Energy, the Great Driver (eBook)

Seven Revolutions and the Challenges of Climate Change

R. Gareth Wyn Jones (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2019
160 Seiten
University of Wales Press (Verlag)
978-1-78683-424-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Energy use lies at the core of all biological and human activity. Unless we understand ours and the rest of natural world’s relationship with energy, we are doomed to disaster.

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Drawing on research and concepts from fields as varied as physics, biology, anthropology, behavioural psychology and economics, this volume proposes that two unifying threads can be identified running through the 4-billion-year history of life on this planet. The first is the exploitation of energy sources, coupled to an attendant capacity to do work and exert power, generating increasing material and social complexity; the second is a hierarchy of homeostatic regulatory mechanisms, which sequentially stabilise these evolving complexities and are essential to their sustainability and well-being. Six major step-changes in energy use are highlighted, from energising the first cell, out of equilibrium with its environment, to the latest, the industrial revolution fuelled by burning fossil hydrocarbons. Humans now face a seventh revolution, to energise society without these greenhouse gas emissions – however ill-adapted our historic (as hunter-gatherers-cookers) and recently constructed (as Homo economicus) homeostatic mechanisms are to this challenge.

'Given the huge inequalities in wealth and lifestyle, the energy and consequently CO2 footprints of the jet-setting elite from any country must be at least double, probably, treble, the mean, even the ‘rich’ countries. Energy use permeates all aspects of modern life. This is supplied largely by burning fossil fuels. Regrettably, it appears that the non-catastrophic-resolution of one of humanity’s gravest problems, global warming, is made more difficulty by nature of the homeostatic mechanisms that have historically modulated human behaviour.' - Read more about this on page 14 https://www.booklaunch.london/issue-6

 

Autor

Energy, the Great Driver will appeal to both those who are concerned about the growing problem of human-induced climate change, as well as those interested in contemporary scientific concepts and their application to the connections between earth systems and human society.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Prologue
Chapter I: Introduction
Chapter II: The Mysterious Origins of Life
Chapter III: Harvesting the Sun
Chapter IV: A Structural Revolution: Complex Cells
Chapter V: The Hominid Factor
Chapter VI: ‘Food Glorious Food’?
Chapter VII: Fossil Fuels –An Energy Bonanza
Chapter VIII: The Homeostatic Hierarchy.
Chapter IX: Emergent Patterns
Chapter X: The Gathering Storm – Greenhouse Gases: The Effluence of Affluence
Chapter XI: On human behaviour and our social and physical constructs
Chapter XII: Denouement?
Chapter XIII: The Human Factor
Notes
References

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.10.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
• Schlagworte: challenges • Change • Climate • Driver • Energy • Great • of • revolutions • SEVEN
• ISBN-10: 1-78683-424-3 / 1786834243
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78683-424-9 / 9781786834249