Oil pulses through our daily lives. It is the plastic we touch, the food we eat, and the way we move. Oil politics in the twentieth century was about the management of abundance, state power, and market growth. The legacy of this age of plenty includes declining conventional oil reserves, volatile prices, climate change, and enduring poverty in many oil-rich countries. The politics of oil are now at a turning point, and its future will not be like its past.In this in-depth primer t...

The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology presents a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the rapidly growing field of political ecology. Located at the intersection of geography, anthropology, sociology, and environmental history, political ecology is one of the most vibrant and conceptually diverse fields of inquiry into nature-society relations within the social sciences. The Handbook serves as an essential guide to this rapidly evolving intellectual landscape. With...

Energy and Society is the first major text to provide an extensive critical treatment of energy issues informed by recent research on energy in the social sciences. Written in an engaging and accessible style it draws new thinking on uneven development, consumption, vulnerability and transition together to illustrate the social significance of energy systems in the global North and South. The book features case studies, examples, discussion questions, activities, recommended reading and mo...

**Discover the bestselling book that reveals how mainstream economics has led us astray - and what we can do to fix it, now with a new afterword.*The Sunday Times Bestseller**A Financial Times and Forbes Book of the Year**Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award***Relentless financial crises. Extreme inequalities in wealth. Remorseless pressure on the environment. Anyone can see that our economic system is broken.But can it be fix...

"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it."—Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of AmericaSince it first appeared, this book has achieved a classic status. Reprinted many times since its publication, it remains the only work that looks in detail at the political issues posed by global warming. This new edition has been thoroughly updated and provides a state-of-the...

We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress are the ideas and institutions that are supposed to be helping us? Five Times Faster is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, who has spent ten years at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy. In our ...

Every day, we are presented with a range of “sustainable” products and activities—from “green” cleaning supplies to carbon offsets—but with so much labeled as “sustainable,” the term has become essentially sustainababble, at best indicating a practice or product slightly less damaging than the conventional alternative. Is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure sustainability? If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best pr...

Concern about humanity's impact on the planet has never been greater, but what are the drivers of environmental change? This wide-ranging introductory textbook outlines the competing explanations of why environmental problems occur and examines the different political approaches taken to address them. Adopting a case study approach, Hayley Stevenson enables students to gain a detailed understanding of how theories and concepts are applied in practice. Diverse perspectives on a variety of c...

This book by two leading scholars offers the first systematic analysis of the relationship between globalization and the environment from the early Modern period to the present. Peter Christoff and Robyn Eckersley develop a broad conceptual framework for understanding the globalization of environmental problems and the highly uneven, often faltering, international political response. The authors develop linkages between economic globalization and environmental degradation and explore a ran...

An Introduction to Sustainability provides students with a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and ideas which are encompassed within the growing field of sustainability.The fully updated second edition, including new figures and images, teases out the diverse but intersecting domains of sustainability and emphasises strategies for action. Aimed at those studying the subject for the first time, it is unique in giving students from different disciplinary backgrounds ...

* Further substantial climate change is unavoidable and the risks to the natural world, the economy and our everyday lives are immense. The way we live in the next thirty years - how we invest, use energy, organise transport and treat forests - will determine whether these risks become realities.* Although poor countries - the least responsible for climate change - will be hit earliest and hardest, all countries must adapt to the effects: hurricane...

'There are few scholarly books about climate change that take the issue of the distribution of its costs, and of the costs and benefits of its mitigation, as seriously as their absolute value. This is probably the best of those books that I have come across. Rigorously rooted in Gough's earlier work on theories of human need, the book is relentless in its pursuit of equity in respect of climate change and responses to it. Not everyone will agree with all its conclusions - for example t...