Changing the Global Environment

Perspectives on Human Involvement
By Daniel B. Botkin, Margriet Caswell, John E. Estes, and Angelo Orio

In 1956 a distinguished group of scientist met and wrote chapters in what became a classic book about people and environment, Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. With the development of the then new global perspective on life. Inspired by this book, a similarly distinguished group experts teamed up to write a book that took the same themes to a planetary level. The result was Changing the Global Environment: Perspectives on Human Involvement.

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More About the BookReviewsExcerpt

In the last human generation we have learned that life existed on our earth for more than three billion years, yet man has done more to change the earth and its ability to support life in the last few centuries than preceding life forms have over hundreds of millions of years. And nearly all of these changes were brought about as unforeseen or unconsidered side-effects of our technologies.

The editors of this book feel that rather than accepting environmental degradation as the wages of progress, today we are seeing "a more widely accepted idea that concern for the environment is simply good economics and planning."

In a series of essays written by environmental, economic, and social scientists from around the world, Changing the Global Environment looks at the ecological problems facing us as we move into the next century and examines possible solutions suggested by such new techniques as remote sensing and the implementation of worldwide computer-based data systems.

Edited by Daniel Botkin, economist M. Caswell, geographer and remote sensing expert J. E. Estes, and biologist A. Orio, it was originally published in 1989 by Academic Press, N.Y. This book was one of the products of a project intended to develop an international center for environmental studies on an otherwise unused island in the Venetian Lagoon, an idea suggested by a group of leading Venetian citizens and the government of that city.

Hardcover, Elsevier Science & Technology Books (July 1989)
ISBN-13: 9780121187316
ISBN: 0121187314

This book contains 27 essays written by environmental, economic and social scientists from around the world….They provide an overview of the role of human beings in changing the global environment: what we have done, are doing, and could accomplish in the future.
–Geocarto International

Multiple perspectives on global environmental concerns are effectively presented in this volume…
The focus of most current discussions of global environment is on the concept of sustainability; such is the case in this book, where it is done well.
–Environmental Professional