Environment, power, and society for the twenty-first century
Subtitle: the hierarchy of energy
By: Howard T. Odum.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 418
ISBN-13: 9780231128865; 9780231128872
Subjects: Power resources; Energy consumption -- Environmental aspects
Description: Howard T. Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet. This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing his approach and insight to a whole new generation of students and scholars. For this edition Odum refines his original theories and introduces two new measures: emergy and transformity. These concepts can be used to evaluate and compare systems and their transformation and use of resources by accounting for all the energies and materials that flow in and out and expressing them in equivalent ability to do work. Natural energies such as solar radiation and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are diagrammed in terms of energy and emergy flow.

Through this method Odum reveals the similarities between human economic and social systems and the ecosystems of the natural world. In the process, we discover that our survival and prosperity are regulated as much by the laws of energetics as are systems of the physical and chemical world. Also includes information on agriculture, animals, available energy, biomass, capitalism, civilization, consumption, cycles, diversity, earth, economy, ecosystems, empower, alternative energy, environment, evolution, fossil fuels, fuels, growth, information, kinetic energy, energy laws, matter, metabolism, microcosm, models of energy systems, nations, nature, organic matter, organization, overgrowth, oxygen, photosynthesis, power, production, pulses, ratios, respiration, self organization, society, solar energy, storage, structure, sustainability, systems networks, transpiration, waste, work, yields, etc.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: This world system; title: Systems networks and metabolism; title: Energy laws and maximum power; title: Energy hierarchy and natural value; title: Energy and planet earth; title: Energy and ecosystems; title: Empower basis for society; title: Structure, information, and evolution; title: Energy and economics; title: Energetic organization of society; title: Energetic basis for religion; title: Partnership with nature; title: Climax and descent .