A framework is concisely presented for the economic analysis of pollution problems and for evaluating proposed solutions. The substantial recent literature on environmental economics is reviewed and related to Ontario environmental policy. Topics include the theory of externalities as an explanation of environmental problems, policy objectives, costs of information and monitoring, and the impact of these costs on control policy selection. Three case studies of specific pollution problems –...

During recent years, environmental debate worldwide has been dominated by climate change, carbon emissions and eff orts to achieve low carbon economies. But a number of academic, technical, political, business and NGO initiatives indicate that there is a new wave of environmental attention focused on a wholly different set of subjects: namely that of natural capital, ecosystem services and biodiversity, or in other words, what Nature does for us. From recycling miracles in the soil to the ...

Two experts explain the consequences for the planet when corporations use sustainability as a business tool.McDonald's promises to use only beef, coffee, fish, chicken, and cooking oil obtained from sustainable sources. Coca-Cola promises to achieve water neutrality. Unilever seeks to achieve 100 percent sustainable agricultural sourcing by 2020. Walmart has pledged to become carbon neutral. Big-brand companies seem to be making commitments that go beyond the usual...

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 ...

This book is an original, accessible, and thought-provoking introduction to the severe and broad-ranging challenges that climate change presents and how societies can respond. It synthesizes and deploys cutting-edge scholarship on the range of social, economic, political, and philosophical issues surrounding climate change. The treatment is introductory, but the book is written "with attitude", for nobody has yet charted in coherent, integrative, and effective fashion a way to move societi...

The author explores the fraught politics of energy transitions in an age of climate change. She does so through an ecological modernisation and corporate social responsibility lens which she contends shapes and underpins sustainability today. Case studies cover climate policy, unconventional gas and renewable energy.

The Behavioral Economics of Climate Change: Adaptation Behaviors, Global Public Goods, Breakthrough Technologies, and Policy-Making shows readers how to understand mitigation strategies emerging from global warming policy discussions and the ways that changing climate conditions can alter these strategies. Through quantitative analyses, case studies and policy examples, this bottom-up approach to climate change economics gives readers the tools to create effective responses to global warmi...

This book is not another warning about the end of the world. It is neither a penitential sermon on environmentalism, nor an appeal to frugality and self-restraint. Far from having exhausted the era of technological, social and democratic progress, we are on the brink of a new stage of industrial modernity: a shift from a fossil-based to a postfossil economy, from the ruthless exploitation of nature toward growth in tandem with it. Decoupling economic growth from environmental consumption i...

Accounting literature has viewed sustainability in terms of social, economic and environmental performances. There have been concerns that the relationship between sustainability, accounting and organizational performance cannot be explained unless we can deduce patterns of administrative behaviour that chronicle management practices.Ecology, Sustainable Development and Accounting argues that, despite the broader social and economic development dimensions of sustainability and the ...

This book is free to download in PDF and EPub formats.Is certification the solution? Can it deliver urgently needed improvements to complex problems like deforestation and the exploitation of people? In this controversial new book, Scott Poynton, founder of The Forest Trust, makes a compelling case for a new approach to social and environmental problems that goes "beyond certification".Certification emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit amidst great hope. Since then, despite a pro...

This book provides a timely and insightful analysis of the expansion of biofuels production and use in recent years. Drawing on interviews with key policy insiders, Ackrill and Kay show how biofuels policies have been motivated by concerns over climate change, energy security and rural development.

The authors examine how far internal policies in the European Union move towards the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 80-95 per cent by 2050, and how or whether the EU's 2050 objective to 'decarbonise' could affect the EU's relations with a number of external energy partners.