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Fossil fuel energy is the lifeblood of the modern world. Before the Industrial Revolution, humanity depended on burning wood and candle wax. But with the ability to harness the energy in oil and other fossil fuels, quality of life and capacity for progress increased exponentially. Thanks to incredible innovations in the energy industry, fossil fuels are as promising, safe, and clean an energy resource as has ever existed in history. Yet, highly politicized climate policies are pushing a grand-scale shift to unreliable, impractical, incredibly expensive, and far less efficient energy sources. Today, "fossil fuel" has become such a dirty word that even fossil fuel companies feel compelled to apologize for their products. In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by "green" alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.
Abundant, salutary, problematic - energy makes history. As a symbol, resource and consumer good, it shapes technologies, politics, societies and cultural world views. Focussing on a range of energy types, from electricity and oil to bioenergy, this volume analyzes the social, cultural and political concepts and discourses of energy and their implementation and materialization within technical systems, applications, media representations and consumer practice. By examining and connecting production, mediation and consumption aspects from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, the book offers an innovative view on how energy is imagined, discussed, staged and used.
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Written by a leading scholar, this essential introduction to the history of energy traces one of humans’ most basic ecological interactions: energy exchange. From fire to agriculture, water wheels to electric dynamos, the rise in intensity led humans to define a new “high energy” existence during the twentieth century. Industrialization and consumption increased the connection between energy and economic and political power, clarifying its importance throughout the world wars and into the Cold War. To Have and Have Not reveals a world in which energy supply now defines global standing, starkly revealing the connection between history and...
Why social, racial, and economic justice are just as crucial as science in determining how humans can reverse climate catastrophe We are facing a climate catastrophe. A plethora of studies describe the damage we’ve already done, the droughts, the wildfires, the super-storms, the melting glaciers, the heat waves, and the displaced people fleeing lands that are becoming uninhabitable. Many people understand that we are facing a climate emergency, but may be fuzzy on technical, policy, and social justice aspects. In Is Science Enough?, Aviva Chomsky breaks down the concepts, terminology, and debates for activists, students, and anyone concerned about climate change. She argues that science is...
Are profits and sustainability compatible? This book brings unique perspectives to this key debate by exploring the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The book uses the lens of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet, rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored as the book looks at how they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies. The green entrepreneurs seen ...
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Sustainable Development is a comprehensive exploration of how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are revolutionizing the field of sustainable development. The book examines cutting-edge innovations, practical applications, and potential challenges in harnessing AI and ML to address global sustainability issues. It offers insights into how these technologies can optimize resource management, improve environmental monitoring, enhance decision-making processes, and promote equitable, eco-friendly solutions. This book would be of special interest to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to leverage cutting-edge technology for a more sustainable future.
Even before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. Credit Nation presents a new vision of American economic history, examining how the drive to expand credit shaped property laws and legal institutions in the colonial and founding eras of the republic. Claire Priest describes how the British Parliament enacted laws for the colonies that privileged creditors by defining land and slaves as commodities available to satisfy debts. Colonial governments, in turn, created local legal institutions that enabled people to further leverage their property to obtain credit. Priest shows how loans backed with slaves as property fueled slavery from the colonial era through the Civil War, and how increased access to credit was key to the explosive growth of capitalism in nineteenth-century America.
Brazil is the world's sixth-largest economy, and for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. While the country underwent two decades of unrelenting decline from 1975 to 1994, the economy has rebounded dramatically. How did this nation become an emerging power? Brazil in Transition looks at the factors behind why this particular country has successfully progressed up the economic development ladder. The authors examine the roles of beliefs, leadership, and institutions in the elusive, critical transition to sustainable development. Analyzing the last fifty years of Brazil's history, the authors explain how the nation's beliefs, ...
The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world? In an absorbing narrative that begins with ancient Rome but stretches far beyond it, from Byzantium to China and from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, Scheidel shows how the demise of Rome and the enduring failure of empire-building on European soil launched an economic transformation that changed the continent and ultimately the world.
Presenting critical insights on how economic activity is constrained by the environment’s ability to provide material and energy resources, this timely Research Agenda explores how humanity shapes, and is shaped by, environmental change and sustainability challenges. Chapters highlight how, under these constraints, people may seek to improve their lives and standards of living without undermining the abilities of others to do so now or in the future.