Elections Then and Now: Environment

From Denali's majestic slopes to the Great Swamp of central New Jersey, protected wilderness areas make up nearly twenty percent of the parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands that cover a full fourth of the nation's territory. But wilderness is not only a place. It is also one of the most powerful and troublesome ideas in American environmental thought, representing everything from sublime beauty and patriotic inspiration to a countercultural ideal and an overextension of government authority. The Promise of Wilderness examines how the idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964.

Is the quest for true energy security a fool's errand? In recent years, the efforts of nations to promote energy security have been hotly debated. Fuels Paradise examines how five major developed democracies--Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States--have sought to enhance their energy security since the oil shocks of the 1970s and in response to the more diverse set of challenges of the early twenty-first century.

Over the past few decades, the vexing problems of climate change and finite resources have ignited contentious global debates about alternative energy technologies. In this lucid, balanced book, Rody Johnson investigates the development and deployment of one such technology--wind power--and, in particular, the ways in which a heated battle over that energy source played out in an Appalachian community.

In their book Nicola Armaroli, Vincenzo Balzani and Nick Serpone uncover the background details associated with a transition to sustainable energy production that are routinely swept under the table in public discussions. They are not only concerned with the (alleged) advantages and disadvantages of any one energy generation technology from a technical viewpoint, but also with the ecological, economic, political and social consequences of an inevitable transition. In a highly readable manner aimed at an international audience, the authors introduce the often misused and sometimes abused term 'energy' and give a lucid account of the development of energy production from timber to nuclear energy and renewable energies. They compare various energy generation methods with respect to their efficiency and practicability for large-scale implementation and examine if, and how, these methods live up to the expectations and promises their proponents make.

Over the last decade research exploring green infrastructure planning has burgeoned. Transferable green infrastructure messages between locations though are less well established and there remains a visible gap between the conceptual understanding of green infrastructure and its application in practice. Drawing together evaluations of green infrastructure policy-making and practice from across the world Global Green Infrastructure illustrates where successful practices can be identified.