The american west at risk: science, myths, and politics of land abuse and recovery

The American West at Risk summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United StatesAmerica's legendary, even mythical, frontier. When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few ‘renewable’ resources. The importance of this story is that preserving lands has a central role for protecting air and water quality, and water supplies-and all support a healthy living environment. The idea that all life on earth is connected in a great chain of being, and that all life is connected to the physical earth in many obvious and subtle ways, is not some new-age fad, it isscientifically demonstrable. An understanding of earth processes, and the significance of their biological connections, is critical in shaping societal values so that national land use policies will conserve the earth and avoid the worst impacts of natural processes. These connections inevitably lead science into the murkier realms of political controversy and bureaucratic stasis. Most of the chapters in The American West at Risk focus on a human land use or activity that depletes resources and degrades environmental integrity of this resource-rich, but tender and slow-to-heal, western U.S. The activities include forest clearing for many purposes; farming and grazing; mining for aggregate, metals, and other materials; energy extraction and use; military training and weapons manufacturing and testing; road and utility transmission corridors; recreation; urbanization; and disposing of the wastes generated by everything thatwe do. We focus on how our land-degrading activities are connected to naturalearth processes, which act to accelerate and spread the damages we inflict onthe land INDICE: Introduction. Obeying Nature 1. Once and Future Trees 2. Harvesting the Future 3. Raiding the Range 4. Digging to China 5. Routes of Ruin 6. Legacies of War 7. Creating the Nuclear Wasteland 8. No Habitat But Our Own 9. 10. Garbage of the Golden West 11. Tragedy of the Playground 12. Driving to the End of America's Birthright 13. Nature's Way / Conclusions. The Needs of our Posterity Appendix 1. Conserving U.S. Public Lands--A Chronology Appendix 2. Best Intentions--Federal Waste Disposal Laws Appendix 3. Everything Comes from the Earth Appendix 4. Bio-Chemical War and You Appendix 5. Destroyer of the Worlds Appendix 6. Plutonium Fields Forever Appendix 7. Bombs for Peace Appendix 8. The Bunker Buster Fantasy Appendix 9. US and Them--the United States and World Oil Reserves Appendix 10. ‘Democratizing’ Energy--Hydrogen Fuel Cells Glossary Notes Index

• ISBN: 978-0-19-514205-1
• Editorial: Oxford University
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 640
• Fecha Publicación: 01/07/2008
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés