Environmental Economics

From the man that the New York Times calls “the most important person you’ve never heard of,” renowned Cambridge University economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, comes a paradigm shifting treatise, asking a simple yet profound question—what if we put a value on nature, just as we put a value on...

In Residual Governance, Gabrielle Hecht dives into the wastes of gold and uranium mining in South Africa to explore how communities, experts, and artists fight for infrastructural and environmental justice. Hecht outlines how mining in South Africa is a prime example of what she theorizes as residual governance—the governance of waste and discard, governance that is purposefully inefficient, and governance that treats people and places as waste and wastelands.

This Isn’t Fine is a surprisingly funny and accessible ride through a world on the brink of collapse—and what we can do to survive it. Diving headfirst into finance and energy, culture and ecology, Taylor Ahlstrom transforms the complex systems and histories that underpin our society into relatable narratives, all while mythbusting popular delusions on everything from free-market capitalism to electric cars.

Economic growth is wrecking the planet. It's the engine driving climate change, pollution, and the shrinking of natural spaces. To save the environment, will we have to shrink the economy? Might this lead to a better society, helping us break free from an obsession with material wealth that only benefits the few? Alessio Terzi takes these questions as a starting point for a journey into the socioeconomic, evolutionary, and cultural origins of our need for growth.

A climate catastrophe can be avoided, but only with rapid and sustained investment in companies and projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To the surprise of many, this has already begun. Investors are abandoning fossil-fuel companies and other polluting industries and financing businesses offering climate solutions. Rising risks, evolving social norms, government policies, and technological innovation are all accelerating this movement of capital.

Within every company, there lies a sleeping giant. Companies have long been viewed as either the primary cause of environmental destruction, or as a deep-pocketed funding source for people trying to confront it. But with their access to innovation, new technology, and intellectual firepower, most companies are built to tackle the challenges our planet faces in a way smaller organizations and foundations can’t. What would happen if executives stopped looking at sustainability as a side project for the PR team and saw it instead as a way to benefit the planet and their profits?

Questo è un libro sul surriscaldamento globale, sulla devastazione degli ecosistemi, sull’estinzione di massa ma non sull’Apocalisse. È, anzi, un libro sulla speranza. Possiamo ancora salvare il mondo, possiamo ancora cambiare il nostro destino, possiamo ancora sopravvivere all’antropocene. Dobbiamo però ripensare completamente il nostro modo di produrre e di consumare, abbandonando il paradigma della crescita economica infinita e dell’accumulazione, superando lo sfruttamento selvaggio delle risorse naturali.

Unser Handeln als Konsumenten, Produzenten und Investoren zerstört die natürliche und soziale Umwelt. Ohne es zu merken, töten wir Menschen. Der Ökonom Jakob Thomä legt den Finger in die Wunde: Wie ein Detektiv sammelt er Indizien, besichtigt Tatorte und ermittelt Verdächtige. Seine harte Beweisaufnahme führt ihn zu neuen Antworten auf die Frage, wie die Menschheit zukunftsfähig wird. "Der Kill-Score" erzählt mit einem radikalen Realismus die Geschichte von den tödlichen Folgen unseres Handelns.

Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: Tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources - most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens - one species among millions - become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate?

How Business Can Fight Climate Change captures the perspectives, insights, and ideas of 35 of the world's greatest thought and action leaders, addressing the increasingly alarming global challenges of a world where carbon emissions are out of control. It provides an easy-to-understand guide for every business leader and company on how they can play a more proactive role in addressing this serious threat to the global system—the very system they depend on and thrive in. This is a call to action and a practical blueprint for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions

This book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Prior to the park's creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects. Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland.

Debates continue to rage over the merits or flaws of public land and whether or not it should be privatized - or at least, radically reconfigured in some way. In Defense of Public Lands offers a comprehensive refutation of the market-oriented arguments. Steven Davis passionately advocates that public land ought to remain firmly in the public’s hands. He reviews empirical data and theoretical arguments from biological, economic, and political perspectives in order to build a case for why our public lands are an invaluable and irreplaceable asset for the American people.

Buildings and commerce are vital to this green future, but environmental challenges and market pressures block the path to sustainability. Finally, a practical approach to sustainability has emerged, blending the physical and the digital, the human and the machine. From tech titans to niche unicorns, Practical Sustainability showcases the best of the digital stars and the roles required to mine this 21st-century gold rush, with over $8 trillion of existing commercial real estate that must become more intelligent and sustainable as quickly as possible.

In a world full of pressure to be more, do more and consume more, this practical guidebook will help you find your own version of Enough. Enough is a springboard for self-belief, a healthy work pace and sustainable living, so you can move from striving to thriving. Weaving together ideas, stories and practices, The Art of Enough offers seven ways to ease away from the pull of scarcity and excess, towards flourishing with Enough; finding the balance and boundaries we all need for ourselves and for our world.

Wie wir mit Impact Investing unsere Welt vor dem Untergang bewahren: Wenn es um die Gestaltung der Zukunft geht, stehen sich Nachhaltigkeit und Wirtschaftlichkeit meist gegenüber. Doch die Kompromisse aus diesem Spannungsfeld bringen nur wenig Fortschritt. Zu wenig, um genau zu sein - denn unser Planet befindet sich in einem schlechten Zustand: Die Erderwärmung nimmt stetig zu, Ökosysteme befinden sich an kritischen Kipppunkten und die Menschheit schaut ohnmächtig zu. Zum Glück gibt es ein Konzept, welches neue Blickrichtungen und innovative Problemlösungen ermöglicht: Impact Investing.

Decades before the business world discovered the power of authentic staff engagement, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters cofounder Bob Stiller was busy creating a company with a mission to build an engaged workforce focused on innovation. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters went public, moved to selling wholesale exclusively, invested in Keurig, and became one of the few coffee companies to ever reach $1 billion in sales. In Better and Better, Stiller explains how he did it.

Do you really know what’s for dinner? The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet. Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the foods you love have on the earth. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party...

In this groundbreaking guide to building an ethical economy, Peter Brown and his colleagues at the Quaker Institute for the Future show readers how a system that embodies the core Quaker principle of "right relationship" can deliver a more equitable and sustainable future.

In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Why have some countries prospered, while others have failed? Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in a specific set of policies, but rather in a key "development bargain," whereby a country's elites shift from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future.

From fatal heatwaves and cruel droughts to devastating floods and fast-depleting water tables, climate change is the greatest disruptor of our time - and it can no longer be ignored. For most of us the odds seem overwhelming and solutions out of reach. Yet, in this forcefully argued book, climate-change practitioner, teacher and investor Mridula Ramesh emphasizes that while the situation is grim, it is not without hope.