Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society

2013-09-13
 |  House & Home
Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society

Author: Elizabeth Shove

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317988809

Category: House & Home

Page: 130

View: 129

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Current expectations and standards of comfort are almost certainly unsustainable and new methods and ideas will be required if there is to be any prospect of a significantly lower carbon society. This collection reassesses relationships between people and the multitude of environments they inhabit in the context of increasing carbon intensities of everyday life. In this bold and unconventional volume historians, sociologists, environmentalists, geographers, and cultural theorists provoke and stimulate debate about the future of comfort in a lower carbon society. These contributions are then subject to critical commentary from a range of academic and policy perspectives. The result is a book that promotes academic and policy discussion of the environmental consequences of indoor climate change around the world, and that offers new perspectives and strategies for moving towards a lower carbon future. This book was published as a special issue of Building Research & Information.

Household Sustainability

2013-01-01
 |  Self-Help
Household Sustainability

Author: Chris Gibson

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781781006214

Category: Self-Help

Page: 256

View: 646

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ÔThe question Chris Gibson and his colleagues answer in this book is simple: ÒWhy is it not easy being green?Ó In 20 concise, focused and accessible chapters Ð from birthing to dying, from toilets to Christmas Ð they unveil the ambiguities, instabilities and paradoxes of affluent household living in the 21st century. In so doing, they temper the easy rhetoric of sustainable lifestyles with some authentic realities drawn from the affluent world. Earth system science is showing us the deep complexity of our material planet. This book brilliantly reflects back to us the complex materiality of our cultural lives.Õ Ð Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, UK Contrary to the common rhetoric that being green is ÔeasyÕ, household sustainability is rife with contradiction and uncertainty. Households attempting to respond to the challenge to become more sustainable in everyday life face dilemmas on a daily basis when trying to make sustainable decisions. Various aspects of life such as cars, computers, food, phones and even birth and death, may all provoke uncertainty regarding the most sustainable course of action. Drawing on international scientific and cultural research, as well as innovative ethnographies, this timely book probes these wide-ranging sustainability dilemmas, assessing the avenues open to households trying to improve their sustainability. The authors engage critically, and constructively, with the proposition that households are a key scale of action on climate change. They confront dilemmas of practice and circumstance, and cultural norms of lifestyle and consumerism that are linked to troublesome environmental problems Ð and question whether they can be easily unsettled. The work also illuminates the informal and often unheralded work by households Ð frequently the poorest Ð in reducing their environmental burden. This important book is critical to understanding both the barriers to household sustainability and the ÔunsungÕ sustainability work carried out by householders. Containing a unique combination of science and cultural research, this fascinating book will appeal to researchers and students of environmental science, environmental studies, sustainability studies, climate change adaptation, geography, sociology, cultural studies, science and technology studies, as well as energy studies and housing research. Policy-makers in various levels of government working through sustainability problems, environmental educators, social planners and sustainability officers working for governments, will also find much to interest them in this unique book.

A Handbook on Low-Energy Buildings and District-Energy Systems

2012-08-21
 |  Architecture
A Handbook on Low-Energy Buildings and District-Energy Systems

Author: L.D. Danny Harvey

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781136573026

Category: Architecture

Page: 720

View: 365

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Winner of Choice Magazine - Outstanding Academic Titles for 2007 Buildings account for over one third of global energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Reducing energy use by buildings is therefore an essential part of any strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby lessen the likelihood of potentially catastrophic climate change. Bringing together a wealth of hard-to-obtain information on energy use and energy efficiency in buildings at a level which can be easily digested and applied, Danny Harvey offers a comprehensive, objective and critical sourcebook on low-energy buildings. Topics covered include: thermal envelopes, heating, cooling, heat pumps, HVAC systems, hot water, lighting, solar energy, appliances and office equipment, embodied energy, buildings as systems and community-integrated energy systems (cogeneration, district heating, and district cooling). The book includes exemplary buildings and techniques from North America, Europe and Asia, and combines a broad, holistic perspective with technical detail in an accessible and insightful manner.

Life After Oil

2020-08-28
 |  Business & Economics
Life After Oil

Author: Mirza H. Alqassab

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

ISBN: 9781838595029

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 312

View: 782

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The Gulf Arab states became rich by accident. Their golden ticket was oil, which has become the lifeblood of their social and economic systems. But they are prone to become a ‘vanishing Eden’, if the oil curse endures further and economic transformation remains a mirage. LIFE AFTER OIL highlights the economic vulnerability of the Gulf states after the oil party ends. The region depends heavily on imports financed by petrodollars. So, when demand for oil sinks and prices plummet, or when oil and gas reserves ultimately vanish, their survival will be extremely challenged. LIFE AFTER OIL raises the alarm to the impending survival challenges to face the burgeoning Gulf societies in the post-oil era, and tackles the ultimate question: what will the future look like?

Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions [3 volumes]

2017-09-15
 |  Science
Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions [3 volumes]

Author: Bruce E. Johansen

Publisher: ABC-CLIO

ISBN: 9781440840869

Category: Science

Page: 1180

View: 225

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This three-volume set presents entries and primary sources that will impress on readers that what we do—or don't do—today regarding climate change will dramatically influence what life on this planet will be like for untold numbers of generations. • Provides readers with a clearly written description of global-warming science and its role in shaping a body of knowledge regarding a worldwide issue that affects everyone • Suggests remedies for this serious problem, most notably a rapid rise in the implementation of wind power generation and a coming revolution in solar energy • Impresses on readers that what Americans and the citizens and governments of other nations around the globe do over the next decades will determine the future of this planet for many tens of thousands of years to come • Includes primary documents sourced from major scientific journals and from the many reports on recent climate change from governmental organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO), both part of the United Nations; and the U.S. government's National Climate Assessment

An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants

2020-06-01
 |  Social Science
An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants

Author: Ethel V. Kosminsky

Publisher: Lexington Books

ISBN: 9781498522601

Category: Social Science

Page: 377

View: 859

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In this book, Ethel Kosminsky studies the Japanese emigration to the planned colony of Bastos in São Paulo, Brazil in the early twentieth century. She explores the stories of Japanese immigrants who replaced the labor of recently-freed slaves on coffee plantations, and their descendants’ return migration to Japan when the Bastos economy began to suffer in the late twentieth century. Using interviews and fieldwork done in both Bastos and Japan, Kosminsky integrates sociological, historical, political, economic, and ethnographic knowledge to analyze the consequences of these temporary labor migrations on the immigrants and their families.

Running to Resurrection

2019-10-30
 |  Religion
Running to Resurrection

Author: Clark Berge ssf

Publisher: Canterbury Press

ISBN: 9781786222169

Category: Religion

Page: 158

View: 114

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At the age of forty-five, unfit and overweight, Clark Berge, a professed Franciscan friar, took up running. In his younger life he had struggled with alcoholism and with his sexual identity. Running became cathartic not just for his body, but for making peace with the lingering shame of a troubled past, facing unresolved questions and coming to a fuller acceptance of who he was. As the elected leader of a worldwide religious community, Clark had the opportunity to run in widely differing urban and wild places – from the English countryside to a South African shantytown to remote Pacific islands. His running adventures opened up larger spiritual insights into the nature of religious life, social activism, contemplation, life on the margins, solitude and community, fear and fortitude, simplicity and living in harmony with creation. This unique memoir of running and religion explores Christian spirituality with a disarming honesty and depth.

Lost in Mall

2011-01-01
 |  History
Lost in Mall

Author: Lizzy van Leeuwen

Publisher: BRILL

ISBN: 9789004253445

Category: History

Page: 309

View: 717

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In this study, based on extensive anthropological fieldwork throughout the 1990s, an "emerging new middle class" is examined as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Despite a global orientation and a taste for democracy, its members seemed to have internalized the New Order along with some lingering late-colonial notions as their guidelines for life. How "new" was this new middle class anyway? Lifestyle and material culture practices in the suburb of Bintaro Raya—in public space as well as in the intimacy of living rooms—illustrate the everyday ambiguity of people who appear to be trapped in their imagined middle-classness: they were "lost in mall".

Social Welfare in Western Society

2018-05-04
 |  Social Science
Social Welfare in Western Society

Author: Bernice Neugarten

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781351489362

Category: Social Science

Page: 399

View: 732

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Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. Th is book off ers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept-help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. Th e outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. Th e major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume.