Environment and Society: A Critical Introduction

Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Boxes
Acknowledgments
1: Introduction: The View from a Human-Made Wilderness
	What Is This Book?
	The Authors’ Points of View
Part 1: Approaches and Perspectives
	2: Population and Scarcity
		A Crowded Desert City
		The Problem of “Geometric” Growth
			Actual population growth
		Population, Development, and Environment Impact
			Carrying capacity and the ecological footprint
		The Other Side of the Coin: Population and Innovation
		Limits to Population: An Effect Rather than a Cause?
			Development and demographic transition
			Women’s rights, education, autonomy, and fertility behavior
			The potential violence and injustice of population-centered thinking
		Thinking with Population
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 2.1 What Is Your Ecological Footprint?
		Exercise 2.2 Where are Fertility Rates High? Why?
		Exercise 2.3 Too Few People?
	3: Markets and Commodities
		The Bet
			Sustaining environmental goods: The market response model
		Managing Environmental Bads: The Coase Theorem
		Market Failure
		Market-Based Solutions to Environmental Problems
			Green taxes
			Trading and banking environmental “bads”
			Green consumption
		Beyond Market Failure: Gaps between Nature and Economy
			Non-market values
			Money and nature
			The crisis of equity: Turning economic injustice into environmental injustice?
		Thinking with Markets
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 3.1 The Price of Green Consumption
		Exercise 3.2 Marketing Green Technology
		Exercise 3.3 Thinking Economically
	4: Institutions and “The Commons”
		Controlling Carbon?
		The Prisoner’s Dilemma
		The Tragedy of the Commons
		The Evidence and Logic of Collective Action
		Crafting Sustainable Environmental Institutions
			Ingenious flowing commons: Irrigation
			Wildlife commons: Collective management through hunting
			The biggest commons: Global climate
		Are All Commoners Equal? Does Scale Matter?
		Thinking with Institutions
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 4.1 Enclosure and Technology
		Exercise 4.2 Are Commons Overexploited Everywhere?
		Exercise 4.3 Institutions Nearby
	5: Environmental Ethics
		The Price of Cheap Meat
		Improving Nature: From Biblical Tradition to John Locke
		Gifford Pinchot vs. John Muir in Yosemite, California
		Aldo Leopold and “The Land Ethic”
		Liberation for Animals!
			From shallow to deep ecology
		Holism, Scientism, and Other Pitfalls
		Thinking with Ethics
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 5.1 Pass the Bacon (or don’t)
		Exercise 5.2 Animals in Medical and Commercial Research and Testing
		Exercise 5.3 The Land Ethic
	6: Risks and Hazards
		Great Floods
		Environments as Hazard
			Decisions as risk
			Environmental conditions as uncertain
		The Problem of Risk Perception
			Making informed decisions: Risk communication
		Risk as Culture
		Beyond Risk: The Political Economy of Hazards
			Control of decisions – the political economy of environmental justice
			Constraints on decisions – political economy of the range of choice
			Control of information – the political economy of information
		Thinking with Hazards and Risk
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 6.1 Evaluating Risk
		Exercise 6.2 Labeling Risk
		Exercise 6.3 Mapping Risk
	7: Political Economy
		The Strange Logic of “Under-pollution”
		Labor, Accumulation, and Crisis
			Labor
			Accumulation
			Contradiction and crisis
			The second contradiction
		Production of Nature
		Global Capitalism and the Ecology of Uneven Development
		Social Reproduction and Nature
			Environmental justice
			Gender and the political economy of environmental activism
		Environments and Economism
		Thinking with Political Economy
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 7.1 Is Waste Accidental?
		Exercise 7.2 Commodity Analysis
		Exercise 7.3 Mapping Environmental Justice
	8: Social Construction of Nature
		Welcome to the Jungle
		So You Say It’s “Natural”?
			The social construction of New World natures
		Environmental Discourse
			The discourse of North African desertification
			Wilderness: A troublesome discourse
		The Limits of Constructivism: Science, Relativism, and the Very Material World
			What about science?
			The threat of relativism
			Constructivism in a material world
		Thinking with Construction
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 8.1 Analysis of Energy Discourses
		Exercise 8.2 What is Obesity?
		Exercise 8.3 What is Organic about Organic Food?
Part 2: Objects of Concern
	9: Carbon Dioxide
		Stuck in Pittsburgh Traffic
		A Short History of CO2
			The changing CO2 content of the atmosphere
			From carbon loading to climate change
			The puzzle of carbon dioxide
		Institutions: Climate Free-Riders and Carbon Cooperation
			The carbon Prisoner’s Dilemma
			Overcoming barriers through flexibility: Climate treaties
			Beyond Kyoto: Toward new institutions?
		Markets: Trading More Gases, Buying Less Carbon
			Consumer choice: Green carbon consumption
			Producer-driven climate control: Carbon markets and cap and trade
		Political Economy: Who Killed the Atmosphere?
			Green consumption is still consumption
			Critique of carbon trading and other markets
		The Carbon Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 9.1 The Ethics of CO2
		Exercise 9.2 Can You Do Better than the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change?
		Exercise 9.3 Should Cities Think about Climate Change?
	10: Trees
		Chained to a Tree in Berkeley, California
		A Short History of Trees
			Trees and civilization: A complex relationship
			Climax, disturbance, and secondary succession
			How much forest is there now?
			The future of trees
			Trees, people, and biodiversity
			The puzzle of trees
		Population and Markets: The Forest Transition Theory
			Limits of the U-curve model
		Political Economy: Accumulation and Deforestation
			Deforestation as uneven development
		Ethics, Justice, and Equity: Should Trees Have Standing?
			What is it for something to have rights?
			What would the rights of trees look like?
		The Tree Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 10.1 Trees and Institutions
		Exercise 10.2 Are Plantation Forests Useful Forests?
		Exercise 10.3 Appreciating Trees
	11: Wolves
		The Death of 832F
		A Short History of Wolves
			The ecological role of the wolf
			Three centuries of slaughter: Wolf eradication in the United States
			The puzzle of wolves
		Ethics: Rewilding and Wolves
			Wanted: An ecocentric ethic of sustainability
			Rewilding, Part I: The ethical dimension
			Rewilding, Part II: How to get from here to there
			Wary of the wild: Deep ecology and democracy
		Institutions: Stakeholder Management
			Public participation in resource management
			Stakeholders in Minnesota wolf conservation
			Evaluating the results
		Social Construction: Of Wolves and Men Masculinity
			Man as righteous hunter, wolf as evil hunter
			Wolves save the wilderness, but for whom?
		The Wolf Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 11.1 Wolf Conservation and Human Population Growth
		Exercise 11.2 The IUCN “Red List” of Threatened and Endangered Species
		Exercise 11.3 Examining the Wolf Hunting Debate
	12: Uranium
		Renaissance Derailed?
		A Short History of Uranium
			Probing into nature’s atomic secrets
			The Manhattan Project and the power of nuclear technology
			The nuclear fuel chain
			The puzzle of uranium
		Risk and Hazards: Debating the Fate of High-Level Radioactive Waste
			High-level radioactive waste: Hazardous for a long, long time
			Yucca Mountain and risk-assessment site selection
			Critiques of the Yucca Mountain risk assessment
		Political Economy: Environmental Justice and the Navajo Nation
			Laboring in Navajo mines
			Cancer comes to the Navajo Reservation
		The Social Construction of Nature: Discourses of Development and Wilderness in Australia
			Terra Nullius: The British settlement of a peopled, but “unowned” land
			Development in the Northern Territory
			Kakadu National Park: Saving a (socially constructed) wilderness
		The Uranium Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 12.1 Debating the Future of Nuclear Power
		Exercise 12.2 Should Australia Move Ahead with the Jabiluka Mine
		Exercise 12.3 Uranium Mining in the Global South
	13: Tuna
		Blood Tuna
		A Short History of Tuna
			Bluefin tuna: From horse mackerel to ranched sushi
			The Eastern Tropical Pacific yellowfin tuna fishery
			The puzzle of tuna
		Markets and Commodities: Eco-Labels to the Rescue?
			Attempts at solutions through legislation
			Consumer activists to the rescue
			The label stays intact
		Political Economy: Re-regulating Fishery Economies
			Geopolitics of tuna
			From a Fordist to a Post-Fordist fishery
			Post-Fordist regulation: The Marine Stewardship Council
		Ethics: Saving Animals, Conserving Species
		The Tuna Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 13.1 Eco-Labeling and Certification
		Exercise 13.2 Contemporary Commercial Fishing (and Overfishing)
		Exercise 13.3 Scientific Whaling
	14: Lawns
		How Much Do People Love Lawns?
		A Short History of Lawns
			Turfgrasses as part of human economic history
			The chemical revolution
			The explosion of lawns
			The puzzle of lawns
		Risk and Chemical Decision-Making
			Is chemical use irrational or uninformed?
			Chemicals as economically (or socially) rational
		Social Construction: Good Lawns Mean Good People
			Landscape as text
			Social and ecological anxiety
		Political Economy: The Chemical Tail Wags the Turfgrass Dog
			Pressures on the lawn chemical commodity chain
			Marketing strategies: Manufacturing demand
		The Lawn Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 14.1 What is a “Weed”?
		Exercise 14.2 The War over Pesticides
		Exercise 14.3 Responsibility for Environments: Do Objects Make You a Subject?
	15: Bottled Water
		A Tale of Two Bottles
		A Short History of Bottled Water
			The current global state of the bottled water market
			Environmental impacts of bottled water
			The puzzle of bottled water
		Population: Bottling for Scarcity?
			Who drinks bottled water?
		Risk: Health and Safety in a Bottle?
			Risk assessment: Is bottled water “healthy” or “less risky”?
			Risk perception and the limits of risk communication in water quality
		Political Economy: Manufacturing Demand on an Enclosed Commons
			The rise of the water commodity
			Bottled accumulation: Selling back nature
			Bottled overproduction: Producing demand
		The Bottled Water Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 15.1 Thinking with Life Cycle Assessment
		Exercise 15.2 Social Construction of Bottled Water
		Exercise 15.3 A Bottled Water Taste Test
	16: French Fries
		Getting Your French Fry Fix
		A Short History of the Fry
			What a long, strange trip it’s been: Cultivation and use of Solanum tuberosum, from the New World, to the Old, and back again
			The advent of the fry and the American century
			The demands of the Russet Burbank and contemporary frozen French fry production
			The puzzle of French fries
		Risk Analysis: Eating What We Choose and Choosing What We Eat
			The science of good and bad fats
			Better information, healthier choices?
			Risk, choice, and regulation
		Political Economy: Eat Fries or Else!
			You want what we say you want – marketing and food choices
			Demand or supply: The geography of fast food
			We need more fries!!!
		Ethics: Protecting or Engineering Potato Heritage?
			Agrodiversity
			Rescuing diversity: Back to the future?
			Biotechnology
		The French Fry Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 16.1 Health Knowledge or Food Fads?
		Exercise 16.2 Market Solutions for Agrodiversity?
		Exercise 16.3 What Makes French Fries So Cheap?
	17: E-Waste
		Digital Divides
		A Short History of E-Waste (2000)
			A world of TV viewers?
			Personal computers and mobile phones
		Risk Management and the Hazard of E-Waste
		E-Waste and Markets: From Externality to Commodity
			Pollution havens
			Recycling e-wastes
		E-Waste and Environmental Justice: The Political Economy of E-Waste
			Global e-waste/global environmental justice
		The E-Waste Puzzle
		Questions for Review
		Exercise 17.1 The Secret Life of Cell Phones
		Exercise 17.2 What Does Your School (or Company) Do with E-Waste?
		Exercise 17.3 What Do We Really Know About Waste Flows?
Glossary
Index