The Coming Age Of Scarcity

Author : Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1998-03-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0815627440

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The Coming Age of Scarcity by Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann Pdf

Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Walliman have edited a book that, although ominous, is not a fatalistic look at the future. The Coming Age of Scarcity lays out the perils of not recognizing the reality of genocide or of acknowledging the full implications of warfare. Showing how scarcity and surplus populations can lead to disaster, The Coming Age of Scarcity is about evil. It tells of "ethnic cleansing" and excavates the world's expanding killing fields. The writers in this volume are all too aware that the future suggests that present-day population growth, land resources, energy consumption, and per capita consumption cannot be sustained without leading to greater catastrophes. The essays in this volume ask: What is the solution in the face of mass death and genocide? As philosopher John K. Roth says in the Foreword, "The essays can sensitize us against despair and indifference because history shows that human-made mass death and genocide are not inevitable, and no events related to them will ever be."

Author : Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2002-02-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0815629435

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On the Edge of Scarcity by Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann Pdf

Modernization and Industrialization have presented the human race with many problems, inflicting deprivation, poverty, war and premature death on millions of people. Until recently, however, solutions were achievable. Drawn from the much-acclaimed Coming Age of Scarcity and adapted here for general classroom use, this work will be an ideal introduction to courses in population, environment and resources, genocide studies, and social conflict. As we enter the twenty-first century, several components converge, namely population, land for cultivation, energy resources, and environmental carrying capacity. Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann establish a realistic projection of the disastrous future that awaits humankind as surplus populations collide with dwindling resources. Scholars from a variety of disciplines investigate the problems and suggest ways to maximize individual and collective survival, discussing cause-and-effect scenarios concerning industrialization, biophysical limits, exponential population growth, and genocide.

Author : Richard J. Barnet
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 1930
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1203429353

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The Lean Years by Richard J. Barnet Pdf

Author : Jeremy Rifkin,Ted Howard
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0345304640

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The Emerging Order by Jeremy Rifkin,Ted Howard Pdf

Author : Jeremy J. Schmidt
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781479853823

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Water by Jeremy J. Schmidt Pdf

An intellectual history of America's water management philosophy Humans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. This imbalance has created an era of intense water scarcity that affects the security of individuals, states, and the global economy. For many, this brazen water grab and the social inequalities it produces reflect the lack of a coherent philosophy connecting people to the planet. Challenging this view, Jeremy Schmidt shows how water was made a “resource” that linked geology, politics, and culture to American institutions. Understanding the global spread and evolution of this philosophy is now key to addressing inequalities that exist on a geological scale. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity details the remarkable intellectual history of America’s water management philosophy. It shows how this philosophy shaped early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, influenced American international development programs, and ultimately shaped programs of global governance that today connect water resources to the Earth system. Schmidt demonstrates how the ways we think about water reflect specific public and societal values, and illuminates the process by which the American approach to water management came to dominate the global conversation about water. Debates over how human impacts on the planet are connected to a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.

Author : Thomas Byrne Edsall
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2012-01-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780385535205

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The Age of Austerity by Thomas Byrne Edsall Pdf

One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles. In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners. Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.

Author : Sendhil Mullainathan,Eldar Shafir
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2013-09-03
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781429943451

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Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan,Eldar Shafir Pdf

In this provocative book based on cutting-edge research, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show that scarcity creates a distinct psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. Busy people fail to manage their time efficiently for the same reasons the poor and those maxed out on credit cards fail to manage their money. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students and busy executives mismanage their time, and why the same sugarcane farmers are smarter after harvest than before. Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus, and Scarcity reveals not only how it leads us astray but also how individuals and organizations can better manage scarcity for greater satisfaction and success.

Author : Damien Ma,William Adams
Publisher : FT Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2013-08-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780133133912

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In Line Behind a Billion People by Damien Ma,William Adams Pdf

Nearly everything you know about China is wrong! Yes, within a decade, China will have the world’s largest economy. But that is the least important thing to know about China. In this enlightening book , two of the world’s leading China experts turn the conventional wisdom on its head, showing why China’s economic growth will constrain rather than empower it. Pioneering political analyst Damien Ma and global economist Bill Adams reveal why, having 35 years of ferocious economic growth, China’s future will be shaped by the same fundamental reality that has shaped it for millennia: scarcity. Ma and Adams drill deep into Chinese society, illuminating all the scarcities that will limit its power and progress. Beyond scarcities of natural resources and public goods, they illuminate China’s persistent poverties of individual freedoms, cultural appeal, and ideological legitimacy — and the corrosive loss of values and beliefs amongst a growing middle class shackled by a parochial and inflexible political system. Everyone knows “the 21st century is China’s to lose” — but, as with so many things that “everyone knows,” that’s just wrong. Ma and Adams get beyond cheerleading and fearmongering to tell the complex truth about China today. This is a truth you need to hear — whether you’re an investor, business decision-maker, policymaker, or citizen.

Author : John Brewer,Neil Fromer,Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Frank Trentmann
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2019-02-21
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781350040922

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Scarcity in the Modern World by John Brewer,Neil Fromer,Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Frank Trentmann Pdf

Scarcity in the Modern World brings together world-renowned scholars in an open access book to examine how concerns about the scarcity of environmental resources such as water, food, energy and materials have developed, and subsequently been managed, from the 18th to the 21st century. These multi-disciplinary contributions situate contemporary concerns about scarcity within their longer history, and address recent forecasts and debates surrounding the future scarcity of fossil fuels, renewable energy and water up to 2075. This book offers a fresh way of tackling the current challenge of meeting global needs in an increasingly resource-stressed environment. By bringing together scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume provides an innovative multi-disciplinary perspective that corrects previous scholarship which has discussed scientific and cultural issues separately. In doing so, it recognizes that this challenge is complex and cannot be addressed by a single discipline, but requires a concerted effort to think about its political and social, as well as technical and economic dimensions. This volume is essential for all students and scholars of environmental and economic history. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Author : Edward B. Barbier
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 767 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2010-12-23
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781139493468

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Scarcity and Frontiers by Edward B. Barbier Pdf

Throughout much of history, a critical driving force behind global economic development has been the response of society to the scarcity of key natural resources. Increasing scarcity raises the cost of exploiting existing natural resources and creates incentives in all economies to innovate and conserve more of these resources. However, economies have also responded to increasing scarcity by obtaining and developing more of these resources. Since the agricultural transition over 12,000 years ago, this exploitation of new 'frontiers' has often proved to be a pivotal human response to natural resource scarcity. This book provides a fascinating account of the contribution that natural resource exploitation has made to economic development in key eras of world history. This not only fills an important gap in the literature on economic history but also shows how we can draw lessons from these past epochs for attaining sustainable economic development in the world today.

Author : Jeremy Rifkin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1103574797

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THE EMERGING ORDER by Jeremy Rifkin Pdf

Author : Andrew Keen
Publisher : Currency
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2008-08-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780385520812

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The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen Pdf

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

Author : Colin H. Kahl
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2008-08-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780691138350

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States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World by Colin H. Kahl Pdf

Over the past several decades, civil and ethnic wars have undermined prospects for economic and political development, destabilized entire regions of the globe, and left millions dead. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World argues that demographic and environmental stress--the interactions among rapid population growth, environmental degradation, inequality, and emerging scarcities of vital natural resources--represents one important source of turmoil in today's world. Kahl contends that this type of stress places enormous strains on both societies and governments in poor countries, increasing their vulnerability to armed conflict. He identifies two pathways whereby this process unfolds: state failure and state exploitation. State failure conflicts occur when population growth, environmental degradation, and resource inequality weaken the capacity, legitimacy, and cohesion of governments, thereby expanding the opportunities and incentives for rebellion and intergroup violence. State exploitation conflicts, in contrast, occur when political leaders themselves capitalize on the opportunities arising from population pressures, natural resource scarcities, and related social grievances to instigate violence that serves their parochial interests. Drawing on a wide array of social science theory, this book argues that demographically and environmentally induced conflicts are most likely to occur in countries that are deeply split along ethnic, religious, regional, or class lines, and which have highly exclusive and discriminatory political systems. The empirical portion of the book evaluates the theoretical argument through in-depth case studies of civil strife in the Philippines, Kenya, and numerous other countries. The book concludes with an analysis of the challenges demographic and environmental change will pose to international security in the decades ahead.

Author : James Heartfield
Publisher : Mute
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Capitalism
ISBN : 1906496102

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Green Capitalism by James Heartfield Pdf

A polemic against 'Green Capitalism'. James Heartfield accuses the 'Green Capitalists' of profiteering over climate change and other environmental scares. Green capitalists like Zac Goldsmith and Al Gore are manufacturing scarcity to boost prices. The technological revolution has removed scarcity from most of our lives, but the green capitalists are trying to re-invent it. Chapters on 1. The age of plenty, 2. The retreat from production, 3. The green capitalists, 4. Manufactured scarcity, 5. Green consumerism, 6. The economy of wasting time, 7. Green imperialism, 8. Environmental economics, 9. Green socialism?, 10. The unnatural limits to growth, plus an appendix, The revolution in technique. Bibliography and index. 136 pp. Author James Heartfield wrote Let's Build! Why we need five million new homes in the next 10 years (2006) The Creativity Gap (2005) The Death of the Subject Explained (2002). www.heartfield.org

Author : Francis J. Gavin
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 119 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2024-03-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781040098264

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The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty by Francis J. Gavin Pdf

The underlying structure, incentives and costs shaping international relations, state behaviour and the nature of power are profoundly different today to how they were in the past, in ways that are scarcely recognised and widely misunderstood. For much of history, world politics was marked by profound scarcity in resources, information and security. A series of historical revolutions has largely tamed this scarcity in ways few could have imagined. These revolutions, however, have generated new, potentially catastrophic challenges for the world – the problems of plenty. In this Adelphi book, Francis J. Gavin argues that the institutions, practices, theories and policies that helped explain and largely tamed scarcity by generating massive prosperity, and which were sometimes used to justify punishing conquest, are often unsuitable for addressing the problems of plenty. Successful grand strategy in this new age of abundance requires new thinking. New conceptual lenses, innovative policies and processes, and transformed institutions will be essential for confronting and solving the problems of plenty, without undermining the expanding efforts against scarcity.