Structural change in basic industries is usually interpreted as an autonomous economic process. Some authors claim that there is a tendency to use the "end of the era of materials", thus resulting in a decline of the basic industries. Such a process would obviously benefit the environment. Classic economic theories, which deal with structural change in a rather holistic way, correspond to this trend, predicting either a shift towards manufacturing and services or a relocation of old basic ...

Gain the latest knowledge about the colour technology of coatings in a single book - from the fundamentals of colour perception, to colour measurement and colour-order systems, through to the characterisation and practical application of pigments. The authors provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of relevant industrial colour applications and illustrate the different methods of elementary and advanced colorimetry in detail. An excellent introduction for the ambitious expert to th...

Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them too. Combining a global approach with examples from everyday life, Partha Dasgupta describes the lives of two children who live very different lives in different parts of the world: in the Mid-West USA and in Ethiopia. He compares the obstacles facing them, and the processes that shape their lives, their families, and their futures. He shows how economics unco...

An inspiring outline of a new economics system, where justice, human dignity, compassion and reverence for life are the guiding values.The economic system under which we live not only forces the great majority of humankind to live their lives in indignity and poverty but also threatens all forms of life on Earth. Economics Unmasked presents a cogent critique of the dominant economic system, showing that the theoretical constructions of mainstream economics...

Most people remember chemistry from their schooldays as largely incomprehensible, a subject that was fact-rich but understanding-poor, smelly, and so far removed from the real world of events and pleasures that there seemed little point, except for the most introverted, in coming to terms with its grubby concepts, spells, recipes, and rules. Peter Atkins wants to change all that. In this Very Short Introduction to Chemistry, he encourages us to look at chemistry anew, through a ch...

The message that our environment is in peril has filtered from environmental groups to theAmerican consciousness to our shopping carts. Every day, millions of Americans dutifully replace conventional produce with organic, swap Mr. Clean for Seventh Generation, and replace their bottled water with water bottles. Many of us have come to believe that the path to environmental sustainability is paved by shopping green. Although this green consumer movement certainly has many Americans c...

The processes in a single living cell are akin to that of a city teeming with molecular inhabitants that move, communicate, cooperate, and compete. In this Very Short Introduction, Philip Ball explores the role of the molecule in and around us - how, for example, a single fertilized egg can grow into a multi-celled Mozart, what makes spider's silk insoluble in the morning dew, and how this molecular dynamism is being captured in the laboratory, promising to reinvent chemistry as the centra...

Consensus is growing internationally that traditional command-and-control approaches to environmental regulation have borne much of their low-hanging fruit. Yet it is far from clear what should complement or replace them. Regulatory agencies and policy-makers are struggling with a lack of information about regulatory reform, about what works and what doesn't, and about how best to harness the resources of both government and non-government stakeholders. Progress is being impeded unnecessar...

Climate change is arguably the most profound challenge facing the international community in the 21st century. It is as much a challenge for poverty reduction, growth and development as it is a global environmental issue. It could undermine or reverse progress in reducing poverty and attaining the Millenium Development Goals, thereby unraveling many of the development gains of recent decades. It already threatens the livelihoods, health and well-being of millions of people worldwide, and of t...

Mr. Johnson’s thesis can be summarized without much difficulty: after generations of extravagant and reckless industrial expansion, we are clearly entering an age of economic scarcity. While human demands continue to rise, natural resources, especially the non-renewable kind, become harder to find and more expensive to extract, process, transport and distribute. This simple brute fact is the basic cause of inflation, despite the inability of most professional economists to see it. (The di...

Small and medium-sized enterprises can serve as promising cradles for challenging ideas and pioneering initiatives. That is exactly what is required in order to make progress towards sustainable levels and patterns of production and consumption. Of all the continents of the world, Europe is most likely to lead the way towards a more sustainable relation with the environment. Having been the cradle of the industrialized world as we know it today, Europe again will lead the way in the journe...

Striving to explore the subject in as simple a manner as possible, this book helps readers understand the elusive concept of entropy. Innovative aspects of the book include the construction of statistical entropy from desired properties, the derivation of the entropy of classical systems from purely classical assumptions, and a statistical thermodynamics approach to the ideal Fermi and ideal Bose gases. Derivations are worked through step-by-step and important applications are highlighted ...