Global warming is the story of the twenty-first century. It is the most serious issue facing the future of humankind, but American energy and environmental policy is driving the whole world down a path toward global catastrophe. According to Joseph Romm, we have ten years, at most, to start making sharp cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions, or we will face disastrous consequences. The good news, he writes, is that there is something we can do--but only if the leadership of the U.S. government acts immediately and asserts its influence on the rest of the world.

Hell and High...

The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent underground oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is considered by many to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Interest groups, public officials, and media organizations have spent considerable time documenting the economic and ecological impacts of this spill as well as the causes of the spill, ostensibly to prevent future disasters of this magnitude. However, rather than an unbiased search for answers, such investigations involve strategic efforts by a variety of political actors to define the spill and its causes in...

In an innovative blend of environmental and labor history, Workers and the Wild examines the changing terms on which battles over the proper use of nature were fought in the early twentieth century. Focusing on Oregon in the 1910s and 1920s, Lawrence M. Lipin traces labor's shift in thinking about natural resources. They began with the 'producerist' idea that resources and land, both rural and urban, should be put to productive use, and that those who do are most entitled to access to them. They later shifted to a consumerist' view under which resources should be available for public and...

In Transnational Politics of the Environment, Liliana Andonova examines the effect of the Europen Union (EU) on the environmental policies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Compliance with EU environmental regulations is especially onerous for Central and Eastern European countries because of the costs involved and the legacy of pollution from communist-era industries. But Andonova argues that EU integration has a positive impact on environmental policies in these countries by exerting a strong influence on the environmental interests of regulated industries. With her...

Promoting environmental citizenship as a path to achieving sustainability -- encouraging people to act according to the public environmental good -- offers an alternative to the mainly market-based incentives used by most governments today. This book considers the theory and practice of environmental citizenship, the obstacles to its realization, and the opportunities it presents for bringing about environmental and social sustainability. The multidisciplinary perspective -- drawing on work in sociology, political theory, philosophy, psychology, and education -- and the variety of...

Strategic Planning in Environmental Regulation introduces an approach to environmental regulatory planning founded on a creative, interactive relationship between business and government. The authors argue that regulation -- often too narrowly defined as direct, command-and-control standard setting and enforcement -- should include the full range of activities intended to influence private behavior to conform to public goals. The concept of strategic regulatory planning that the book introduces provides a model for designing more effective environmental regulation. Strategic...

This survey of current issues and controversies in environmental policy and management is unique in its thematic mix, broad coverage of key debates and approaches, and in-depth analysis of concepts treated less thoroughly in other texts. The contributing authors, all distinguished scholars or practitioners, offer a comprehensive examination of key topics in environmental governance today, including perspectives from environmental economics, democratic theory, public policy, law, political science, and public administration. Environmental Governance Reconsidered is the first book to...

The United States and European countries are experimenting with a new generation of policy approaches for combating environmental degradation. Industrial Transformation evaluates the effectiveness of twelve innovative voluntary, collaborative, and information-based programs, focusing particularly on the effectiveness of these programs in bringing about industrial transformation -- changes in production and consumption structures that will help move their societies toward environmental sustainability.The twelve programs analyzed have the potential to create incentives for industry...

Environmental regulation in the United States has succeeded, to a certain extent, in solving the problems it was designed to address; air, water, and land, are indisputably cleaner and in better condition than they would be without the environmental controls put in place since 1970. But Daniel Fiorino argues in The New Environmental Regulation that -- given recent environmental, economic, and social changes -- it is time for a new, more effective model of environmental problem solving. Fiorino provides a comprehensive but concise overview of U.S. environmental regulation -- its...

The Business of Global Environmental Governance takes a political economy approach to understanding the role of business in global environmental politics. The book's contributors -- from a range of disciplines including international political economy, management, and political science -- view the evolution of international environmental governance as a dynamic interplay of economic structures, business strategies, and political processes. By providing comparative insights to the responses of business to major international environmental issues, the book illuminates the ways...

This systematic investigation of the interaction among international and European institutions provides both a theoretical framework for analysis and the first broad overview of this largely uncharted field of research. By offering detailed case studies and a systematic analysis of results, the book examines the effects of institutional interaction on environmental governance and explores the ways in which international and European Union policies can either reinforce or undercut one another.After a conceptual overview in which Oberthur and Gehring identify three causal mechanisms by which...

The precautionary principle--which holds that action to address threats of serious or irreversible environmental harm should be taken even in the absence of scientific certainty--has been accepted as a key feature of environmental law throughout the European Union. In the United States, however, it is still widely unknown, and much of what has been written on the topic takes a negative view. Precautionary Politics provides a comprehensive analysis of the precautionary principle--its origins and development, its meaning and rationale, its theoretical context, and its policy...