Author: Daniel A. Vallero
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0443186529
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 722
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Book Description
Unraveling Environmental Disasters, Second Edition provides scientific explanations of the most threatening current and future environmental disasters, including an analysis of ways disasters could have been prevented and how to minimize risk of similar disasters in the future. In this new edition the authors provide foundational knowledge on why certain environmental disasters occur and ways of reducing the risk of recurrences. Anyone involved in teaching or working in the main sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology, or in the applied sciences, including engineering, design, planning, and homeland security, should read the book to become acquainted with these very important issues. - Evaluates natural hazards and disasters with an emphasis on lessons learned for better future forecasting - Considers the impact of human systems on environmental disasters, treating disasters as complex systems - Provides detailed predictions, based upon sound science, on why disasters occur - Includes fully updated chapters on food, health, and water - Focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of each disaster - Includes disasters related to climate change and pollution
Author: Robert R. M. Verchick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674047915
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
The author argues for a new perspective on disaster law that is based on the principles of environmental protection. His prescription boils down to three simple commands: Go green, be fair, and keep safe. He argues that government must assume a stronger regulatory role in managing natural infrastructure, distributional fairness, and public risk.--[book cover].
Author: D. Bradford Hunt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226360873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Now considered a dysfunctional mess, Chicago’s public housing projects once had long waiting lists of would-be residents hoping to leave the slums behind. So what went wrong? To answer this complicated question, D. Bradford Hunt traces public housing’s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daley’s Plan for Transformation. In the process, he chronicles the Chicago Housing Authority’s own transformation from the city’s most progressive government agency to its largest slumlord. Challenging explanations that attribute the projects’ decline primarily to racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions—ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts—also paved the road to failure. Moreover, administrators who fully understood the potential drawbacks did not try to halt such deeply flawed projects as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes. These massive high-rise complexes housed unprecedented numbers of children but relatively few adults, engendering disorder that pushed out the working class and, consequently, the rents needed to maintain the buildings. The resulting combination of fiscal crisis, managerial incompetence, and social unrest plunged the CHA into a quagmire from which it is still struggling to emerge. Blueprint for Disaster, then,is an urgent reminder of the havoc poorly conceived policy can wreak on our most vulnerable citizens.
Author: Debarati Guha-Sapir
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199841934
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
This work combines research and empirical evidence on the economic costs of disasters with theoretical approaches. It provides new insights on how to assess and manage the costs and impacts of disaster prevention, mitigation, recovery and adaption, and much more.
Author: Melvin J. Visser
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 9780870138027
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Understanding persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has occupied Melvin J. Visser for over a decade. Visser’s quest to understand contamination in the far north led him to discover that developing countries continue to use POPs. As polluted air travels around the globe, it falls as rain into northern waters. This fact, complicated by trade agreements and abelief that without POPs developing countries would have no agriculture at all, makes Cold, Clear and Deadlya must-read for anyone concerned about the silent but deadly toxic chemicals in our food and water.
Author: Finis Dunaway
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226169901
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
"Over 15 chapters, Dunaway transforms what we know about icons and events. Seeing Green is the first history of ads, films, political posters, and magazine photography in the postwar American environmental movement. From fear of radioactive fallout during the Cold War to anxieties about global warming today, images have helped to produce what Dunaway calls "ecological citizenship, " telling us that "we are all to blame." Dunaway heightens our awareness of how depictions of environmental catastrophes are constructed, manipulated, and fought over" -- Publisher information.
Author: Bas van Bavel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108752381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Author: Joanna Macy
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608687112
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
The challenges we face can be difficult even to think about. Climate change, war, political polarization, economic upheaval, and the dying back of nature together create a planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. This revised, tenth anniversary edition of Active Hope shows us how to strengthen our capacity to face these crises so that we can respond with unexpected resilience and creative power. Drawing on decades of teaching an empowerment approach known as the Work That Reconnects, the authors guide us through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality, and holistic science. This process equips us with tools to face the mess we’re in and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society.
Author: Dennis Mileti
Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
ISBN: 0309261732
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Disasters by Design provides an alternative and sustainable way to view, study, and manage hazards in the United States that would result in disaster-resilient communities, higher environmental quality, inter- and intragenerational equity, economic sustainability, and improved quality of life. This volume provides an overview of what is known about natural hazards, disasters, recovery, and mitigation, how research findings have been translated into policies and programs; and a sustainable hazard mitigation research agenda. Also provided is an examination of past disaster losses and hazards management over the past 20 years, including factorsâ€"demographic, climate, socialâ€"that influence loss. This volume summarizes and sets the stage for the more detailed books in the series.
Author: Samuel Myers
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919661
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 538
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Book Description
Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.
