As debates over climate change rage in Washington and American consumers become ever more conscientious about 'going green,' evangelical Christians are increasingly concerned about the proper relationship between faith and environmentalism. The notion of human 'stewardship' over God's creation could be a groundbreaking opportunity for cooperation between evangelicals, the scientific community, and environmental activists. However, a deep understanding of environmental issues from a distinctively Christian perspective will inevitably complicate partnerships with those who approach the subject from conventional secular viewpoints. Although there is some common ground, there remain important differences between Christian and secular perspectives on the environment. Are human beings merely one 'part' of the undifferentiated whole of nature? Or, worse, are humans a blight and a drain on God's perfect creation? Do we really 'own' the land we live on and the plants and animals that provide our sustenance? The answers to these questions begin to form a Christian approach to solving ecological problems. In Mere Environmentalism: A Biblical Perspective on Humans and the Natural World, Steven F. Hayward provides a thorough examination of the philosophical presuppositions underlying today's environmentalist movement and the history of policies intended to alleviate environmental challenges such as overpopulation and global warming. Relying on Scripture to understand God's created order, Hayward offers an insightful reflection on the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Visionary essays from a founder of the modern ecology movement. In this collection of essays, Murray Bookchin's vision for an ecological society remains central as he addresses questions of urbanism and city planning, technology, self-management, energy, utopianism, and more. Throughout, he opposes efforts to reduce ecology to a toothless “environmentalism,” a task as vital today as when these essays were first published. Written between 1969 and 1979, the essays in this collection represent a fascinating and fertile period in Bookchin’s life. Coming out of the unfulfilled promise of the sixties and trying to develop a revolutionary critique of social life that avoided the pitfalls of Marxism, he was entering his creative intellectual peak. He was laying the foundations of a truly social ecology: a society based on decentralization, interdependence, democratic self-management, mutual aid, and solidarity. Presented with clarity and fervor, these key works contain the kernels of concerns that would occupy him until his death in 2006. This edition also includes a new foreword by Dan Chodorkoff, someone who was with Bookchin at the founding of his Institute for Social Ecology and who understand his work better than anyone.

A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide” Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds. This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.

This title was first published in 2000: The author examines those current theories which purport to explain the emergence and character of 'new' social movements in the 'advanced' industrial societies since the 1960s. In particular, it sets out to test the efficacy of these explanations in relation to the history of the environmental movement in Britain. The book breaks new ground in bringing together both short-term and the more historically orientated long-term explanations into a single volume, thus providing an invaluable resource for students of social movements. Its critical exposition of major theories also points to the need for a more developmental approach which seeks to connect old and new movement forms, thus allowing for a more balanced evaluation of the potential of the environmental movement to bring about significant social change.

This book examines environmentalist thought through its connections to ancient philosophies and religions and a lineage which runs through romantic art and nineteenth-century science. The examination is conducted from a broad and skeptical utilitarian point of view.

"e;System change not climate change!"e; This cry reverberated throughout the streets of Paris during 2015's heated COP21 climate negotiations. It was as much a demand as it was an indictment of the failure of existing political institutions to respond adequately to our world's ecological crisis. In an era of slow motion apocalypse, with 3,500 international environmental agreements to date, where did everything go wrong? In this new and greatly expanded edition of his 1991 classic Political Ecology, Dimitri Roussopoulos delves into the history of environmentalism to explain the failure of the state management of the ecological crisis. He explores civil society's various past responses and the prospects for channeling environmentalist aspirations into political alternatives, emphasizing the ideas of social ecology and the central role of democratic neighborhoods and cities in developing alternatives. Ecologists, Roussopoulos argues, aim further than simply protecting the environment-they call for new communities, new lifestyles, and a new way of doing politics. This US edition also includes a new preface analyzing the implications of Trump's presidency for climate politics and an extensive new conclusion analyzing the Paris Accord. Revised, expanded, and updated, Political Ecology is a classic that provides an essential, timely history of the environmental movement now when we need it most.