America's Environmental Report Card, second edition

America's Environmental Report Card, second edition PDF Author: Harvey Blatt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262515911
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
An accessible overview of the most important environmental issues facing the United States, with new and updated material. Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in both scientists' and politicians' ability to solve environmental problems. In America's Environmental Report Card, Harvey Blatt sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. Blatt has thoroughly updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting); infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject); the leaching of garbage buried in landfills; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter); controversies over nuclear energy; the increasing pace of climate change; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems—workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, Blatt argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it—in fact, we can't afford not to.

America's Environmental Report Card, second edition

America's Environmental Report Card, second edition PDF Author: Harvey Blatt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262515911
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Get Book Here

Book Description
An accessible overview of the most important environmental issues facing the United States, with new and updated material. Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in both scientists' and politicians' ability to solve environmental problems. In America's Environmental Report Card, Harvey Blatt sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. Blatt has thoroughly updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting); infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject); the leaching of garbage buried in landfills; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter); controversies over nuclear energy; the increasing pace of climate change; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems—workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, Blatt argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it—in fact, we can't afford not to.

Environmental Planning Handbook

Environmental Planning Handbook PDF Author: Tom Daniels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351178415
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 793

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Book Description
Environmental protection is a global issue. But most of the action is happening at the local level. How can communities keep their air clean, their water pure, and their people and property safe from climate and environmental hazards? Newly updated, The Environmental Planning Handbook gives local governments, nonprofits, and citizens the guidance they need to create an action plan they can implement now. It’s essential reading for a post-Katrina, post-Sandy world.

Resources in Education

Resources in Education PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 836

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Book Description


Energy and Empire

Energy and Empire PDF Author: George A. Gonzalez
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438442955
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
What set the United States on the path to developing commercial nuclear energy in the 1950s, and what led to the seeming demise of that industry in the late 1970s? Why, in spite of the depletion of fossil fuels and the obvious dangers of global warming, has the United States moved so slowly toward adopting alternatives? In Energy and Empire, George A. Gonzalez presents a clear and concise argument demonstrating that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals. At the same time, these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation. While researchers have blamed safety concerns and other factors as helping to arrest the expansion of domestic nuclear power plant construction, Gonzalez points to an entirely different set of motivations stemming from the loss of America’s domination/control of the enrichment of nuclear fuel. Once foreign countries could enrich their own fuel, civilian nuclear power ceased to be a lever the United States could use to economically/politically dominate other nations. Instead, it became a major concern relating to nuclear weapons proliferation.

Energy, the Modern State, and the American World System

Energy, the Modern State, and the American World System PDF Author: George A. Gonzalez
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438469829
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In this provocative and original study, George A. Gonzalez argues that the relationship between energy and the state, as well as global politics, has become more and more deeply intertwined, reaching something of a crescendo with the global hegemony of Pax Americana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He presents a clear and concise case for viewing the modern state as the collaborative and affirmative union of capitalism and political authority in a setting where energy resources, be it wind, coal, or oil, provide the basis for the relatively inexpensive projection of political power. More broadly, energy serves as the foundation of the modern economy and, because of this, a prime function of the modern state is ensuring access to cheap, reliable sources to power and grow the economy. Historically, energy is more of a zero-sum resource than capital, markets, labor, or technology, and thus is a greater source of geopolitical tension and violence. Energy politics, and by extension international politics is, moreover, shaped by domestic corporate elites, especially those within the United States.

Energy and the Politics of the North Atlantic

Energy and the Politics of the North Atlantic PDF Author: George A. Gonzalez
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438447965
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Since the onset of the Second Industrial Revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century, energy has become a key axis of politics and international relations, particularly for the United States and Western Europe. In Energy and the Politics of the North Atlantic, George A. Gonzalez documents how the United States—thanks to its copious reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas—was able to assume a dominant position in the world system by the 1920s. This energy/economic imbalance was an important causal factor underlying the eruption of World War II. After 1945, and in the context of the Cold War with communism, the United States used its access to both fossil fuels and nuclear power as a means to defeat the Soviet Union and its allies. Driving American foreign policy, Gonzalez argues, is a domestic system of urban sprawl based on the automobile and the energy reserves necessary to maintain it. The massive consumer demand created by urban sprawl underpins US foreign policy in the Middle East, while concerns over access to energy drive the European Union project.

Environmental Health Perspectives

Environmental Health Perspectives PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental health
Languages : en
Pages : 1252

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ENSO Signal Network Newsletter

ENSO Signal Network Newsletter PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description


America's Children and the Environment

America's Children and the Environment PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428901442
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Book Description


America's Food

America's Food PDF Author: Harvey Blatt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226045X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The complete story of what we don't know, and what we should know, about American food production and its effect on health and the environment. We don't think much about how food gets to our tables, or what had to happen to fill our supermarket's produce section with perfectly round red tomatoes and its meat counter with slabs of beautifully marbled steak. We don't realize that the meat in one fast-food hamburger may come from a thousand different cattle raised in five different countries. In fact, most of us have a fairly abstract understanding of what happens on a farm. In America's Food, Harvey Blatt gives us the specifics. He tells us, for example, that a third of the fruits and vegetables grown are discarded for purely aesthetic reasons; that the artificial fertilizers used to enrich our depleted soil contain poisonous heavy metals; that chickens who stand all day on wire in cages choose feed with pain-killing drugs over feed without them; and that the average American eats his or her body weight in food additives each year. Blatt also asks us to think about the consequences of eating food so far removed from agriculture; why unhealthy food is cheap; why there is an International Federation of Competitive Eating; what we don't want to know about how animals raised for meat live, die, and are butchered; whether people are even designed to be carnivorous; and why there is hunger when food production has increased so dramatically. America's Food describes the production of all types of food in the United States and the environmental and health problems associated with each. After taking us on a tour of the American food system—not only the basic food groups but soil, grain farming, organic food, genetically modified food, food processing, and diet—Blatt reminds us that we aren't powerless. Once we know the facts about food in America, we can change things by the choices we make as consumers, as voters, and as ethical human beings