Who Rules the Earth?

How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives

Paul F. Steinberg (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

352 Seiten

2017
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-069221-6 (ISBN)

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Worldwide, half a million people die from air pollution each year-more than perish in all wars combined. One in every five mammal species on the planet is threatened with extinction. Our climate is warming, our forests are in decline, and every day we hear news of the latest ecological crisis. What will it really take to move society onto a more sustainable path? Many of us are already doing the "little things" to help the earth, like recycling or buying organic produce. These are important steps-but they're not enough.

In Who Rules the Earth?, Paul Steinberg, a leading scholar of environmental politics, shows that the shift toward a sustainable world requires modifying the very rules that guide human behavior and shape the ways we interact with the earth. We know these rules by familiar names like city codes, product design standards, business contracts, public policies, cultural norms, and national constitutions. Though these rules are largely invisible, their impact across the planet has been dramatic. By changing the rules, Ontario, Canada has cut the levels of pesticides in its waterways in half. The city of Copenhagen has adopted new planning codes that will reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2025. In the United States, a handful of industry mavericks designed new rules to promote greener buildings, and transformed the world's largest industry into a more sustainable enterprise.

Steinberg takes the reader on a series of journeys, from a familiar walk on the beach to a remote village deep in the jungles of Peru, helping the reader to "see" the social rules that pattern our physical reality and showing why these are the big levers that will ultimately determine the health of our planet. By unveiling the influence of social rules at all levels of society-from private property to government policy, and from the rules governing our oceans to the dynamics of innovation and change within corporations and communities-Who Rules the Earth? is essential reading for anyone who understands that sustainability is not just a personal choice, but a political struggle.

Paul F. Steinberg is the Malcolm Lewis Professor of Sustainability and Society and Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy at Harvey Mudd College. He is the author of Comparative Environmental Politics and Environmental Leadership in Developing Countries, which won the International Studies Association's Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for the best book in international environmental affairs. He is the director of the Social Rules Project, a multi-media initiative designed to raise public awareness about the importance of changing policies and other binding rules to promote sustainability.

I. Searching for Solutions
1 Recycling Is Not Enough
2 Strings Attached
3 Feasible Worlds

II. Who Owns the Earth?
4 A Perilous Journey
5 The Big Trade
6 A Planet of Nations

III. Transformations
7 Scaling Up
8 Scaling Down
9 Keep the Change

IV. Leverage
10 Super Rules
11 Paper, Plastic, or Politics?

Erscheinungsdatum	03.11.2017
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	231 x 155 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
ISBN-10	0-19-069221-9 / 0190692219
ISBN-13	978-0-19-069221-6 / 9780190692216
Zustand	Neuware