This book provides a thought provoking outline of the solutions already in hand to the challenges now facing humanity with respect to prevalent gross social and economic inequalities, ecological thresholds and tipping points, and the ever-looming threat of climate catastrophe. The authors find these solutions in the arenas of renewable energy systems, agroecological methods, and reimagined social organization. Clarity is brought to the political economic obstacles standing in the way as well as the false solutions and alleged barriers that pervade the discourse thereby delaying and obstructing progress to the solutions advanced.
The authors provoke readers to face up to these challenges by demonstrating how people, all over the world, have already begun this effort through collective action ranging from the local to the global community. Drawing on their own and many other scholar's research, they reject a reliance on the "business as usual" approach trusting the capitalist market and existing global institutions, and provide an accessible popular account with thoroughly footnoted endnotes that contain technical details and references to the scientific literature.
The Earth is Not for Sale informs its readers and provides well-documented solutions in a bid to inspire readers to think critically, and potentially become more active in society.
Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, policy makers, and members of the general public dealing with or who are concerned about environmental issues, and who wish to understand what anyone can do about it.
Peter D Schwartzman has taught Environmental Studies at Knox College (in west-central Illinois, USA) since 1998. He holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences (University of Virginia, USA); an MSc in Science and Technology Studies (Virginia Tech, USA); and a BSc in Physics with a minor in Philosophy (Harvey Mudd College, USA). He has served as Alderman in Galesburg, IL since 2011, having been elected twice. He has co-founded two locally-focused non-profits (Knox Prairie Community Kitchen, and Growing Together, Inc.) and has served as a board member on many others (including, Galesburg Athletic Youth Club, Galesburg Farmers' Market Association, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, and Western Illinois Nature Group). He oversees two websites: solarutopia.org and onehuman.org (personal blog). He has two children and loves to play Scrabble, basketball and tennis.
David W Schwartzman is Professor Emeritus at Howard University (Washington D.C., USA) and is a biogeochemist and environmental scientist. He holds a PhD in Geochemistry from Brown University, USA. He contributes to his older son Peter Schwartzman's website solarUtopia.org. His publications include: Life, Temperature and the Earth (2002), and several recent papers in Capitalism Nature Socialism (CNS). David serves on the CNS Advisory Board, and is also on the Advisory Board of Science & Society, and the Institute for Policy Research & Development. He is an active member of the DC Statehood Green Party/Green Party of the United States as well as several other community organizations, especially since his retirement from Howard University at the end of June, 2012.
