In this chapter, these four co-authors emphasise the importance of sustainability for the future of people and planet, given that the case for all human and non-human inhabitants has never been clearer. Through an account of Mia’s doctoral study, they challenge readers to provide young children with meaningful opportunities to participate in conversations about the Earth’s future. More importantly, they argue for children’s concerns to be heard and their ideas acted upon. To this end, the chapter offers research-based strategies for early years educators, especially in the first years of schooling, given that the research was conducted with children aged from 6 to 8 years. They developed the 4C Pedagogical Framework for transformational early childhood education for sustainability as a valuable tool for this purpose.

The Earth is the yardstick against which the state of isostasy on the terrestrial planets will be assessed in the future. The primary data sets will continue to be gravity anomaly and topography data together with seismic data which have the potential to image the surfaces of flexure directly. We are close to defining the relative contributions of plate flexure and mantle dynamics in contributing to Earth’s topography and gravity fields as well as to its crustal structure and vertical motion history. The acquisition of higher-resolution data will increase the number of estimates of Te of the planets which, in turn, will help us to understand better the complexities of their geodynamical evolution.

The poetry of Edward Thomas (1878–1917) was all written during the First World War, but that war is frequently absent.He is an unusual war poet: an ‘Arts and Crafts’ war poet; a war poet who is focused on home but nonetheless committed to action and engagement with the world; a modern poet at home in the old wars and with the old tunes; a war poet of peacefulness.Thomas’s poetry addresses the war in its own way, directly and indirectly, with its own inclusive, hesitant, honest voice.We can see the uniqueness of his approach by looking at poems like ‘Adlestrop’, ‘The Manor Farm’, ‘The Combe’, ‘As the Team’s Head-Brass’, ‘The Owl’, ‘A Private’, ‘Digging’ and ‘Tears’.Thomas said of war poetry that ‘No other class of poetry vanishes so rapidly, has so little chosen from it for posterity’, but his own survived, and not simply because it contained very little of the war.

This chapter introduces the main theorists associated with ecological hermeneutics, their objectives and strategies. It demonstrates how an ecological approach can be applied using a specific story from the book of Judges as a case study.

This chapter introduces the idea of Earth’s timeline and the six major epochs. The principle of radiometric dating is introduced here, to provide the absolute age of the earth and other geological features. This chapter also provides a brief outline of geological principles, and especially emphasizes the importance of plate tectonics and continental drift, to explain the contours and positions of the continents, oceans, mountain ranges, and rifts. It introduces the idea of understanding the importance of geology/climate in driving biological evolution.

In GC II 8, Aristotle shows that earth, water, air, and fire, are presented in every mixed body. Here Aristotle develops further the discussion of elemental mixtures started in GC II 7. He goes beyond anything done up to this point because the mixed bodies he is concerned with are not just the elemental mixtures discussed in GC II 7; rather, they are all the mixed bodies inhabiting the region around the center of the universe. Insofar as this region is the place where the natural processes of generation and corruption take place, GC II 8 prepares the grounds for the final section of the GC II (GC II 9-11).

Drawing on biblical texts and theological reflections from early Christianity to the present, three prominent ways in which the sacramentality of creation has been nuanced over the centuries are explored: (1) Experiencing the presence of God in the world with focus on Ignatius of Loyola’s final contemplation in his Spiritual Exercises; (2) reflecting on manifestations of God’s goodness, power and wisdom that eminent patristic and medieval theologians discerned when studying the world and novel attributes that are discernible today when informed by current scientific findings; and (3) receiving the Eucharist as a heightened encounter with God that can strengthen individuals and communities to act cooperatively. These three ways of perceiving the world within which we encounter God constitute a formula for venerating Earth that should stimulate Christian attitudes and actions aimed at mitigating impediments to the flourishing of our common home.

Story of early life and the oxygen Holocaust >2400 million years ago. Impact of oxygen overload on early life. Worst extinction event. Evolution of oxygen-dependent life. Irony of human chemical deluge. Moral of the tale.

Explains how man-made ‘pollution’ – often seen as a local problem – has become a virtual river flowing round the entire planet. Describes contamination of oceans, remote regions, air in homes and cities, effect of plastics, impacts on wildlife. Defines six modes of chemical transport. Pollution is now universal, affecting all people and most of life on Earth

Early in the nineteenth century, the planetary Earth emerged as a new object of fascination across the Western world, upending Biblical authority and intertwining the once-separate orders of human and natural history. The industrial and imperial energies released by the emergence of Earth into human consciousness launched chains of causality leading to the Anthropocene, chains that bind us to this earlier era even as the Anthropocene cuts us off from its grounding assumptions. As natural scientists from Buffon and Hutton to Humboldt, Lyell and Darwin elaborated Earth’s evolutionary development and the ecological interdependences of living systems, political economists wrestled with the resulting problem: Do human beings have planetary agency? Their epochal decision to admit such agency in theory even while denying it in practice would bequeath us an unresolved legacy of metaphysical terror – as well as a role for literary artists in reimagining the horizon of the human.

The last part of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3 of De mundo (392a31–393a8) describe the cosmic layers further below the sphere of the moon, leading down to the very centre of the universe. This section provides a brief overview of the sublunary layers of the four elements (fire, air, water and earth), some of which will be discussed in more detail later in the text. The two main theses that constitute the reasoning behind this section are (i) continuity throughout the entire cosmos and (ii) the great variety of phenomena and processes within the sublunary domain. The layers are organised from the most active one at the top down to the most passive one at the centre of the universe. The continuity among the layers is demonstrated on each and every level. There is, however, no suggestion that each lower, less active substance gains all its characteristics from the more active substance above. For our author’s purpose it is sufficient to demonstrate that there is some relation, some communication among the layers which can later be used by the divine dunamis permeating the entire cosmos. The final part of the present section concerns the claim that the continents are large islands surrounded by an ocean.

Chapter 4: This chapter argues for a new way of thinking about what an ecologically oriented dialogue between theatre and science might give rise to. Three canonical Western texts – Plato’s cave, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Beckett’s Endgame – are read as instances of geology. The aim is to show how Western theatre is not simply a privileged space for human society to reflect on itself, as is often claimed, but a nonhuman medium, a decidedly mineralized practice – the very thing that so troubled Plato and that has caused Western philosophy to remain so suspicious of the stage. Reading Western theatre as geology, moreover, permits a theory of eco-performance criticism appropriate to and for the Anthropocene. Where accepted models of eco-theatre tend to run into dangerous contradiction, practically and theoretically, by divorcing themselves from theatre’s larger ecology and history, this chapter discloses, by contrast, the extent to which the theatrical medium is always already ecological by dint of its occluded mineralogy.

“Debts to Nature” explores Greek myths about overreach and encroachment involving the operational deity the Greeks variously described as Potnia Therōn (“Mistress of the Animals”), the Great Goddess, or Mother of All, whose domain is Nature. It also concerns the implications of some sustainability principlesembedded and at work in Greek cult, especially acts of reciprocity and exchange in sacrificial ritual, which are ultimately explained by way of Albert Schweitzer’s philosophy of “Reverence for Life” (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben). The poet Hesiod is proffered as an adherent to this kind of worldview and as an early systems thinker, deeply concerned about sustainable living.

Here, I investigate the concept of a habitable zone. Given that all life on Earth – and possibly all life in general – needs water, the defining of a habitable zone as the belt around a star in which liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface seems sensible. However, habitable zones may shift in position over time. One reason for this is the gradual increase in energy output from a star as it progresses through its main-sequence phase. To take account of this, we can define a continuously habitable zone (CHZ) in which liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface throughout its history. Inevitably, the CHZ will be narrower than its ‘instantaneous’ counterpart. I consider the question of whether life might exist, or might have existed, on Mars – a planet that is near the outer edge of the Sun’s habitable zone. I also look at whether life might exist on the moons Europa and Enceladus. Although these are far outside the habitable zone, they are thought to have sub-surface oceans. Finally, I ask whether in addition to there being stellar habitable zones there may also be larger-scale habitable zones – galactic ones. The answer is a qualified ‘no’.

The author reflects upon graveyards and physical memorials to the dead as place markers for individuals, families and communities. Syncretic Indian culture in medieval and modern times, has revolved around graves as Muslim Sufi saints were venerated by all communities, and their attitude to power influenced the masses. However, there is a new political discourse where graveyards are set against up cremation grounds, as if the two were incompatible, suggesting that Hindus and Muslims/Christians were incompatible. This chapter is about the divisive discourse and its impact on memory and attachment for communities who count upon a physical, emotional and spiritual attachment to the land