Environmental Engineering & Technology

An environmental expert unleashes a scientific, fact-based broadside against eco-alarmism and the excesses of the left, arguing that climate change and other environmental problems are real but not apocalyptic and require practical, not radical, solutions. Many environmentalists ...claim the world as we know it will soon come to an end unless we radically change how we live our lives. They demand we stop eating meat, ban plastics, and significantly reduce how much we drive and fly. Climate change is real, says Michael Shellenberger in Apocalypse Never, but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Most environmental trends, including population, pollution, and resource use, are all going in the right direction. The left profits from hyping climate change as apocalypse while opposing obvious solutions. Schemes like The Green New Deal would transfer wealth to well-connected elites, raise energy costs, and hurt wildlife. Poverty, not prosperity, is the real enemy of the environment. We use can produce more food using less land and water, move from wood to coal to natural gas to nuclear, and safely capture and contain plastic waste. But all of that will require standing up to the eco-alarmism in the way of environmental protection.
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This book is for those wanting to create vibrant, profitable and healthy food production systems. For the Love of Soil was written to communicate the often complex and technical know-how of soil in more digestible terms, with case studies from regenerative farmers, growers and... ranchers in Australasia and North America. I reveal what inspired these land managers to shift their thinking and what have been the results from a process of restoring the soil-gut-microbiome. We'll also explore the principles and tools so you can take actions to regenerate your own soil resource, no matter the scale.
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This book analyses water allocation law and policy in New Zealand and offers a comparative analysis with Australia. In New Zealand it is generally accepted that water allocation law has failed to be adequately addressed and New Zealand is now faced with the problem of over-alloca...tion in many catchments. In comparison, Australia has extensive experience in reforming its water law and policy over the last twenty years. This book provides a comparative and critical analysis of the lessons that New Zealand can learn from the Australian experience and offers guidance for the improvement of water allocation outcomes in New Zealand. Starting with the background of water allocation law and policy in New Zealand, the book traces the evolution of legal policies, including the 1967 Water and Soil Conservation Act and the 1991 Resource Management Act, and examines the role they have played in current water allocation issues. The book situates these findings within global challenges, such as the impact of climate change, and the global scarcity of and increasing demand for freshwater resources. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars researching water law and policy, natural resource management and environmental law more broadly. It was also be of use to policymakers and professional involved in developing and implementing water allocation laws and policies.
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Lose yourself in the vast sewer networks that lie beneath the world's great cities - past and present. Let detailed archival plans, maps and photographs guide you through these subterranean labyrinths - previously accessible only to their builders, engineers and, perhaps, the odd... rogue explorer. This execrable exploration traces the evolution of waste management from the ingenious infra-structures of the ancient world to the seeping cesspits and festering open sewers of the medieval period. It investigates and celebrates the work of the civil engineers whose pioneering integrated sewer systems brought to a close the devastating cholera epidemics of the mid-19th century and continue to serve a vastly increased population today. And let's not forget those giant fatbergs clogging our underground arteries, or the storm-surge super-structures of tomorrow.
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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 eyesOver 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.
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