Best of
Ecology

1971

Encounters with the Archdruid


John McPhee - 1971
    The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside


Edward Abbey - 1971
    In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

Nature's Children


Juliette De Bairacli Levy - 1971
    Back in print at last! Remedies, recipes, and fascinating lore on nourishing and healing children naturally."Surely this is how our children were meant to be raised and nourished! In harmony with the rhythms of the earth, seasons, wild creatures, and plants, the author shares her knowledge and compassion. How I wish I had known of Nature's Children when my son was younger, but it's never too late to begin employing the remedies and recipes contained in this marvelous book which is dedicated to the simple life and family health."

An Island Called California: An Ecological Introduction to Its Natural Communities


Elna Bakker - 1971
    Striking new photographs illustrate the diversity of life, climate, and geological formation.

The Entropy Law and the Economic Process


Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen - 1971
    This is such a book, yet it is more. It is a "poetic" philosophy, mathematics, and science of economics. It is the quintessence of the thought that has been focused on the economic reality. Henceforce all economists must take these conclusions into account lest their analyses and scholarship be found wanting. "The entropy of the physical universe increases constantly because there is a continuous and irrevocable qualitative degradation of order into chaos. The entropic nature of the economic process, which degrades natural resources and pollutes the environment, constitutes the present danger. The earth is entropically winding down naturally, and economic advance is accelerating the process. Man must learn to ration the meager resources he has so profligately squandered if he is to survive in the long run when the entropic degradation of the sun will be the crucial factor, "for suprising as it may seem, the entire stock of natural resources is not worth more than a few days of sunlight!" Georgescu-Rogen has written our generation's classic in the field of economics."Library Journal

Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy


Howard T. Odum - 1971
    Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet.This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing his approach and insight to a whole new generation of students and scholars. For this edition Odum refines his original theories and introduces two new measures: emergy and transformity. These concepts can be used to evaluate and compare systems and their transformation and use of resources by accounting for all the energies and materials that flow in and out and expressing them in equivalent ability to do work. Natural energies such as solar radiation and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are diagrammed in terms of energy and emergy flow. Through this method Odum reveals the similarities between human economic and social systems and the ecosystems of the natural world. In the process, we discover that our survival and prosperity are regulated as much by the laws of energetics as are systems of the physical and chemical world.

Animals, Men and Morals: An Enquiry Into the Maltreatment of Non-Humans


Stanley Godlovitch - 1971