Best of
Environment

1972

The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update


Donella H. Meadows - 1972
    Their results shocked the world and created stirring conversation about global 'overshoot,' or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Now, preeminent environmental scientists Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have teamed up again to update and expand their original findings in The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global Update.Meadows, Randers, and Meadows are international environmental leaders recognized for their groundbreaking research into early signs of wear on the planet. Citing climate change as the most tangible example of our current overshoot, the scientists now provide us with an updated scenario and a plan to reduce our needs to meet the carrying capacity of the planet.Over the past three decades, population growth and global warming have forged on with a striking semblance to the scenarios laid out by the World3 computer model in the original Limits to Growth. While Meadows, Randers, and Meadows do not make a practice of predicting future environmental degradation, they offer an analysis of present and future trends in resource use, and assess a variety of possible outcomes.In many ways, the message contained in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a warning. Overshoot cannot be sustained without collapse. But, as the authors are careful to point out, there is reason to believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to Earth if it takes appropriate measures to reduce inefficiency and waste.Written in refreshingly accessible prose, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a long anticipated revival of some of the original voices in the growing chorus of sustainability. Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update is a work of stunning intelligence that will expose for humanity the hazy but critical line between human growth and human development.

Food for Free (Collins Gem)


Richard Mabey - 1972
    Over 100 edible plants are listed, fully illustrated and described, together with recipes and other fascinating details on their use throughout the ages.Practical advice on how to pick along with information on countryside laws and regulations on picking wild plants helps you to plan your foray with a feast in mind.This is the ideal book for both nature lovers and cooks keen to enjoy what the countryside has to offer.

A Whale for the Killing


Farley Mowat - 1972
    When an 80-ton fin whale became trapped in a nearby saltwater lagoon, Mowat rejoiced: here was the first chance to study at close range one of the most magnificent animals in creation. Some local villagers thought otherwise, blasting the whale with rifle fire and hacking open her back with a motorboat propeller. Mowat appealed desperately to the authorities, but it was too late-ravaged by an infection resulting from her massive wounds, the whale died. A plea for the end of commercial hunting of the whale, this moving account blends all the tension of the life-and-death struggle for one animal's survival with the drama of man's wanton destruction of life-bearing creatures and the environment itself.

Round River


Aldo Leopold - 1972
    These daily journal entries on hunting, fishing and exploring, written in camp during his many field trips in lower California, New Mexico, Canada, and Wisconsin, indicate the source of Leopold's ideas on land ethics found in his longer essays. The excerpts from these journals—many taken from notes written around a camp fire, spattered with a slapped mosquito or a drop of coffee—show in direct context what he did in his own leisure time. The essays are taken from more contemplative notes which were still in manuscript when Leopold died, fighting a grass fire in 1948. Round River has been edited by Leopold's son, Luna, a geologist well-known in the field of conservation. It is also illustrated throughout with line drawings by Charles W. Schwartz. All admirers of Leopold's work—indeed, all lovers of nature—will find this book richly rewarding.

The Times Concise Atlas of the World


The Times - 1972
    An amazingly detailed view of the world is provided by 260 pages of mapping, and the illustrated thematic content covers the most important geographical issues of the day. The reference mapping has been completely revised with thousands of changes reflecting recent geopolitical and geographical changes around the world. The 26 new World Heritage sites added in July 2012, such as the Landscape of Pré in Canada, Western Ghats in India, and the site of Xanadu in China, are all represented here. Other updates include the addition of Queen Elizabeth Land in Antarctica; new administrative divisions in India, Bangladesh, Chad, and Finland; the largest cities sizes based on latest UN figures; updated English place name forms for countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Georgia; and the realigned International Date Line around Samoa. The index contains more than 130,000 place names, fully cross-referenced with alternative and former names.

The Poor Man's James Bond


Kurt Saxon - 1972
    It embodies all the practical paramilitary knowledge collected and studied by dissident groups through-out America.

The Great American Forest


Rutherford Hayes Platt - 1972
    In the fantastic sweep of 100 million years, Platt telescopes the drama for forests marching across continents creating a new world of life and then closes in on the minutest rituals of tree life to explain the mechanics and wonder of how sap runs.

Notes of an Alchemist


Loren Eiseley - 1972
    Eiseley describes this book as a "kind of alchemy...by which a scientific man has transmuted for his personal pleasure these sharp images into something deeply subjective."

Book Of British Birds (Readers Digest)


Reader's Digest Association - 1972
    There are also entries for a further 117 rarer species. Readers will find out how to identify birds by shape, color and flight action, as well as learning about their evolution and navigation systems.

Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance


Charles J. Krebs - 1972
    The author emphasizes the role of experiments in testing ecological ideas, discusses many contemporary, controversial problems, and explains all mathematical concepts of ecology and reinforces concepts with research references and chapter-ending review questions. This edition has been updated and reviewed by experts in the field to feature coverage of the emerging areas of behavioural and physiolgical ecology and a more in-depth discussion of population genetics, mutualism and succession. It also includes a new two-colour format, four-colour insert, and new features to aid learning.

Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra


Ann Zwinger - 1972
    No other book has ever looked so closely, so thoroughly, and so charmingly at this important and fragile ecological zone.

Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish


Michael Foreman - 1972
    When Man decides to explore a distant star, he leaves the Earth in a terrible mess. He can only return to Earth if he learns to care for it. A book for any child who takes an interest in the world around them.

The White Island


John Lister-Kaye - 1972
    

The Spotted Hyena: A Study of Predation and Social Behavior


Hans Kruuk - 1972
    

The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture


Albert Howard - 1972
    Howard's The Soil and Health became a seminal and inspirational text in the organic movement soon after its publication in 1945. The Soil and Health argues that industrial agriculture, emergent in Howard's era and dominant today, disrupts the delicate balance of nature and irrevocably robs the soil of its fertility. Howard's classic treati