Overview

Global warming, toxic waste, water and air pollution, acid rain, and shrinking energy supplies are frightening challenges that may threaten our future. Global Environmental Challenges provides important information and gives us hope about the environment. This book first helps us to grasp these difficulties, then shows us the choices we can make. How long to leave a light on, whether to take the car, the train, or bicycle to work, whether to recycle or throw away, whether to vote to curb continued suburban sprawl--all of these decisions can make a difference. This collection of some of the best essays and articles on the environment comes from a variety of sources. Five major sections investigate the interaction of population growth, consumption, and environment; the emerging crisis in freshwater around the globe; global climate and atmosphere (including global warming); biodiversity loss; and the concept of sustainable development - using natural resources to place future human development on a sustainable path. The final section on sustainable development reveals how action can be taken. This valuable resource offers readers a better under standing of our environmental problems and presents solutions to improving the health of the planet.

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9780842050487

Table of Contents

Reviews

A MASTERFUL AND INFORMATIVE COMPILATION OF THE BEST OF CURRENT THOUGHT ON THE BROAD ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES FACING HUMANS IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE.

With selections from many leading scholars, Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-first Century is an accessible introduction to critical global environmental issues. While providing reviews of key issues such as water, climate, and biodiversity, it also addresses the causes and solutions to problems in ways that empower students to understand and act to solve global environmental challenges. This book will be especially useful for instructors of basic environmental courses who seek to combine an understanding of both the social and scientific aspects of global environmental issues. -- Diana Liverman, University of Arizona This concise volume presents an excellent synopsis of many of the key articles describing the Earth's condition. In convenient form, this book presents the selections in such a way that they can easily be used for undergraduate courses. Any active ecologist or student of biology would have need to refer to many of these. By exposing undergraduate students to these articles, careers in biology will be stimulated and enhanced. Outstandingly useful! -- Peter H. Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden David Lorey has put together a masterful and informative compilation of the best of current thought on the broad environmental challenges facing humans in our immediate future. Most importantly, he also includes ideas as to sustainable solutions. Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-first Century is readily accessible to the general reader and should be required reading for policy makers and the public alike. -- Carol Boggs, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University

Author Information

David E. Lorey is director of the U.S.-Latin American Relations Program at the Hewlett Foundation.

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