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Ecomodernism
Ecomodernism is an environmental philosophy which argues that technological development can protect nature and improve human wellbeing through eco-economic decoupling, i.e., by separating economic growth from environmental impacts. Description Ecomodernism embraces substituting natural ecological services with energy, technology, and synthetic solutions as long as they help reduce impact on environment. Among other things, ecomodernists embrace agricultural intensification, genetically modified and synthetic foods (for their reduced usage of herbicides and pesticides), fish from aquaculture farms, desalination and waste recycling, urbanization, and replacing low power-density energy sources (e.g. firewood in low-income countries, which leads to deforestation) with high power-density sources as long as their net impact on environment is lower (nuclear power plants, and advanced renewables). Key among the goals of an ecomodern environmental ethic is the use of technology to i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmentalism
Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the impact of changes to the environment on humans, animals, plants and non-living matter. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. ''Ecologism'' is more commonly used in continental European languages, while ''environmentalism'' is more commonly used in English but the words have slightly different connotations. Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and improvement of the natural environment and critical earth system elements or processes such as the climate, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whole Earth Discipline
''Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto'' is the sixth book by Stewart Brand, published by Viking Penguin in 2009. He sees Earth and people propelled by three transformations: climate change (global warming), urbanization and biotechnology. Brand tackles "touchy issues" like nuclear power, genetic engineering and geoengineering, "fully aware that many of the environmentalist readers he hopes to reach will start out disagreeing with him". Overview Brand said in an interview with ''Seed'' magazine, "...I'd accumulated a set of contrarian views on some important environmental issues—specifically, cities, nuclear energy, genetic engineering, and geoengineering—and that it added up to a story worth telling." The author cites numerous other authors both in the recommended reading section and in live lectures. In particular, book influences are ''Constant Battles'' by Steven A. LeBlanc with Katherine Register, ''Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World'' by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently '' Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto''. Life Brand was born in Rockford, Illinois, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He studied biology at Stanford University, graduating in 1960. As a soldier in the U.S. Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing. A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute, photography at San Francisco State College, and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD, in Menlo Park, California. In 1966, he married mathematician Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American.Brand 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial society, industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach. Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage (filmmaking), montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and modern architecture. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of Realism (arts), realism and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorpor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolutionary Economics
Evolutionary economics is part of mainstream economics as well as a heterodox school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology. Much like mainstream economics, it stresses complex interdependencies, competition, growth, structural change, and resource constraints but differs in the approaches which are used to analyze these phenomena. Some scholars prefer to call their evolutionary theory by a different names. Samuel Bowles named it "evolutionary social science" and Joachim Rennstich called it "evolutionary systems theory". Evolutionary economics deals with the study of processes that transform economy for firms, institutions, industries, employment, production, trade and growth within, through the actions of diverse agents from experience and interactions, using evolutionary methodology. Evolutionary economics analyzes the unleashing of a process of technological and institutional innovation by generating and testing a diversity of ideas which discover and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. Pragmatism began in the United States in the 1870s. Its origins are often attributed to the philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. In 1878, Peirce described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object."Peirce, C.S. (1878), " How to Make Our Ideas Clear", ''Popular Science Monthly'', v. 12, 286–302. Reprinted often, including ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Planning
Economic planning is a resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution. Planning is a mechanism for the allocation of resources between and within organizations contrasted with the market mechanism. As an allocation mechanism for socialism, economic planning replaces factor markets with a procedure for direct allocations of resources within an interconnected group of socially owned organizations which together comprise the productive apparatus of the economy. There are various forms of economic planning that vary based on their specific procedures and approach. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed. In addition, one can distinguish between centralized planning and decentralized planning. An economy primarily based on planning is referred to as a planned economy. In a centrall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soft Energy Path
In 1976, energy policy analyst Amory Lovins coined the term soft energy path to describe an alternative future where energy efficiency and appropriate renewable energy sources steadily replace a centralized energy system based on fossil and nuclear fuels. Background Amory Lovins came to prominence in 1976 when he published an article in ''Foreign Affairs'' called "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?". Lovins argued that the United States had arrived at an important crossroads and could take one of two paths. The first, supported by U.S. policy, promised a future of steadily increasing reliance on dirty fossil fuels and nuclear fission, and had serious environmental risks. The alternative, which Lovins called "the soft path," favored "benign" sources of renewable energy like wind power and solar power, along with a heightened commitment to energy conservation and energy efficiency. In October 1977, ''The Atlantic'' ran a cover story on Lovins's ideas. Soft vs hard Lovins viewed th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' rests on the following axioms: "the individual is the basic unit in society, i.e. the standard of measurement in social calculus; the individual has a natural right to freedom; and the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system." Another basic principle of ''laissez-faire'' holds that markets should naturally be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom by allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' proposed a ''impôt unique'', a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production. Proponents of ''l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Church Of Euthanasia
The Church of Euthanasia (also known as CoE) is a religion founded by Chris Korda and Robert Kimberk (Pastor Kim) in Boston, Massachusetts in 1992. As stated on its website, it is "a non-profit educational foundation devoted to restoring balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth." Its members affirm that this can only turn into a reality by a massive voluntary population reduction, which will depend on a leap in human consciousness to species-awareness. According to Korda, it is likely that this church is the world's only anti-human religion. Its most popular slogan is "Save the Planet, Kill Yourself," and its founding ideology is set in one commandment, "Thou Shalt not Procreate," and four main pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (of the already dead), and sodomy ("any sexual act not intended for procreation"). The church stresses population reduction by voluntary means only, and rejects murder and eugenics as a means of achieving it. The church promotes i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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