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This book explains the causes of climate change and who is responsible for it. It shows that the emissions keep going up, and that nothing of substance has yet been achieved after more than two decades of effort. It is claimed that the energy sector can be converted from an overwhelmingly carbon-based one to almost zero carbon in the space of half a century, all at just a small cost, or even a profit, based on simplistic assumptions about economic growth and a new industrial revolution. The current industrial structures of all developed and most developing economies are overwhelmingly carbon-based. Decarbonizing requires the coordinated replacement of almost all of the capital stock of the world. Tackling climate change does mean lowering standard of living from its current unsustainable levels, even after the economic crisis. A border carbon tax has one other great virtue: it provides a bottom-up way of getting global action, and avoids the tortuous Kyoto-style top-down negotiations. Applying border adjustments is bound to take time and cause transitional difficulties. Carbon pricing is necessary, but it is not sufficient. By considering climate change mitigation in the context of a limited ability to pay, a very different strategy emerges. For the amounts currently spent, carbon emissions could be cut by much more in the short run, and the possibility of a series of breakthroughs could be husbanded through a major international R&D programme.

This book focuses on how rivers function, how those functions have changed through time, and the role of humans in those changes. A river continually responds to changes in its environment and is never static. The type of river response depends on the magnitude and persistence of changes in water and sediment entering the river. The movements of water and sediment within a sand-bed channel adjust readily over a period of minutes to hours. The book discusses rivers of the Northeast and East-Central region of the United States, which drain east to the Atlantic Ocean. The single largest drainage basin in this region is the St. Lawrence, which delivers an average of 65,000 billion gallons of water to the ocean each year. The book examines the river systems in America, explains how the earliest human inhabitants reached America and modified the physical and biological environments of the rivers, and reveals that sedentary agricultural communities first appeared in the archeological record of North America more than 2,000 years ago. As with agricultural peoples elsewhere in the world, these first farmers affected rivers more than their hunter-gatherer predecessors. The book discusses the impact of industrialization on the health of rivers in United States, also focusing on the restoration and rehabilitation of rivers.

Yellowstone, one of America's most special places, has a special responsibility for its people to whom its management is entrusted. The federal government manages the park itself and much of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, while the rest is managed by the individual landowners, businesses, and state and tribal governments. This book assesses the leadership and policy process of greater Yellowstone through which leaders seek to work together to chart a course toward sustainability. Specifically, the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC), a high-level federal committee that influences management policy and which is made up of the heads of the area's national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, is considered at large for leadership purposes. The intent is to see the issues that arise in greater Yellowstone through the eyes of decision makers who are subject to real deadlines and policy constraints. The analysis accomplished in this book is meant to encourage greater reflection and attention to the higher-order tasks as well as to the basic tasks required for effective leadership, not only by the region's leaders, but also by all the other organizations and individuals who live there and care about the future of America's natural heritage.

This book traces the diffusion of industrial agriculture by looking closely at the main components of this process in its first generation, between 1918 and 1930. The story begins in 1918 because a number of new, large-scale farms began operation then and were described in the national press as bellwethers of a new industrial farming era. The number of these farms continued to grow through the 1920s, peaking in 1929. The book examines the contextual gridwork on which the transformation from traditional to industrial agriculture hung, and discusses the great diversity of American rural landscapes and the farm products that came from them, as well as their amenability to the industrializing push. It also examines the role of World War I in destabilizing both farm production and rural expectations. After exploring the intriguing and ultimately irresistible attraction of new factories and businesses that promoted rational management and mechanization, and which seemed a fitting model for agriculture, the book discusses the development of two metrics that were used to frame and maintain the industrializing impulse: quantification and mechanization. It also explores the emergence of agricultural economics as an academic discipline, and its practical application in farm communities and federal agencies.

This book defines the dimensions of crop diversity and questions surrounding it. Understanding the nature of crop diversity and its fate in the modern world is an international scientific enterprise that draws scientists from many different disciplines—archaeology, geography, botany, genetics, anthropology, and economics. Since the mid-nineteenth century, many investigators have dealt with this topic and have defined an array of scientific, industrial, and political issues that reach far beyond the original investigations of botanists and natural historians. Geneticists and social scientists study diversity in agriculture for different reasons—for instance, to understand gene flow or the effect of the industrial seed industry. This book explains how human ecology came to the study of crop diversity, and describes the ways it has been used to address larger issues about human and agricultural evolution. It examines various ways of defining and measuring crop diversity, and introduces the three crops and farming regions: potatoes in the Peruvian Andes, maize in Mexico, and wheat in Turkey. The book describes the ethnobiology of Andean potatoes as an example of how anthropological research can contribute to an overall understanding of the ecology and evolution of a crop in its center of origin, and also examines the nature of farmer selection, using material from research on wheat diversity in Turkey.

This book reflects a longstanding personal interest in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and environmental struggles, focusing on the theoretical understanding around notions of moral capital and moral entrepreneurship in relation to NGOs. The importance of NGO strategic action needs to be kept in full view. Such action requires, in turn, assessment of three inter-related strategies, the first of which is that of political strategy, or the manner in which an NGO addresses its political relationships. This strategy comprises critical engagement with state agencies and constructive engagement with local communities. The second component is financial strategy. The way in which an organization addresses financial need while accounting for noneconomic considerations is assessed, and it is suggested that a strong impetus to promote financial autonomy can determine where an NGO seeks funding and what it does once it has found it. The effort to map the mission can take on a life of its own such that spatial and territorial dynamics add an edge to the quest for moral capital. This is seen in the pursuit of area-based reputations as a means of attaining spatial economies of scale in the dissemination of a good name.

Water is essential to life, yet humankind's relationship with water is complex. For millennia, we have perceived it as abundant and easily accessible. But water shortages are fast becoming a persistent reality for all nations, rich and poor. With demand outstripping supply, a global water crisis is imminent. This book argues that our water crisis is as much a failure of water management as it is a result of scarcity. Outdated governance structures and institutions, combined with continual underpricing, have perpetuated the overuse and undervaluation of water and disincentivized much-needed technological innovation. As a result “water grabbing” is on the rise, and cooperation to resolve these disputes is increasingly fraught. The book draws on evidence from countries across the globe to show the scale of the problem, and outlines the policy and management solutions needed to avert this crisis.