Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

RADICAL MEASURES ARE NECESSARY


If you've ever wondered where we're headed, and what a truly sustainable future might look like-this is the book for you.

- - - -

Today's civilization is like a kid with a credit card, thinking the party will never end. Politically speaking, there are no adults in the room. Perhaps there never were.


Climate change is only the best known of the many environmental crises that are undoing human civilization. The area of land turned into desert or otherwise rendered unfarmable by humans is now larger than the area being farmed-which is itself being destroyed by the very methods used to farm it. These methods depend heavily on fossil fuels every step of the way.


Meanwhile, the ever-more difficult extraction of the ever-rarer resources needed to manufacture the ever-expanding number of products our civilization requires (or desires) to keep itself going cannot be sustained. We live on a finite planet with finite resources-a fact that the world's economies, based as they are on the concept of infinite expansion, refuse to acknowledge.


Recycling bottles, putting up windmills, and driving electric cars isn't going to cut it. We're told it will, because it's comforting to think that small changes will save us. We, all of us, need to make massive changes, now. Nothing less will do.


This book details the challenges we face, and the solutions that may save us.


1143247893
Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

RADICAL MEASURES ARE NECESSARY


If you've ever wondered where we're headed, and what a truly sustainable future might look like-this is the book for you.

- - - -

Today's civilization is like a kid with a credit card, thinking the party will never end. Politically speaking, there are no adults in the room. Perhaps there never were.


Climate change is only the best known of the many environmental crises that are undoing human civilization. The area of land turned into desert or otherwise rendered unfarmable by humans is now larger than the area being farmed-which is itself being destroyed by the very methods used to farm it. These methods depend heavily on fossil fuels every step of the way.


Meanwhile, the ever-more difficult extraction of the ever-rarer resources needed to manufacture the ever-expanding number of products our civilization requires (or desires) to keep itself going cannot be sustained. We live on a finite planet with finite resources-a fact that the world's economies, based as they are on the concept of infinite expansion, refuse to acknowledge.


Recycling bottles, putting up windmills, and driving electric cars isn't going to cut it. We're told it will, because it's comforting to think that small changes will save us. We, all of us, need to make massive changes, now. Nothing less will do.


This book details the challenges we face, and the solutions that may save us.


8.99 In Stock
Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

by Keith Akers
Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

Embracing Limits: A Radical and Necessary Approach to the Environmental Crisis

by Keith Akers

eBook

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Overview

RADICAL MEASURES ARE NECESSARY


If you've ever wondered where we're headed, and what a truly sustainable future might look like-this is the book for you.

- - - -

Today's civilization is like a kid with a credit card, thinking the party will never end. Politically speaking, there are no adults in the room. Perhaps there never were.


Climate change is only the best known of the many environmental crises that are undoing human civilization. The area of land turned into desert or otherwise rendered unfarmable by humans is now larger than the area being farmed-which is itself being destroyed by the very methods used to farm it. These methods depend heavily on fossil fuels every step of the way.


Meanwhile, the ever-more difficult extraction of the ever-rarer resources needed to manufacture the ever-expanding number of products our civilization requires (or desires) to keep itself going cannot be sustained. We live on a finite planet with finite resources-a fact that the world's economies, based as they are on the concept of infinite expansion, refuse to acknowledge.


Recycling bottles, putting up windmills, and driving electric cars isn't going to cut it. We're told it will, because it's comforting to think that small changes will save us. We, all of us, need to make massive changes, now. Nothing less will do.


This book details the challenges we face, and the solutions that may save us.



Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780945528036
Publisher: Earth Animal Trust
Publication date: 04/22/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

Keith Akers is a writer, speaker, and activist. He's also the author of Disciples (Apocryphile Press, 2013), The Lost Religion of Jesus (Lantern Books, 2000), and A Vegetarian Sourcebook (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1983), and numerous articles on the environment and plant-based diets. In his former life as a computer consultant, he worked on projects with the US Departments of State and Education, American Management Systems, Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile (now Verizon), and others. You can reach him at CompassionateSpirit.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. The problem of limits

1. It's not just climate change:

 The growing environmental crisis

2. Understanding limits:

 From empty world to full world 

3. Harder than it looks: 

 Why dealing with limits is so difficult

4. Degrowth:

 Getting to a smaller economy


Part II. The state of the planet 

5. Biology for a small planet: 

 Plants, animals, and humans living together 

6. Are we the next dinosaurs?: 

 Mass extinctions 

7. Hidden dimensions of climate change: 

 Forests, cows, and the atmosphere 

8. The dirt dilemma: 

 The threat of soil erosion 

9. Water and agriculture: 

 Draining out the source of life 

10. Peak oil: 

 Energy and the fate of industrial civilization 

11. Limits and the economy: 

 The failure of markets 

12. Collapse: 

 The failure of politics 


Part III: Moving toward an ecological civilization 

13. Parameters for an ecological civilization: 

 Implementing degrowth

14. Renewables to the rescue?: 

 The limits of renewable energy 

15. Nuclear power to the rescue?: 

 The limits of atomic energy

16. Half-Earth: 

 A place for wilderness on the planet 

17. Food, animals, and disease: 

 The economics of nutrition 

18. How many people can the earth support?: 

 Population, the economy, and the biosphere

19. Facing the economy: 

 The economics of sustainability

20. Facing future generations: 

 A massive demographic transition

21. Resistance, work, and technology: 

 Social justice in a post-consumer world 

22. Why simple living is complicated: 

 Decommoditizing the economy

23. A new Axial Age: 

 The shape and character of massive social change 

24. What do we do now?: 

 Activists and ideals

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