Too Many People?

Too Many People? PDF Author: Ian Angus
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608461408
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented, and popularly written refutation of the idea that "overpopulation" is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions. No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for the layperson and environmental scholars alike. Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, and Simon Butler is co-editor of Green Left Weekly.

Too Many People?

Too Many People? PDF Author: Ian Angus
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608461408
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented, and popularly written refutation of the idea that "overpopulation" is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions. No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for the layperson and environmental scholars alike. Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, and Simon Butler is co-editor of Green Left Weekly.

The Population Bomb

The Population Bomb PDF Author: Paul R. Ehrlich
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781568495873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Too Many Humans

Too Many Humans PDF Author: Morrison Bonpasse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781506176567
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
This "Little Green Book" presents 21 proposals for reducing the size of the human population to 1 billion people, in order to enable humanity to live sustainably on Earth. For centuries and millennia, humans have exploited the inherited riches of the Earth without significant observable permanent harm. The Industrial Revolution, which used non-human, non-animal power sources to accomplish tasks, began in the 18th century in Europe and North America. In the early 19th century, that power increasingly came from the burning of fossil fuels, primarily coal and oil, and that burning created carbon dioxide. The ills of fossil fuel burning were compounded by population growth. Around the beginning of the 19th century, medical and nutritional advances led to the reduction of the death rate and populations began to grow more rapidly. This change can be said to be the beginning of the Demographic Transition, which is defined as the period during which there is a large gap between the declining death rate and the subsequent reduction of the birth rate which typically occurs several generations later. Proposed here are additional stages of the model to show a Sustainable Demographic Transition (SDT) to a human population of 1 billion, which was the population of the Earth around 1800. The question posed in this book is whether the human birth rate can be reduced soon enough to avoid much of the potential further damage to the Earth, and reduced further to enable remediation of previous damage. The year 1800 is chosen in this book as the pivotal year for the Industrial Revolution and Demographic Transition. At that time, the carbon dioxide density in the atmosphere was approximately 300 parts per million. During the subsequent 215 years, the Industrial Revolution accelerated and, together with exponential population growth, has degraded the ability of the Earth to sustain life. Whatever damage to the Earth the Industrial Revolution would have produced for a planet supporting one billion humans, that damage has been multiplied, so far, by the growth of the human population since 1800 to 7.3 billion by mid-2015. If not stopped, the multiplier will continue to grow. Even at the current and seemingly slow annual growth rate of 1.2%, the Earth's population will double to 14.6 billion in 58 years. Such a total is inconceivable, and avoidable. There has been debate about whether the sheer number of people is the problem or whether their unequal or excessive consumption patterns are the problem. The problem with that debate is that it poses a false choice, which need not be resolved here. That is, while there is no question that there is substantial inequality among people of income and wealth and therefore, of Earth-degrading consumption, there is also no question that every human being has an impact on the Earth. Putting it simply, more humans produce more carbon. Further, more humans have produced too many more humans. There are two basic elements of each human's impact on the Earth. First s/he consumes energy and resources, and s/he has the capacity to have children. Whatever the world's consumption patterns, there will be less consumption and Earth degradation when there are fewer people. This truth is a corollary to the message of population stabilization advocates since the 1970s - "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause until we control population growth." The first of the 21 proposals is that all humans be encouraged to have no children, or at most, one child. The alternative to achieving population reduction through voluntary means is to endure catastrophes and collapse and gross reduction of biodiversity.

Empty Planet

Empty Planet PDF Author: Darrell Bricker
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771050895
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
From the authors of the bestselling The Big Shift, a provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.

How Many People Can the Earth Support?

How Many People Can the Earth Support? PDF Author: Joel E. Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393314953
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Discusses how many people the earth can support in terms of economic, physical, and environmental aspects.

The Humans

The Humans PDF Author: Matt Haig
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476727929
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a “silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful” (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel that’s “full of heart” (Entertainment Weekly). When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal. He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there. Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490834
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New Republic In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet" (Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. Identifying actual regions of the planet that can still be reclaimed—such as the California redwood forest, the Amazon River basin, and grasslands of the Serengeti, among others—Wilson puts aside the prevailing pessimism of our times and "speaks with a humane eloquence which calls to us all" (Oliver Sacks).

Factfulness

Factfulness PDF Author: Hans Rosling
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 125012381X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth PDF Author: David Wallace-Wells
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 052557672X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? PDF Author: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633696332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Look around your office. Turn on the TV. Incompetent leadership is everywhere, and there's no denying that most of these leaders are men. In this timely and provocative book, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic asks two powerful questions: Why is it so easy for incompetent men to become leaders? And why is it so hard for competent people--especially competent women--to advance? Marshaling decades of rigorous research, Chamorro-Premuzic points out that although men make up a majority of leaders, they underperform when compared with female leaders. In fact, most organizations equate leadership potential with a handful of destructive personality traits, like overconfidence and narcissism. In other words, these traits may help someone get selected for a leadership role, but they backfire once the person has the job. When competent women--and men who don't fit the stereotype--are unfairly overlooked, we all suffer the consequences. The result is a deeply flawed system that rewards arrogance rather than humility, and loudness rather than wisdom. There is a better way. With clarity and verve, Chamorro-Premuzic shows us what it really takes to lead and how new systems and processes can help us put the right people in charge.