Jeremy J. Schmidt - Böcker

A study of oil-rich Alberta reveals the entwined relationships among geoscience, governance, and power.The Canadian province of Alberta holds the world’s fourth-largest reserve of fossil fuels, with oil sands famous for bitumen, a viscous form of petroleum. A clearinghouse for international environmental ideas and energy policies, Alberta pioneered state-led efforts to understand, extract, and sell bitumen. Without natural access to ocean ports, Alberta is reliant on pipelines to global markets, which are often hampered by neighboring provinces and nations alike. But Alberta is also landlocked in another sense: it is caught in an extractive relationship with oil-rich earth.In Landlocked, Jeremy J. Schmidt focuses on Alberta’s energy industry, particularly its use of water and oil, to argue for a new way to understand how political authority is forged and maintained through the environment. Schmidt details how water and oil were enrolled in early state-making projects, such as irrigation, before tracing the reverberating consequences, including a series of events in 2013 that released 4.2 million barrels of bitumen into underground environments. By uncovering the ways that geosciences supported activities—from land settlement to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples—that produced particular environmental policies and approaches to management and governance, he shows that geosciences aren’t merely instruments of state power, but central to Alberta’s political identity and legitimacy.

The planetary boundaries framework - one of the most influential ideas of our age - is used to describe human-Earth relationships. It shapes global environmental policy and new economic thinking. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to the planetary boundaries framework. It consists of eighteen chapters by scholars from disciplines ranging from international law to indigenous knowledge. Each chapter begins with an introduction before expanding into a critical analysis of the reach and limits of the boundary framework itself, with each of the nine frameworks the focus of two chapters. This volume comes at as a critical moment, when the unprecedented challenges of the climate crisis demand new approaches, tools and perspectives to questions of climate justice and sustainability. It is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students in environmental politics and ethics, geography, and Earth system science. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

An intellectual history of America's water management philosophyHumans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. This imbalance has created an era of intense water scarcity that affects the security of individuals, states, and the global economy. For many, this brazen water grab and the social inequalities it produces reflect the lack of a coherent philosophy connecting people to the planet. Challenging this view, Jeremy Schmidt shows how water was made a "resource" that linked geology, politics, and culture to American institutions. Understanding the global spread and evolution of this philosophy is now key to addressing inequalities that exist on a geological scale. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity details the remarkable intellectual history of America's water management philosophy. It shows how this philosophy shaped early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, influenced American international development programs, and ultimately shaped programs of global governance that today connect water resources to the Earth system. Schmidt demonstrates how the ways we think about water reflect specific public and societal values, and illuminates the process by which the American approach to water management came to dominate the global conversation about water. Debates over how human impacts on the planet are connected to a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.

An intellectual history of America's water management philosophyHumans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. This imbalance has created an era of intense water scarcity that affects the security of individuals, states, and the global economy. For many, this brazen water grab and the social inequalities it produces reflect the lack of a coherent philosophy connecting people to the planet. Challenging this view, Jeremy Schmidt shows how water was made a "resource" that linked geology, politics, and culture to American institutions. Understanding the global spread and evolution of this philosophy is now key to addressing inequalities that exist on a geological scale. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity details the remarkable intellectual history of America's water management philosophy. It shows how this philosophy shaped early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, influenced American international development programs, and ultimately shaped programs of global governance that today connect water resources to the Earth system. Schmidt demonstrates how the ways we think about water reflect specific public and societal values, and illuminates the process by which the American approach to water management came to dominate the global conversation about water. Debates over how human impacts on the planet are connected to a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.

The world's emerging water crisis has ignited efforts to reconnect policy to human values. According to the book, all approaches to managing water, no matter how grounded in empirical data, involve moral judgments and cultural assumptions. Each of the book's six sections discuses a different approach to thinking about the relationship between water and humanity, from utilitarianism to eco-feminism to religious beliefs. Contributors range from Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church to Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and water policy expert Sandra Postel. "Water Ethics" will help readers understand how various moral perspectives have guided and will continue to guide water policy around the globe.

This book presents a historically situated explanation of the rise of global water governance and the contemporary challenges that global water governance seeks to address.