, and in Beyond Wolves, he tells an important story of wolves and people, place and politics, that resonates far beyond the fate of America’s most misunderstood inhabitants.
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cover of Beyond the European Left: Ideology and Political Action in the Belgian Ecology

Beyond the European Left

Ideology and Political Action in the Belgian Ecology

Herbert Kitschelt and Staf Hellemans

Duke University Press, 1990

Drawing on recent research on the internal politics of the Belgian ecology parties, Agalev and Ecolo, this work demonstrates how political careers in contemporary social movements lead to activism in left-libertarian politics and influence political ideology. Beyond the European Left is the first comprehensive survey of ecology parties in Europe that presents detailed empirical information on the careers, organizational practices, and political beliefs of the activists involved.
The authors employ a new research methodology—surveying party militants—that is better adapted to the study of micropolitics than are expert interviews. Herbert Kitschelt and Staf Hallemans show that European Green party activists express an egalitarian and libertarian vision of a desirable social order that builds on, but radically transforms, ideas of the traditional socialist European left. The authors then examine the debates and disagreements among militants on political objectives and the consequences of conflicting views for party organization and strategy. Their findings illuminate the unique dynamics of left-libertarian politics in a number of Western European countries with obvious relevance to current developments in Eastern Europe.
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cover of Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics

Bombs in the Backyard

Atomic Testing and American Politics

A. Constandina Titus

University of Nevada Press, 2001

On January 27, 1951, the first atomic weapon was detonated over a section of desert known as Frenchman Flat in southern Nevada, providing dramatic evidence of the Nevada Test Site's beginnings. Fifty years later, author A. Costandina Titus reviews contemporary nuclear policy issues concerning the continued viability of that site for weapons testing. Titus has updated her now-classic study of atomic testing with fifteen years of political and cultural history, from the mid-1980s Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear standoff to the authorization of the Nevada Test Site Research Center, a Desert Research Institute facility scheduled to open in 2001. In this second edition of Bombs in the Backyard, Titus deftly covers the post-Cold War transformation of American atomic policy as well as our overarching cultural interest in all matters atomic, making this a must-read for anyone interested in atomic policy and politics.
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cover of Border Air: A History of US-Mexico Environmental Cooperation

Border Air

A History of US-Mexico Environmental Cooperation

Laura M. Uribarri

University of Texas Press, 0

Tracing a century of pollution and transnational collaboration in the Paso del Norte air basin.

The air knows no borders, which makes atmospheric pollution a devilish legal and environmental challenge. The problem is especially dangerous in the Paso del Norte, where the industry and urbanization of Juárez-El Paso stretch across the international boundary, and surrounding mountains trap airborne pollutants. Laura Uribarri traces the nineteenth- and twentieth-century transformations of the region, uncovering the sources of pollution and analyzing transnational efforts to regulate and improve the air.

Border Air shows how a favorable location, rail expansion, and numerous trade and labor agreements made Juárez-El Paso a global manufacturing hub, leading to unfettered growth and declining air quality. By the mid-1990s, El Paso and Juárez ranked among the most polluted cities on the continent. Environmental treaties crafted in Washington and Mexico City made little difference. But fronterizos themselves had an impact. Uribarri focuses on the Paso del Norte Air Quality Task Force, a citizen group that pioneered successful mitigation projects such as working with emitters to design cleaner production methods without disrupting workers’ livelihoods. This history shows what can be accomplished at the grassroots and offers lessons on how border communities can collaborate to address complex environmental problems.

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cover of Border Water: The Politics of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945–2015

Border Water

The Politics of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945–2015

Stephen Paul Mumme

University of Arizona Press, 2023

The international boundary between the United States and Mexico spans more than 1,900 miles. Along much of this international border, water is what separates one country from the other. Border Water provides a historical account of the development of governance related to transboundary and border water resources between the United States and Mexico in the last seventy years.

This work examines the phases and pivot points in the development of U.S.-Mexico border water resources and reviews the theoretical approaches and explanation that impart a better understanding of these events. Author Stephen Paul Mumme, a leading expert in water policy and border studies, describes three important periods in the chronology of transboundary water management. First, Mumme examines the 1944 Water Treaty, the establishment of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) in 1945, and early transborder politics between the two governments. Next, he describes the early 1970s and the rise of environmentalism. In this period, pollution and salinization of the Colorado River Delta come into focus. Mumme shows how new actors, now including environmentalists and municipalities, broadened and strengthened the treaty’s applications in transboundary water management. The third period of transborder interaction described covers the opening and restricting of borders due to NAFTA and then 9/11.

Border Water places transboundary water management in the frame of the larger binational relationship, offering a comprehensive history of transnational water management between the United States and Mexico. As we move into the next century of transnational water management, this important work offers critical insights into lessons learned and charts a path for the future.

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cover of Bridging a Great Divide: The Battle for the Columbia River Gorge

Bridging a Great Divide

The Battle for the Columbia River Gorge

Kathie Durbin

Oregon State University Press, 2013

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act, setting into motion one of the great land-use experiments of modern times. The act struck a compromise between protection for one of the West’s most stunning landscapes—the majestic Gorge carved by Ice Age floods, which today divides Washington and Oregon—and encouragement of compatible economic development in communities on both sides of the river.

In Bridging a Great Divide, award-winning environmental journalist Kathie Durbin draws on interviews, correspondence, and extensive research to tell the story of the major shifts in the Gorge since the Act’s passage. Sweeping change has altered the Gorge’s landscape: upscale tourism and outdoor recreation, gentrification, the end of logging in national forests, the closing of aluminum plants, wind farms, and a population explosion in the metropolitan area to its west. Yet, to the casual observer, the Gorge looks much the same as it did twenty-five years ago.

How can we measure the success of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act? In this insightful and revealing history, Durbin suggests that the answer depends on who you are: a small business owner, an environmental watchdog group, a chamber of commerce. The story of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is the story of the Pacific Northwest in microcosm, as the region shifts from a natural-resource-based economy to one based on recreation, technology, and quality of life.
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cover of Building Something Better: Environmental Crises and the Promise of Community Change

Building Something Better

Environmental Crises and the Promise of Community Change

Stephanie A. Malin

Rutgers University Press, 2022

As the turmoil of interlinked crises unfolds across the world—from climate change to growing inequality to the rise of authoritarian governments—social scientists examine what is happening and why. Can communities devise alternatives to the systems that are doing so much harm to the planet and people?
 
Sociologists Stephanie A. Malin and Meghan Elizbeth Kallman offer a clear, accessible volume that demonstrates the ways that communities adapt in the face of crises and explains that sociology can help us understand how and why they do this challenging work. Tackling neoliberalism head-on, these communities are making big changes by crafting distributive and regenerative systems that depart from capitalist approaches. The vivid case studies presented range from activist water protectors to hemp farmers to renewable energy cooperatives led by Indigenous peoples and nations. Alongside these studies, Malin and Kallman present incisive critiques of colonialism, extractive capitalism, and neoliberalism, while demonstrating how sociology’s own disciplinary traditions have been complicit with those ideologies—and must expand beyond them.
 
Showing that it is possible to challenge social inequality and environmental degradation by refusing to continue business-as-usual, Building Something Better offers both a call to action and a dose of hope in a time of crises.
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cover of Building a Green Economy: Perspectives from Ecological Economics

Building a Green Economy

Perspectives from Ecological Economics

Robert B. Richardson

Michigan State University Press, 2013

The first decade of the twenty-first century has been characterized by a growing global awareness of the tremendous strains that human economic activity place on natural resources and the environment. As the world’s population increases, so does the demand for energy, food, and other resources, which adds to existing stresses on ecosystems, with potentially disastrous consequences. Humanity is at a crossroads in our pathway to future prosperity, and our next steps will impact our long-term sustainability immensely. In this timely volume, leading ecological economics scholars offer a variety of perspectives on building a green economy. Grounded in a critique of conventional thinking about unrestrained economic expansion and the costs of environmental degradation, this book presents a roadmap for an economy that prioritizes human welfare over consumerism and growth. As the authors represented here demonstrate, the objective of ecological economics is to address contemporary problems and achieve long-term socioeconomic well-being without undermining the capacity of the ecosphere. The volume is organized around three sections: “Perspectives on a Green Economy,” “Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” and “Applications and Practice.” A rich resource in its own right, Building a Green Economy contains the most innovative thinking in ecological economics at a critical time in the reexamination of the human relationship with the natural world.

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cover of Bureaucracy vs. Environment: The Environmental Costs of Bureaucratic Governance

Bureaucracy vs. Environment

The Environmental Costs of Bureaucratic Governance

John Baden and Richard L. Stroup, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 1981

Bureaucracy vs. Environment: The Environmental Costs of Bureaucratic Governance explores a provocative and under-examined reality: that the very institutions created to protect and manage America’s natural resources often become the source of environmental harm. Edited by John Baden and Richard L. Stroup and featuring contributions from prominent economists and policy analysts, this volume challenges the widely held assumption that bureaucratic governance and collective management are inherently more environmentally responsible than private enterprise.Drawing on frameworks such as property rights theory and public choice economics, the book demonstrates that when authority to manage resources is separated from responsibility for the consequences, self-interest and perverse incentives drive public decision-makers—just as they do in the private sector. Bureaucrats, operating outside the discipline of market pressures and profits, may consistently expand their agencies’ activities for personal or institutional gain, often at the expense of both taxpayers and the environment. Case studies on water management, public lands grazing, and energy policy show how these distorted incentives can lead to overexploitation, inefficiency, and environmental degradation.The collection not only critiques misplaced trust in bureaucratic benevolence but also highlights a surprising potential alliance between environmentalists and advocates of market-based solutions. The contributors argue that genuine environmental stewardship requires institutional reforms that link authority with responsibility, foster accountability, and harness incentives for efficiency.Both a warning and a call to action, Bureaucracy vs. Environment provides vital analytical tools for policymakers, scholars, and citizens interested in how to realistically align public institutions with the goals of environmental sustainability and economic sense. The book stands as a seminal contribution to the ongoing debate over the best ways to protect natural resources in the face of complex political and economic pressures.
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