Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden—an Eden that may be only a mirage.
The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster. In Cadillac Desert Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West.
Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden—an Eden that may be only a mirage.
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http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/EWB110_0.pdf Human demands are pressing up against more and more of the Earth's limits. This book from the Worldwatch Institute examines the impacts of population growth on global resources and services, including food, fresh water, fisheries, jobs, education, income, and health. Despite the current hype of a "birth dearth" in parts of Europe and Japan, the fact remains that human numbers are projected to increase by over 3 billion by 2050. Rapidly growing nations are likely to outstrip the carrying capacity of their natural support systems. Governments worn down by several decades of rapid population growth often cannot mobilize the resources necessary to cope with emerging threats such as new diseases, food and water shortages, and mass unemployment. Already, in several African nations, hunger, disease, and social disintegration are leading to rising death rates, checking the rapid growth of population. Either nations with surging populations will quickly shift to smaller families or nature will impose its own, less humane limits to growth. As the world enters the new millennium, no challenge is perhaps so urgent as the need to quickly reduce population growth. Pakistan's population is projected to increase from 148 million to 357 million, surpassing that of the United States before 2050. Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, and Swaziland, where over one-fifth of the adult population is infected with HIV, will likely reach population stability shortly after the year 2000, as AIDS-related deaths offset soaring birth rates. A Worldwatch Environmental Alert book. Newsmaking press conference on publication National press and television coverage Synopsis: On the bicentennial of Malthus's legendary essay on the tendency for population to grow more rapidly than the food supply, the question facing the world is not whether population growth will slow, but how. Children in Woburn, Massachusetts are getting sick - terribly sick. When Anne Anderson discovers that her three-year old son has leukemia, she embarks on a quest for its cause, only to discover what constitutes a childhood leukemia cluster in her small town just north of Boston. One common environmental factor for all of these children is the water, pumped from Wells G and H, which has been a subject of complaint and controversy for some time, due to foul odor, taste, and color. Anne's research eventually evolves into a civil suit, on the part of many affected families, against two large corporations, Beatrice Foods and Grace Chemical, with the contention that they have contaminated the wells with a carcinogen, specifically trichloroethylene (TCE).
Author Jonathan Harr traces the course of this civil action through the history of corporate dumping activities, backgrounds of all parties, the discovery and deposition phases, the trial itself, the verdict and, ultimately, settlement negotiations and appeals. Most of the story is recounted through the eyes of Jan Schlichtmann, attorney for the plaintiffs. He chronicles his time-consuming, laborious and horribly expensive preparation for what he believes will be a landmark case, sending a message to corporate boardrooms and netting the plaintiffs and himself huge compensatory and punitive damage awards. To this end, Schlichtmann spends over two million dollars for medical and geological reports and documents, employing experts at each phase of trial preparation. Defense lawyers, however, are focused on maneuvers to detract and ultimately thwart the proceedings, often successfully doing so. **this was made into a movie in 1998. ***It is kind of like Erin Brockovich-esque... The world faces numerous environmental trends of disruption and decline such as rising temperatures, falling water tables, shrinking forests, melting glaciers, collapsing fisheries, and rising sea levels. In Plan B, Lester R. Brown notes that in ignoring nature's deadlines for dealing with these environmental issues we risk the disruption of economic progress. In addition to these environmental trends, the world faces the peaking of oil, the addition of 70 million people per year, a widening global economic divide, and the spread of international terrorism. The global scale and growing complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent. Amazon.com Review: Published in 1949, shortly after the author's death, A Sand County Almanac is a classic of nature writing, widely cited as one of the most influential nature books ever published. Writing from the vantage of his summer shack along the banks of the Wisconsin River, Leopold mixes essay, polemic, and memoir in his book's pages. In one famous episode, he writes of killing a female wolf early in his career as a forest ranger, coming upon his victim just as she was dying, "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.... I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." Leopold's road-to-Damascus change of view would find its fruit some years later in his so-called land ethic, in which he held that nothing that disturbs the balance of nature is right. Much of Almanacelaborates on this basic premise, as well as on Leopold's view that it is something of a human duty to preserve as much wild land as possible, as a kind of bank for the biological future of all species. Beautifully written, quiet, and elegant, Leopold's book deserves continued study and discussion today. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Paperback edition. |
Thinking GloballyHere you will find synopses of the books or documentaries from your summer assignment. (Some will even be used throughout the year!) **note: these synopses have been hijacked from reviewer sites to give you a brief overview. The views expressed are not my own and do not substitute you reading/viewing the materials. Archives
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