Search

This essay combines historical research with developmental psychology and Piagetian Cross-Cultural Psychology. It will be shown that the empirical data that evidence major psychological differences between premodern and modern peoples can be applied to the study of history generally. The differences in mind, language, worldview, religion, literature, and sciences between pre-civilized peoples, archaic kingdoms, ancient civilizations, and modern industrial society can be connected to distinct differences in developmental stage. Data are presented that reveal a continuous rise in the final cognitive stage of adults through the four historical periods. Ancient Egypt lies in the middle between nature peoples and post-axial civilizations, in terms of developmental stages. The post-axial civilizations again are more developed than the archaic kingdoms, but less than modern industrial civilization. Stages of cognitive development can help us understand the distinctions of cultural development that historians make when comparing these cultures. Indeed, such a developmental approach may revolutionize the study of history.

The article analyzes the place and role of changing the knowledge paradigm in the self-deployment of industrial civilization in accordance with the life cycle of the industrial education system; the content of education determines, as it turns out, all other parameters of the teaching and educational process, because it is a product of the development of fundamental science on the one hand, and on the other – determines the state of scientific and technological process on the basis of which there is a revolutionary change in the means of production, which entails a change in the so-called technological structures and poses the problem of compliance of the workforce functional means of production; on the basis of these changes, the global and regional communities have steadily risen along the axis of the evolutionary development of the social world, leaving behind artifacts of culture of one or another historical age on the shelves of the planetary archive; it is argued that two methodological conditions must be used to analyze the dynamics of knowledge change: to apply the civilizational approach and the paradigm of the life cycle of social systems, since this phenomenon has a long-lasting dimension in space and time; it is emphasized that knowledge is the basic and system-forming element of self-deployment of civilization and therefore it can be used (according to Foucault) as a methodological criterion for assessing the quality of life of civilization; the meaning of educational content at each stage of industrial civilization life is distinguished: natural knowledge prevailed at the stage of its origin; at the stage of growth – technical knowledge that corresponded to the essence of civilization itself; at the stage of maturity – scientific knowledge turned into ideologues of social development, which led to the emergence of technocratism and "drove" the planetary community into a dead end; at the stage of decline – technological knowledge led to the loss of mainstream guide of social development and began the catastrophic destruction of the social organism of the planet, which entails a change in the type of civilizational development; the solution is seen in the rise of the planetary community into the space of informational civilization, the transition of education to mastering methodological knowledge corresponds to it.

The waste problem is closely related to the traditional cognition of human waste accepted by the earth, the invention and use of plastics, the industrialization of social economic structure, urbanization and the development of science and technology. Ecologically, waste is the “external input” of ecosystem. From the view of nature, the waste problem can also be attributed to the anti-natural expansion of modern industrial civilization. Waste is also the end of the chain of “science-technology-product-industry-pollution and waste”. Waste is related to the ideology of industrial civilization. It is believed that it is the right of human beings to obtain resources from nature and discard wastes indefinitely. The ecological cost is placed outside the calculation scope of economic development, and nature is regarded as the raw material storehouse and disposal site.

Ecological civilization is not a new form of civilization that will replace the current industrial civilization, but a basic structure or factor running through all forms of civilization (f...

The industrial civilization doubtlessly represents huge progress of mankind, but as traditional industrial mode is unsustainable, ecological civilization has become the only choice to achieve sustainable development. When we discuss ecological civilization, one typical thinking is to equate it with green industrial civilization, which hopes to resolve environmental problems through technological progress under the traditional industrial mode.

The emergence of an industrial civilization is the historical roots of all modern conflicts. On the one hand, as Friedrich Engels said, it not only promotes the progress of material civilization, but also is conducive to the development of spiritual civilization. On the other hand, while advancing the capitalist civilization, the industrial civilization overly exploited natural resources, showing a strong anthropocentric tendency, which ultimately would lead to a deterioration of the balance between man and nature. The anthropocentric tendency of an industrial civilization emphasizes the conquest of nature by humans. This tendency allows humans to set rules for the world with peace of mind, and use such rules to develop and utilize the natural world, treating nature as a source of wealth instead of a friend.

As the world is going through profound changes never seen in a century, the human civilization is also switching from industrial civilization to ecological civilization. Upholding the basic governance philosophy of ecological civilization and guided by the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, especially the Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core has materialized historic, epochal and all-round changes in China’s ecological civilization by promoting the green initiative of building a beautiful China.

In the era of industrial civilization, the economy and society are highly developed and a large amount of social wealth has been accumulated, but at the same time, it has brought about irreparable ecological trauma.Foster in his book Marx's ecology, talk about "Marx's ecology" for the first time, he puts forward "ecological Marxism" point of view, and stood in the perspective of Marxist ecological theory and the nature of capitalism from the Marxism reveals to criticize capitalism, dedicated to social and ecologically sustainability, building ecological theory system of its own.

The accelerated progress of modern science and technology and the appearance of global ecological crisis have both made us realize the end of an old age and the arrival of a new one as we are moving from industrial civilization to a new civilization. There are various views as to what defines the new age or civilization and how we should name it. Two views are worth special attention—the new age or civilization is about ecology or about information. This paper will compare the two views and briefly delineate the vision of the new civilization.

In modern times, Western industrial civilization spread into China which impacted the traditional construction system. Tianjin is the city with the largest number of concessions in modern China, and it is also one of the main cities and pioneers of modern transformation in China. With the introduction of Western construction technology, the import of building materials, and their integration with native craft, new building cladding materials emerged in the concessions of modern Tianjin, which became one of the important factors characterizing the transformation of modern Chinese architecture. As a representative area within the concessions of modern Tianjin, the Wudadao historical area represents the latest and advanced construction materials and technology of that time. This article takes the historical buildings in Wudadao area as a case study on the use of building cladding materials, by discussing their type, texture, color and construction, and presenting the development and evolution of architecture in modern Tianjin at the micro-level.

The 18th National Congress of the CPC proposed the path of ecological civilization for China, the first time the banner of ecological civilization was held up in the world and marking a milestone in the twenty-first century. It demonstrates the confidence and commitment of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core for seeking a path different from the western path of industrial civilization with eastern wisdom to adapt to the requirements of the times.

With the advancement of industrial civilization it has been a great concern how climate has been changed over time. Climatology has become an immensely important area to study for the understanding of our environment and its change. Climate data contain huge amount of information about the history of different areas. Data mining is one the fast and growing technique in analysis of large amount of data. In this paper, we have focused on the climate data of different area of Bangladesh. We have studied the climate data of 60 years and found the patterns of each area about how they have been changed over time. Moreover, we have found the trend of change in different area of Bangladesh and the similarity among the areas in the context of trend.

Green civilization is a product of economic development at a particular historical stage. It is the common form of human civilizations following the industrial civilization. In this case, green civilization must be erected upon on a higher level of industrial development, that is, a green industry. This chapter focuses on the following themes: the significance of exploring green industry, greening of traditional industries, fostering green energy industry, promoting eco-environmental agriculture, and driving cultural industry with green development.

Through a diachronic comparison of the environmental consciousness in the United States and in China in the last chapter, we can see that awareness of environmental issues rose rapidly in the United States from the 1960s to the early 1970s. That was around the time that the first wave of environmental consciousness had been formed in the society with the first wave of industrial civilization. During that time, the establishment of heavy industry with coal, metallurgy, and chemical in western society, economics rose fast in those countries; however, environmental problems with pollutions and nature resources deterioration became more and more serious. As a short summary of the previous chapters, Meuse Valley fog killed 60 people in Belgium due to a combination of industrial air pollution and climatic conditions in 1930 (Nemery, Hoet, & Nemmar, 2001); Donora smog killed 20 people and sickened 7000 more in Donora, Pennsylvania, the United States in 1948; then in 1952, “Great smog” or “Big smoke” affected London, 4000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract (Seinfeld, 2004); in 1956, Minamata disease was first discovered in Minamata city in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan and 1784 had died (Environmental Health Department, n.d.).

This chapter analyses in detail Straub-Huillet’s Kafka adaptation Class Relations, with special attention paid to language and power in the film and the filmmakers’ use of space, as this was their first film from which each scene was filmed from only one camera position. What this choice does to the place of the spectator in relation to the film’s protagonist is related to the poems George Oppen wrote in his Discrete Series, especially in his effacing the role of an “I” narrator.

Global changes in the modern world cannot be adequately described on the basis of neoliberal thinking and require a new approach. It can be formed on the basis of the cyclical-wave characterization of the development of mankind. The hypothesis about the wave-like development of the world economy with a certain cyclicity lies at the heart of thisresearch. The authors determined the economic basis of the formation, development and change of these waves (technological ways and technical revolutions). These changes reflect in the cyclical fluctuations of the world economy.The mechanism of these fluctuations is described by the theory of "large cycles of the economic conjuncture" by N. Kondratiev. The authors propose a methodology and methodological tools for analyzing and forecasting cyclic-wave processes in the economic development. The study has concluded that it is the regularities of K-cycles that allow one to correctly assess the ongoing processes in the world economy, to forecast possible variants of their development. The authors came to the conclusion that the development of the world economic structure is necessarily accompanied by a cyclical shift in the instruments of capital accumulation (material and financial expansion). These processes are reflected in the periodic replacement of scientific paradigms of economic development and management. The state always takes an active part in the phase of the dominance of productive capital, and the ideological paradigm is of a directing nature. While in the phase of domination of financial capital the liberal paradigm becomes dominant. We have substantiated the thesis about the transition from the American to the Asian systemic cycle of capital accumulation, which would inevitably lead in the middle of the 21st century to the shift of the center of the world economy from the West to the East. The paper concludes that the world is facing a change from the Monopolistic world economic structure to the Integrated world economic structure. The authors formulated the main contradiction of our present day - the confrontation of the dying Industrial Civilization in the face of the cumulative West and the emerging Information Society. The authors analyzed the main tendencies, problems and possible alternatives to the development of the world economy. It can ensure the development and adoption of political decisions for the most painless transition of Russia to the emerging forms and institutions of the global economy. © 2018 Institute of Economics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. The article has been prepared with the support by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the research project No. 18-010-00500).

The paper highlights the fundamental changes in the way of thinking in science and the management practice caused by the transition from the era of industrial civilization to the information civilization. These include the change in the subject of management, i.e. the transition from the management of the organization to the management of joint projects; from the requirement of flexibility from own resources to the ability to use external resources and the departure from the methodological rationality of a decision to the material rationality. The change of management philosophy is particularly evident in the electronic market which sets a new and interesting research area, due to its cognitive appeal resulting from different conditions in comparison to the traditional market, and due to the high dynamics of development. The article is theoretical and its purpose is cognitive. Its subject is a fragment of the author’s concept of the evolution of management in the organizational space. It presents the synthesis of observations on the transformations of the essence of management. To undertake such a research task is motivated by the argument that one of the tasks of management science is to visualize the changes that take place within it, in order to induce the revision of anchored old cognitive patterns inadequate to reality and replace them with new, described by an appropriate conceptual apparatus.

The necessity of the economy and society produced by ecological aesthetics must explain whether the form of human civilization should achieve a new transition from industrial civilization to ecological civilization.

The final chapter examines the future of industrial agriculture given the decline of the fossil-fuel era and the likely collapse of industrial-based civilization, as the material base on which the entire system depends disappears. This section discusses that a perceived and increasingly artificial, hyper-technologized, gray, and disarticulated future—like the images of Hollywood cinema—responds to linear scenarios, based on the idea of scientific and technical progress and the preconception of the city as the ultimate goal. However, given the impossibility of continuing to feed energy into the dynamics of accumulation, we face a critical disruptive scenario, in which the system must self-organize in another way. If we take seriously the inevitable depletion of the energy and material sources that underpinned the growth of industrial civilization and capitalism, then we can imagine many other possibilities for the future: deindustrialized, de-urbanized, and greener, smaller-scale societies, with simpler technologies, and a massive return to rural settlements. Without trying to prophesize, I argue that in any potential scenarios, agroecology will accompany our transition to other forms of civilization. In fact, I think this is an opportunity to dream of other landscapes with forests integrated into an agroecological rhizome and with human populations living in their interior. In any case, other future possibilities different from the imaginaries of progressive artificialness would require not only a change in the technical and political-economic platform but also a profound ontological and spiritual change.

In the previous chapter, we discussed the socioeconomic background of ecological aesthetics. We discussed the gradual transition from industrial civilization to ecological civilization from the middle of the 20th century.

Images are the key for us to sort out modern British history and study the development of early industrial civilization. This paper takes the most classic representative works of those immortal artists in the long river of British art to create a section of immortal history, and review the historical fragments of modern Britain from the painting brush of art masters, and intuitively feel the historical customs, dress etiquette and natural scenery of Britain at that time.

This article examines turn-of-the-twentieth-century US world’s fairs and the postage stamps that were issued in their honor. The fairs celebrated the progress of industrial civilization, in part by anchoring themselves to a historical origin point (such as Columbus’ voyages), and the post office designed the accompanying stamps to commemorate a historical story deemed to be nationally significant. Both the origin point and the history associated with it were located within a time-space matrix defined by prior processes of mapping the national territory and standardizing time reckoning within it. The commemorative stamps were sold on the fairgrounds, where they could be postmarked to locate them precisely in time and space as souvenirs of what would become past events that would have value in the future. These overlain commemorative practices reveal how the raw materials of history—time and space—have to be manipulated before the history-making practices of modern societies can even begin.

This article deals with the relationship between development, creativity, and culture. It is based on the works of Celso Furtado — a Brazilian economist, a member of ECLAC’s first generation of scholars (along with Raul Prebisch), and a notable intellectual of sub-development and development in Brazil and Latin America. For Furtado, economic development is an endogenous social process that leads to human ingenuity and creativity. However, Furtado argued that creativity does not occur haphazardly. It is conditioned by cultural structures that can take two forms: material (means) or immaterial (ends). The former steers creativity toward serving material accumulation and consumption, while the latter guides it toward individuals’ existential way of life. Furtado’s central claim is that, in the “industrial civilization,” such values as rationality and efficiency bring human creativity into the production process.

Diante da pandemia do Novo Coronavírus, muitos foram os problemas levantados pela filosofia a partir do modo “imunitário” com o qual a civilização industrial lidou com a crise, e muito tem sido aventado sobre a necessidade de se repensar o sentido da noção de comunidades de apoio e de resistência. Exemplos disso não faltam; dentre os filósofos que abordaram a crise, encontram-se desde Giorgio Agamben a Paul B. Preciado, entre outros. Neste artigo, pretendemos partir da discussão sobre imunologia e paradigma imunitário em Roberto Espósito para nos perguntar de que modo podemos pensar essa demanda por “comunidade” em meio a uma crise imunitária, no sentido biológico e político do termo. Temos por hipótese que, mais do que postular a oposição exclusiva dos termos, levantar a questão pela articulação deles nos abre dois modos possíveis de relação com a alteridade abissal que encontramos no vírus.

The construction of ecological civilization in the harmonious development of man and nature as the basic characteristics, is an inevitable historical development. With the rapid development of industrial civilization today, the construction of ecological civilization is more and more national attention. China of higher education and personnel training has always been the case and the ruling party's governing philosophy is closely related. The higher education is one of the important ways to cultivate highquality youth and society, is the base of cultivating high-quality talents. The concept of ecological governance effect on higher education is relatively large, mainly reflected in the change of education philosophy, education curriculum innovation, innovation and other aspects of teaching methods.

espanolLa cultura es todo, desde la invencion de la maquina hasta la critica de la maquina; puede funcionar como motor del desarrollo sostenible y como actitud consciente en contra del “productivismo extractivista y depredador” o puede llevar en su seno el impulso hacia el consumo sin fin. La edu educacion ambiental que ensena a cuidar el agua y a clasificar en origen es parte de la cultura oficial, pero sus posibilidades de cambiar el rumbo de la civilizacion industrial son infimas. La relacion entre la cultura y el ambiente, y sus posibles influencias, continuara generando espejismos mientras no se acepte que el estado actual del ambiente es un fruto de nuestra cultura EnglishCulture is everything, from the invention of the machine to the criticism of the machine; It can actas an engine of sustainable development and as a conscious barrier to “extractive and predatory productivism” or can foster endless consumption. The environmental education that teaches to take care of the water and to classify in origin is part of the official culture, but its possibilities of changing the course of the industrial civilization are slim. The relationship between culture and the environment, and its possible influences, will continue to generate mirages until it is accepted that the current state of the environment is a result of our culture

Persistently revisiting the notion of a Godless society, Aleksei Balabanov directly dialogued with Fedor Dostoevskii’s cursed question and established a permanent touchstone for his own representations of Russia/the USSR, with the help of William Faulkner’s potboiler Sanctuary, in Cargo 200 (Gruz 200, 2007). Balabanov assembled a cinematic text for viewers, drawing on philosophical ideas articulated by the character Ivan Karamazov, filtered through a vulgar reinterpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche and constructed within the context of socialist realism’s own version of the Grand Inquisitor. Faulkner’s entire novel was forcibly relocated to the Soviet Union, where the degradation of the American South is offered as the wreckage of an industrial civilization tottering on the verge of collapse – or the late Stagnation period. Through the bricolage of Dostoevskii and Faulkner, Balabanov explores the realities of a Godless, morally corrupt Soviet society in which anything and everything is permitted. In so doin...

Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism is situated in a larger social metaphysic and philosophical anthropology. This paper investigates some of these overarching intellectual commitments and their implications for his arguments about nationalism. Two main issues are examined. Does the method of �philosophic history� provide any philosophical or methodological support for his treatment of nationalism? What are the implications of the common culture of industrial civilization for his arguments about nationalism? Addressing these issues together contributes to the continuing evaluation of Gellner's work, particularly to recent discussion of his arguments about necessity and nationalism.

International cooperation to address climate change now stands at a crossroads. With a new international regime for emissions reduction established by the Durban Platform, “New Climate Economics (NCE)” has become a research hotspot. The need for urgent action to combat climate change has prompted discussion on reforms of economic growth patterns and the energy system. The industrial civilization, therefore, now faces a transition towards a new pathway for ecological sustainability. NCE explores new economic concepts, theories, and analytical methods to design a balanced pathway for sustainable growth and emission reduction. Instead of getting trapped in discussions on allocation of emission reduction responsibilities and obligations among countries, NCE pays more attention to developing win-win multilateral cooperation mechanisms that facilitate collaborative R&D and knowledge sharing. In addition, NCE studies incentives for low-carbon transition, turning carbon emission reduction into a domestic need for...

This article examines Industrial Design as a profession that supports the modern-capitalist civilization pattern, which has harmful effects on a global level. In response, it states the possible creation of alternatives to coexist with industrial civilization; these alternatives are development-oriented equivalents of Design that have emerged from traditions that difer from the dominant Western traditions, and originated in locations relegated geographically, as well as in hegemonic epistemo-logical locations. The article concludes that the Designs of the South have been present throughout history; time is required to recognize the Designs, to start designing and be designed by them.

The value paradigm dominant in the contemporary world is one of the reasons of the global crisis. It is crucial to reconsider the ways to attain sustainable development of humankind. The theme of this article is environmental ethics as a conceptual basis of global sustainable development. The ecological component of sustainable development should maintain the integrity of biological natural systems. Viability of ecosystems on which global stability of the entire biosphere rests is of special importance.

Quebec visual artist Isabelle Hayeur has become known internationally over the past decade for a body of photographic and video work that deals mostly in pseudorealistic landscapes of man-made desolation and devastation, created by the digital photomanipulation of visual evidence of the entropy generated by “development.” Collapsing time and space, cause and effect, visible power and its hidden costs in a single image, she subtly conflates seemingly contradictory aspects of industrial civilization (construction/destruction, spectacle/invisible, power/refuse) in deadpan epics of tragic irony characterized by a disenchanted sublime. Heidegger’s concept of the gigantic helps elucidate this paradox; his definition of modernity as “the conquest of the world as picture” is used here to understand the dark spectacle of its development in terms of the photographic medium itself in a sample of Hayeur’s work since 2008.

This article presents an almost unknown aspect of the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado that goes far beyond his more evident economic and social considerations on underdevelopment, to the fields of culture, philosophy, and environment. In this sense, he is one of the most important and distinguished authors of Brazilian political thought. The influence of the German sociologist Karl Manheim in his work is analyzed, in addition to those of Hegel and Marx. Finally, the text deepens two relevant issues in Furtado’s work: (i) the construction of a systemic vision and (ii) the critical monitoring of the development, processing, and ruptures in the intellectual production of the contemporary West. Strong and new insights are revealed in his analysis of creativity and dependence on industrial civilization.

Transformation from industrial civilization to ecological civilization requires that people should establish the ecological consciousness that accordance with the requirements of the ecological civilization era. So ecological consciousness should be widely and deeply cultivated in colleges. The implementation of education should follow a rational philosophy thinking mode and the process philosophy provides this paradigm for us. It requires that educators take students' social life as background and guide students to use their rationality, consciously accept and foster the ecological awareness, and guide their owe ecological behavior.

In the era of agricultural civilization, the city size and layout adapted to nature and natural productivity; while in the era of industrial civilization, the constraints of natural productivity were broken by technological means, and the increasing returns to scale have enabled the urban population size to exceed 10 million and the urban population density to exceed 10,000 people/km2. Under the paradigm of industrial civilization, the spatial agglomeration of resources is driven by economic rationality. Besides, China’s urban hierarchy has become a barrier and further strengthened the polarization trend of city size, resulting in an urban system in which the cities at higher administrative levels concentrate a lot of resources while suffering from prominent urban diseases, small- and medium-sized cities lack development vitality, and urban and rural areas are separated from each other. The historical experience that the flow of resource factors between urban and rural areas facilitates a relatively balanced spatial distribution of quality resources is worth learning. Under the paradigm of ecological civilization, it is important to harmonize humans with nature in the transformation and reconstruction by pursuing nature-based solutions, and build a low-carbon, resilient, and coordinated urban system.

Purpose. Outline the range of problems which are illustrative of modern industrial civilization, reflect its controversial nature and humanity prospects in its conditions. Rapid development of scientific and technical progress gradually, from the late of 60s onwards of XX century become lead to problems realization which scientific and technical progress is generates, lead to understanding that without serious and careful monitoring of its development and necessary philosophical analysis of these problems, there is a danger of "post-human" world formation in future. Methodology . Author uses systemic and analytical research methods. Scientific novelty. Multifaceted approach to designation and analysis of problems was carried out, which faced by modern humanity in conditions of industrial civilization. Practical importance of this work is primarily in that it focuses on the need of speedy, serious and circumspect attention to those problems in future in order to avoid dangers that they hold for humanity. Besides, material which is presented in this article could be used in teaching of social and humanitarian courses. Conclusions. The findings can be summarized in following conceptual issues: scientific and technical progress is a major factor in development of modern industrial civilization. It is generated a large range of problem that requires an understanding of necessity for tight control of technology development. Spontaneous, non-circumspect it further development and use could gradually lead to "posthuman world”. Danger of such scenario must generate the need of more attention, discussion and analysis of already existing problems and take measures that will ensure the survival of humanity in conditions of modern industrial civilization.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the most famous novels of Thomas Hardy. Tess—the heroine brings us deep inspiration and profound reflection. And the author Thomas Hardy describes the impacts of the industrial civilization on a village panoramically, then Tess as an individual miniature, further shows the people struggle in the plight of the struggle in the material. Tess is difficult to be recognized by the society, which makes her realize the hypocrisy of bourgeois society and the distortion of ethics. Briefly in this paper, the author tries to find out the causes of the tragedy of Tess by analyzing the characteristics of Tess and the male characters in Tess’ life and make people have a better understanding of the literary work.

When a society transits to a new type of civilization, institutional innovation is indispensable to constantly regulate and accelerate the transition process. During transition from farming civilization to industrial civilization, through institutional innovation, capitalism was created and improved. While the ecological civilization institutional system will not totally deny the industrial civilization, it will form and improve on the basis of industrial civilization and through continuous innovation.

The rapid development of industrial civilization to a certain extent, caused serious environmental pollution and ecological damage, causing people to come to realize the importance of protecting the ecological environment, the environmental art design gradually infiltrated certain ecological concepts. In this paper, a brief analysis of environmental art design content and ecological concepts on the basis of the basic features, from an ecological point of view on the current environment concept art design of a systematic inquiry, hoping to promote the new era of environmental art design to meet the aesthetic needs of the community basis, can produce certain ecological environmental effects, prompting environmental art and design to achieve the effect of the harmonious development of man and nature.

SOUND NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE policies are crucial: without them, it will be impossible to organize a transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy that is orderly enough to maintain industrial civilization, while speedy enough to avert catastrophic ecosystem collapse. However, world leaders have been working on hammering out effective climate policies for nearly a quarter of a century, and during that time greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase. And the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more incontrovertible and perilous. Clearly, individuals, households, communities, and nongovernmental organizations cannot merely stand by and hope that political leaders somehow find the wherewithal at the last moment (if it is not already too late) to halt our descent into climate chaos. We must put all possible pressure on those leaders to take politically difficult decisions to severely limit carbon emissions.

World history is the record of past events that are universally recognized as important and interesting to most peoples. Such events include war and peace, the creation of states and religions, the rise and fall of empires, and the consequences of such changes. While it has always been difficult to determine the nature of forces that control the course of history, it is thought and often claimed that the environment, circumstances, political leaders, ideologies, technological innovations, states, cultures, and ambitions of past leaders and empires have been responsible for making history and what we think of it.

If our industrial civilization is to be sustained, it must find renewable sources of energy to replace its finite and rapidly shrinking reserves of fossil carbon. Moreover, these renewables, even if intermittent, must somehow be rendered reliable and dispatchable, most probably by developing super-massive storage facilities for energy. Historically this has meant pumped hydroelectric storage, a technology that is well developed, reliable, comparatively inexpensive, and seriously limited by a shortage of suitable reservoir sites. The obvious solution is to excavate an underground reservoir many hundreds of meters below surface level and to exchange water between it and a surface reservoir created immediately above it and diked using spoil from the excavation. This variant of hydro storage is called underground pumped hydro (UPH) and is described in detail in this review, where it will be shown that: 1) the cost per GW of pumping station could be reasonable and on the order of 1 G$US while 2) the cost of storage capacity could be less than 100 $US per kWh and in keeping with the U.S. Department of Energy's cost goals.