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The First International Conference on Iceberg Utilization, held at Iowa State University in October 1977, contributed to the formation of nascent hydrologics in the late 1970s that were used to justify incursions into unconventional sites of resource extraction by “dry” nations such as Saudi Arabia. As a central site of water-related knowledge production, the Iceberg Utilization meeting put forward a collection of media that would constitute a form of evidentiary claim in the emergence of increasingly prevalent schemes on the part of water “poor” regions to achieve viable forms of water provision by the early 1980s.

Since the 1880s the main preservation method onboard European fishing trawlers was ice manufactured in the fishing ports with mechanized technology based on direct or indirect use of fossil fuels. In 1929 the Norwegian entrepreneur Harald Berg opened a large-scale natural ice factory in northern Norway and challenged the artificial ice producers by providing natural ice to the trawlers, a sustainable and renewable resource. In response, the artificial ice producers tried to discredit natural ice as polluted, unhealthy, and not acceptable for food preservation, with a German district veterinarian at the fishing port of Geestemuende supporting this effort. After several local and Reich authorities became involved, the Reichskuratorium für Technik in der Landwirtschaft conducted an on-site study in Norway in 1936 that stated that there was absolutely no pollution or food safety/health concern and that the ice was safe to be used onboard the trawlers. In the end, the whole campaign by the artificial ice producers in Geestemünde needs to be understood as a campaign of a fossil fuel-based industry to push a competitor out of the market—a competitor who had found a way to manufacture an identical product in a sustainable and renewable way.

Rocky Flats, Colorado, USA, was the home of plutonium pit manufacturing from 1952 to 1992. Here we explore the legacy of Rocky Flats, from military industrial complex to contaminated land, and finally biorefuge. The cultural impacts of living in a toxic place are explored to create an environmental history of this socially and physically contaminated environment.

Atlantropa united a technological utopia with political visions of reform. The German architect Sörgel proposed building a giant dam across the Strait of Gibraltar to create the largest hydroelectric facility in the world and solve all of Europe's energy problems. The consequences of this large-scale project would have included serious ecological damage and environmental disasters. With the emergence of nuclear energy, which also appeared to offer a solution to the energy problem, this scheme was eventually abandoned. However, other gigantic dam projects have since been carried out around the world.

The ecovillage "Sieben Linden," established in 1997, practices an ecologically sustainable lifestyle embedded within mainstream Western society. Today, the settlement covers eighty hectares and has 120 residents, who see their project as an example and experiment in the development of an alternative, sustainable way of life. Aside from sociological and ecological aspects such as a degree of self-sufficiency and sustainable building practices, the concept of an (intentional) “community” lies at the center of this project. A number of democratic decision-making forms exist in the village, consensus being the community’s ideal: their motto is “unity in diversity.” Sieben Linden is an active member of the Global Ecovillage Network.

How do the three pillars of sustainability—environment, economy, and society—come together in the daily routines of a society? Research in Community (RIC) has given itself the goal of building a network to investigate and promote a culture of sustainability. The “Wheel of Sustainability” was developed as part of the research at RIC by Felix Wagner and Sandra Mende. It is intended to help illustrate the elements and the dynamics of a culture of sustainability and thereby give guidance for the societal organizational process, which includes reflection, negotiation, implementation, and evaluation.

Addresses various ways that water is constructed as “dangerous,” whether because there is too much (floods), too little (droughts), or because it is polluted. Mauch emphasizes that although water catastrophes have a natural origin, their effects are primarily social. It is the vulnerability of human communities that decides the magnitude of a water disaster. The consequences stand in a reciprocal relationship to a community’s technical and social resilience, which is distributed highly unequally. In general, it is the socially disadvantaged who lack the resources necessary to avoid this danger through preventive measures of their own or by means of social safety nets.

Not all transitions to a sustainable society are straightforward. In a survey conducted by Nina Wormbs and her colleague on how people justify acting unsustainably, they ran into numerous instances of cognitive dissonance. The most common ways of reasoning were economic, with people looking to “even out” negative behavior, as if paying into a climate budget. However, the author argues, this does not work for tackling the climate emergency. In caring for the planet, it is important to be aware of the immense complexity of sustainability efforts. Springs: The Rachel Caron Center Review, no. 3 (May 2023)

Kate Rigby challenges the anthropocentric perspective of many modern green city development schemes, inviting us to see cities for the multispecies locales that they truly are. Offering a set of different practices of “deep sustainability” that integrate human and more-than-human perspectives, Rigby reimagines green cities from an interdisciplinary environmental humanities perspective to see how they can also be sites of more-than-human prosperity with bio-inclusive forms of ecological citizenship.

Solar cells generate clean electricity from sunlight. However, they remain significantly more expensive than other, less environmentally-friendly, energy generation technologies. Although the emergence of thin-film solar cells, low-cost alternatives to the prevailing crystalline silicon solar cells, has been a significant advance in photovoltaic technology, these devices typically suffer from low absorption. If this absorption could be enhanced, it would enable an increase in power conversion efficiency and hence a reduction in cost/kW of generating capacity. This is the motivation of the work presented in this doctoral thesis. Metallic nanostructures are used to trap light within the semiconductor film in organic solar cells. By increasing the optical path length, the probability that photons are absorbed before exiting the film is increased. A novel process is developed to fabricate nanostructured metallic electrode organic solar cells. These devices feature a nanovoid array interface between the metallic electrode and the semiconduc- tor film. Absorption enhancements over conventional, planar architectures as high as 45% are demonstrated. This light-trapping is found to be largely enabled by localized void plasmons. The experimental investigations are supported by finite element simulations of absorption in solar cells, which display very good agreement with experimental results. It is found that light trapped in organic solar cell architectures is very efficiently absorbed by the organic film - in- creases in the exciton generation rate per unit volume of semiconductor material of up to 17% are observed. The simulation routine is additionally used to compare and contrast common plasmonic architectures in organic solar cells. The role of the metallic nanostructure geometry on the dominant light-trapping mechanism is assessed for various size domains and optimum architectures are identified. When implemented according to the findings of this thesis, light- trapping will have the potential to vastly increase the efficiency and hence decrease the price of thin-film solar cells.