An Idea Can Go Extinct

An Idea Can Go Extinct PDF

Author: Bill McKibben

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 0141996862

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In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. An Idea Can Go Extinct is Bill McKibben's impassioned, groundbreaking account of how, by changing the earth's entire atmosphere, the weather and the most basic forces around us, 'we are ending nature.' Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.

Earth Emotions

Earth Emotions PDF

Author: Glenn A. Albrecht

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1501715240

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As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis. Pessimism and distress are overwhelming people the world over. In this maelstrom of emotion, solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home, has become, writes Glenn A. Albrecht, one of the defining emotions of the twenty-first century. Earth Emotions examines our positive and negative Earth emotions. It explains the author's concept of solastalgia and other well-known eco-emotions such as biophilia and topophilia. Albrecht introduces us to the many new words needed to describe the full range of our emotional responses to the emergent state of the world. We need this creation of a hopeful vocabulary of positive emotions, argues Albrecht, so that we can extract ourselves out of environmental desolation and reignite our millennia-old biophilia—love of life—for our home planet. To do so, he proposes a dramatic change from the current human-dominated Anthropocene era to one that will be founded, materially, ethically, politically, and spiritually on the revolution in thinking being delivered by contemporary symbiotic science. Albrecht names this period the Symbiocene. With the current and coming generations, "Generation Symbiocene," Albrecht sees reason for optimism. The battle between the forces of destruction and the forces of creation will be won by Generation Symbiocene, and Earth Emotions presents an ethical and emotional odyssey for that victory.

Woman World

Woman World PDF

Author: Aminder Dhaliwal

Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 177046381X

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THE HILARIOUS AND WILDLY POPULAR INSTAGRAM COMIC ABOUT A WORLD WITH NO MEN With her startling humor, it’s no surprise that Aminder Dhaliwal’s web comic Woman World has a devoted audience of over 120,000 readers, updated biweekly with each installment earning an average of 25,000 likes. Now, readers everywhere will delight in the print edition as Dhaliwal seamlessly incorporates feminist philosophical concerns into a series of perfectly-paced strips that skewer perceived notions of femininity and contemporary cultural icons. D+Q’s edition of Woman World will include new and previously unpublished material. When a birth defect wipes out the planet’s entire population of men, Woman World rises out of society’s ashes. Dhaliwal’s infectiously funny instagram comic follows the rebuilding process, tracking a group of women who have rallied together under the flag of “Beyonce’s Thighs.” Only Grandma remembers the distant past, a civilization of segway-riding mall cops, Blockbusters movie rental shops, and “That’s What She Said” jokes. For the most part, Woman World’s residents are focused on their struggles with unrequited love and anxiety, not to mention that whole “survival of humanity” thing. Woman World is an uproarious and insightful graphic novel from a very talented and funny new voice.

Print Is Dead

Print Is Dead PDF

Author: Jeff Gomez

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-06-09

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0230614469

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For over 1500 years books have weathered numerous cultural changes remarkably unaltered. Through wars, paper shortages, radio, TV, computer games, and fluctuating literacy rates, the bound stack of printed paper has, somewhat bizarrely, remained the more robust and culturally relevant way to communicate ideas. Now, for the first time since the Middle Ages, all that is about to change. Newspapers are struggling for readers and relevance; downloadable music has consigned the album to the format scrap heap; and the digital revolution is now about to leave books on the high shelf of history. In Print Is Dead, Gomez explains how authors, producers, distributors, and readers must not only acknowledge these changes, but drive digital book creation, standards, storage, and delivery as the first truly transformational thing to happen in the world of words since the printing press.

On Extinction

On Extinction PDF

Author: Melanie Challenger

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2021-03-16

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1640094636

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Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award–winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine "why" and "what's next."

Imagining Extinction

Imagining Extinction PDF

Author: Ursula K. Heise

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-08-10

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 022635816X

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As the extinction of species accelerates and more species become endangered, activists, filmmakers, writers, and artists have responded to bring this global crisis to the attention of the public. Until now, there has been no study of the frameworks that shape these narratives and images, or of the symbolic meanings that the death of species carries in different cultural communities. Ursula Heise makes the case that understanding how and why endangered species come to matter culturally is indispensable for any effective advocacy on their behalf. Heise begins by showing that the tools of conservation science and law need to be viewed as cultural artifacts: biodiversity databases and laws for the protection of threatened species use rhetorical and cultural resources that open up different approaches to the problem of understanding global wildlife. The second half of her book explores ways of envisioning alternative futures for biodiversity. The narrative of nature s decline or even imminent disappearance has been a successful rallying trope for those skeptical of modernization and ideologies of progress. But environmentalists nostalgia for the past and pessimistic outlook on the future have also alienated parts of the public. Heise tells the story of environmental activists, writers, and scientists who are creating new stories to guide the environmental imagination."

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction PDF

Author: Michelle Nijhuis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-03-09

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1324001690

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Winner of the Sierra Club's 2021 Rachel Carson Award One of Chicago Tribune's Ten Best Books of 2021 Named a Top Ten Best Science Book of 2021 by Booklist and Smithsonian Magazine "At once thoughtful and thought-provoking,” Beloved Beasts tells the story of the modern conservation movement through the lives and ideas of the people who built it, making “a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction). In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis’s “spirited and engaging” account documents “the changes of heart that changed history” (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe). With “urgency, passion, and wit” (Michael Berry, Christian Science Monitor), she describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of modern conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism. As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own.

Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man

Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man PDF

Author: Michael Boulter

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2010-10-07

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13: 0007404867

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How long do humans have left on Earth? Using cutting-edge science that revolutionises our understanding of evolution, Michael Boulter explains how we may be closer to our own extinction than we imagined.

The Sixth Extinction

The Sixth Extinction PDF

Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2014-02-11

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0805099794

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ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.