Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-First Century: Resources, Consumption, and Sustainable Solutions

Global warming, toxic waste, water and air pollution, acid rain, and shrinking energy supplies are frightening challenges that may threaten our future. Global Environmental Challenges provides important information and gives us hope about the environment. This book first helps us to grasp these difficulties, then shows us the choices we can make. How long to leave a light on, whether to take the car, the train, or bicycle to work, whether to recycle or throw away, whether to vote to curb continued suburban sprawl–all of these decisions can make a difference. This collection of some of the best essays and articles on the environment comes from a variety of sources. Five major sections investigate the interaction of population growth, consumption, and environment; the emerging crisis in freshwater around the globe; global climate and atmosphere (including global warming); biodiversity loss; and the concept of sustainable development - using natural resources to place future human development on a sustainable path. The final section on sustainable development reveals how action can be taken. This valuable resource offers readers a better under standing of our environmental problems and presents solutions to improving the health of the planet.