• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2163 0

Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Knopf, 2002); Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison, The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002); David Lorey, ed., Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-first Century: Resources, Consumption, and Sustainable Solutions (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003); Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004); and James Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

The Further Readings for Chapter 15 provided references for problems of deforestation, overfishing, and oil. Vaclav Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003) offers an account not only of oil, coal, and gas but also of other forms of energy production. The biodiversity crisis and habitat destruction are discussed by John Terborgh, Where Have All the Birds Gone? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989) and Requiem for Nature (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999); David Quammen, Song of the Dodo (New York: Scribner, 1997); and Marjorie Reaka-Kudla et al., eds., Biodiversity 2: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1997).

Some recent papers on coral reef destruction are: T. P. Hughes, “Climate change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs” (Science 301:929-933 (2003)); J. M. Pandolfi et al., “Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef ecosystems” (Science 301:955-958 (2003)); and D. R. Bellwood et al., “Confronting the coral reef crisis” (Nature 429:827-833 (2004)).

Books on soil problems include the classic Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, revised ed. (Norman: University of Okalahoma Press, 1974), and Keith Wiebe, ed., Land Quality, Agricultural Productivity, and Food Security: Biophysical Processes and Economic Choices at Local, Regional, and Global Levels (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2003). Articles offering different perspectives on soil problems are David Pimentel et al., “Environmental and economic costs of soil erosion and conservation benefits” (Science 267:1117-1123 (1995)); Stanley Trimble and Pierre Crosson, “U.S. soil erosion rates—myth and reality” (Science 289:248-250 (2000)); and a set of eight articles by various authors, published in Science 304:1613-1637 (2004).

For issues concerning the world’s water supplies, see the reports authored by Peter Gleick and published every two years: e.g., Peter Gleick, The World’s Water, 1998-1999: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000). Vernon Scarborough, The Flow of Power: Ancient Water Systems and Landscapes (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 2003) compares solutions to water problems in ancient societies around the world.

A global accounting of the fraction of solar energy utilized by plant photosynthesis (termed “net primary production”) was offered by Peter Vitousek et al., “Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems” (Science 277:494-499 (1997)), and updated and broken down by region by Mark Imhoff et al. “Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production” (Nature 429:870-873 (2004)).

Effects of toxic chemicals on living things, including humans, are summarized by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York: Plume, 1997). One specific example of the high economic costs of toxic and other impacts on an entire ecosystem is an account for Chesapeake Bay: Tom Horton and William Eichbaum, Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991).

Among books offering good accounts of global warming and climate change are Steven Schneider, Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can’t Afford to Lose (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Michael Glantz, Currents of Change: Impacts of El Ninõ and La Ninã on Climate and Society, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: