Tag: development

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Carbon Value between Equivalence and Differentiation

The latest Environment and Society featured article is now available! This month’s article—”Carbon Value between Equivalence and Differentiation”—comes from Volume 5 (2014). In his article, Steffen Dalsgaard reviews the different understandings of value implicated in debates about the environment seen through carbon by contrasting the values embedded in some of the various initiatives that have resulted from the Kyoto Protocol, and how they relate to the market, government control, and individual consumer morality, among other things.

Visit the featured article page to download your copy of the article today before it’s gone! A new article is featured every month.

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Adaptation—Genuine and Spurious

The latest Environment and Society featured article is now available! This month’s article—”Adaptation—Genuine and Spurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Climate Change”—comes from Volume 1 (2010). In their article, Thomas F. Thornton and Nadia Manasfi critically examine the concept of human adaptation by dividing it into eight fundamental processes and viewing each in a broad cultural, ecological, and evolutionary context. They focus their assessment especially on northern indigenous peoples, who exist at the edges of present-day climate governance frameworks but at the center of increasingly acute climate stress.

Visit the featured article page to download your copy of the article today before it’s gone! A new article is featured every month.

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New Featured Article!: “Climate Changing Small Islands”

The latest Environment and Society featured article is now available! This month’s article, “Climate Changing Small Islands: Considering Social Science and the Production of Island Vulnerability and Opportunity,” comes from Volume 1 (2010). In her article, Amelia Moore argues that climate change has influenced the way in which small island nations are viewed and understood by the international climate community.

Visit the featured article page to download your copy of the article today before it’s gone! A new article is featured every month.

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Why Won’t “Overpopulation” (Finally) Go Away?

This post is presented in this week’s series recognizing Earth Day, Friday, April 22.

The age-old specter of “overpopulation,” it seems, is back in vogue among environmentalists once more. “Our population,” writes celebrity biologist E.O. Wilson on the first page of his new book Half-Earth, “is too large for safety and comfort.” Celebrity economist Jeffrey Sachs agrees, arguing in his own new book on sustainable development that “our starting point is our crowded planet.” Meanwhile, in Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, an eclectic collection of writers come together to “reignite a robust discussion of population issues among environmentalists, environmental studies scholars, policymakers, and the general public.” At the same time, the Foundation for Deep Ecology has launched a campaign called Global Population Speak Out, supported by a collection of evocative photographs, to explore “connections between the size and growth of the human population and key sustainability issues.” This focus has been reinforced by recent projections that the global population may reach nearly ten billion by 2050, revising previous assertions of an imminent level-off at nine billion or less. Despite decades of debate and concerted efforts to point out the problems in its framing, “overpopulation,” it seems, is squarely back on the environmental agenda yet again.

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