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This book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Focusing on the interaction of humans and their environment, the author traces changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a quarter of humankind. Through both word and image, this work illuminates the chaos and paradox inherent in China's environmental narrative, demonstrating how historically sustainable practices can, in fact, be profoundly ecologically unsound. The author also reevaluates China's traditional "heroic" storyline, highlighting the marginalization of nature that followed the spread of Chinese civilization while examining the development of a distinctly Chinese way of relating to and altering the environment. And also, he makes the compelling argument that all of humanity has a stake in China's environmental future

1. Pre-American ecology : environmental alteration is addressed (1100-1854) -- 2. Colonial environmentalism : the first land use & timber regulations (1681) -- 3. Transcending society : the sacrament of wilderness (1862) -- 4. The national park system : preserving wilderness for public use (1865) -- 5. Animals and the environment : creation of the ASPCA (1866) -- 6. The timber barons : profit vs. sustainability (1889) -- 7. The conservationists : save what is left of the forests (1901) -- 8. Naturalist in the capital, Theodore Roosevelt : American wilderness as America's cultural heritage (1908) -- 9. The park service : reforming the federal park management system (1908) -- 10. Lobbyists for life : devastating effects form unlikely alliance (1936) -- 11. The whole of the wild : interconnectiveness of nature (1944) -- 12. Change is in the air : the first Air Pollution Control Act (1955) -- 13. Environmental progress : synthetic pesticides and corporate accountability (1962) -- 14. The new danger : the protection of endangered species (1966) -- 15. Smoke on the water : the Environmental Protection Agency (1970) -- 16. The environmental days : the first Earth Day (1970) -- 17. Beyond the government : Greenpeace makes international headlines (1975) -- 18. Pollution solutions : changes in the automobile industry (1970) -- 19. Ozone depletion : success of the Montreal Protocol (1987) -- 20. Climate chaos part I : the first warning is sounded (1847) -- 21. Climate chaos part II : climate-change denial (1980s-2000s) -- 22. Globalizing environmentalism : international conferences (1972-2017) -- 23. Oceans in the balance : the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (1997) -- 24. Urbane ecology : development of green cities (1800s-present) -- 25. Renewing perspectives : harnessing wind, water, and sun (1960s-present) -- 26. Cyclic waste : reduce, reuse, recycle (1970s-present) -- 27. America's black heart : the debate over coal (2017) -- 28. Leaving the environment behind : environmental policies rolled back (2017).

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter 1 Anthropocentric environmentalism -- Placing (European) humans first -- Scrambles in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific -- Enter the environmentalists? -- To the 1900 convention -- The 1902 bird convention -- Marine life -- World war -- New hope? -- Chapter 2 From war through war -- Whaling -- Oil pollution -- Fisheries -- The 1933 convention -- Birds in North America -- Transboundary pollution -- A World again at war -- The United Nations -- Chapter 3 Cold war, science, and the environment -- Containment, fisheries, and whaling -- Korea -- Science, nature, and the cold war -- The Great Leap Forward -- The atomic arms race -- From moratorium to test ban -- Victory for the environmentalists? -- Chapter 4 Silent Spring, Stockholm, and the North-South divide -- The new environmentalism -- Vietnam and the environment -- Marine life -- Decolonization and the North-South divide -- LDCs and the environment -- Stockholm -- Stockholm's legacy -- Omens -- Chapter 5 Creating regimes -- Stockholm: A legacy lacking -- The Anglo-American shift -- Marine life -- Acid rain and the climate conundrum -- The ozone quandary -- Chernobyl -- The Persian Gulf War -- Addressing ozone -- Hazardous waste -- To Rio -- The Rio conference -- The resistance to environmental regimes -- Chapter 6 The Anthropocene epoch? -- Addressing the Rio Agenda -- NAFTA -- Marine life -- Hazardous waste -- The ozone layer and climate change -- Johannesburg -- The challenges persist -- The climate conundrum continues -- Paris -- Nuclear power and plastics -- In the Anthropocene? -- Conclusion: Accomplishments and challenges -- Accomplishments -- Challenges at sea -- Challenges on land: Poaching, poison, and radiation -- Demographic challenges

Icebergs, at present, are living a second life on screens. While they are one of the natural world's most photogenic objects, icebergs are also subject to modes of representation through parametric modeling applications. The purpose of this digital life on screens is largely confined to determining how, and under what conditions, icebergs can be made a source of potable water for the planet. Yet icebergs have a story to tell about the epistemological and economic production of northern natural resources. Distinct institutional actors, from oceanographers and military engineers to Saudi royalty and software design companies, have sought to control and come to know icebergs through specific practices of modeling. I argue that the representation of icebergs is a contingent practice that has often been bound up with processes of commodification. To come to know icebergs we have to come to know how these quintessentially polar phenomena have been represented and commodified, across the twentieth century and at a significant remove from the highest latitudes of the planet. The increasing pace of northern development, with natural resources at the vanguard of corporate and governmental incursions, signals the emergence of "media environments" that are extending the representation of (and control over) natural phenomena through a series of media technologies, from 3D modeling applications and collections of satellite data to virtual reality environments and predictive algorithms.

"Nature and technology have become critical issues, both empirically and theoretically, within the history of technology and related fields. This book comes at an important moment in the specialty's history: scholarly dialogue has been ongoing for more than a generation, with work under an explicit "envirotech" framework now entering its second decade. The goal of this book is to synthesize some of the critical topics and contributions in envirotech scholarship"--

In Indian context

How do we take stock of the state and direction of the world's environment, and what can we learn from the experience? Among the myriad detailed narratives about the condition of the planet, the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports—issued by the United Nations Environment Programme—stand out as the most ambitious. For nearly three decades the GEO project has not only delivered iconic global assessment reports, but through its multitude of contributors has inspired hundreds of similar processes worldwide from the regional to the local level. This book provides an inside account of the evolution of the GEO project from its earliest days. Building on meticulous research, including interviews with former heads of the United Nations Environment Programme, diplomats, leading contributing scientists, and senior leaders of collaborating organizations, the story is told from the perspective of five GEO veterans who all played a pivotal role in shaping the periodic assessments. The GEO's history provides striking insights and will save valuable time to those who commission, design and conduct, as well as critique and improve, assessments of environmental development in the next decade

How do we take stock of the state and direction of the world's environment, and what can we learn from the experience? Among the myriad detailed narratives about the condition of the planet, the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports—issued by the United Nations Environment Programme—stand out as the most ambitious. For nearly three decades the GEO project has not only delivered iconic global assessment reports, but through its multitude of contributors has inspired hundreds of similar processes worldwide from the regional to the local level. This book provides an inside account of the evolution of the GEO project from its earliest days. Building on meticulous research, including interviews with former heads of the United Nations Environment Programme, diplomats, leading contributing scientists, and senior leaders of collaborating organizations, the story is told from the perspective of five GEO veterans who all played a pivotal role in shaping the periodic assessments. The GEO's history provides striking insights and will save valuable time to those who commission, design and conduct, as well as critique and improve, assessments of environmental development in the next decade.