Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life, particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.

How did humankind deal with the extreme challenges of the last Ice Age? How have the relatively benign post-Ice Age conditions affected the evolution and spread of humanity across the globe? By setting our genetic history in the context of climate change during prehistory, the origin of many features of our modern world are identified and presented in this illuminating book. It reviews the aspects of our physiology and intellectual development that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives - diet, language and the domestication of animals - are also the product of the climate in which we evolved. In short: climate change in prehistory has in many ways made us what we are today. Climate Change in Prehistory weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in the effects of climate on human development and history.

From the acclaimed author of Life and Trilobite!,a fascinating geological exploration of the earth's distant history as revealed by its natural wonders. The face of the earth, crisscrossed by chains of mountains like the scars of old wounds, has changed and changed again over billions of years, and the testament of the remote past is all around us. In this book Richard Fortey teaches us how to read its character, laying out the dominions of the world before us. He shows how human culture and natural history - even the shape of cities - are rooted in this deep geological past. In search of this past, Fortey takes us through the Alps, into Icelandic hot springs, down to the ocean floor, over the barren rocks of Newfoundland, into the lush ecosystems of Hawai'i, across the salt flats of Oman, and along the San Andreas Fault.

Reconstructing climatic changes in deserts and their margins at a variety of scales in space and time, this book draws upon evidence from land and sea, including desert dunes, wind-blown dust, river and lake sediments, glacial moraines, plant and animal fossils, isotope geochemistry, speleothems, soils, and prehistoric archaeology. The book summarises the Cenozoic evolution of the major deserts of the Americas, Eurasia, Africa and Australia, and the causes of historic floods and droughts. The book then considers the causes and consequences of desertification and proposes four key conditions for achieving ecologically sustainable use of natural resources in arid and semi-arid areas. Climate Change in Deserts is an invaluable reference for researchers and advanced students interested in the climate and geomorphology of deserts: geographers, geologists, ecologists, archaeologists, soil scientists, hydrologists, climatologists and natural resource managers.

Climate change is not just a scientific fact, nor merely a social and political problem. It is also a set of stories and characters that amount to a social drama. This drama, as much as hard scientific or political realities, shapes perception of the problem. Drs Smith and Howe use the perspective of cultural sociology and Aristotle's timeless theories about narrative and rhetoric to explore this meaningful and visible surface of climate change in the public sphere. Whereas most research wants to explain barriers to awareness, here we switch the agenda to look at the moments when global warming actually gets attention. Chapters consider struggles over apocalyptic scenarios, explain the success of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth, unpack the deeper social meanings of the climate conference and 'Climategate', critique failed advertising campaigns and climate art, and question the much touted transformative potential of natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy.

In this book, Richard Rosenzweig, describes the policies proposed and adopted in the first generation of climate change policy-making including the Kyoto Protocol and the carbon markets and assesses their failure to halt the increases of rising emissions of greenhouse gases. Carefully structured throughout, each chapter demonstrate how the first generation of policies failed because they were top down, overly ambitious and complex. The author uses the lessons drawn from this analysis to recommend more modest, targeted policies, arguing that they will be more successful in fighting climate change in the new era of policy-making. An invaluable reference for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in taking relevant courses in Environmental Policy, Law and Business. This book will also be a useful overview for researchers working in the field as well as those working in government and policy.

In 2003, Darfur started to attract the attention of the international community following the outbreak of the conflict. Since then, much is being written on what is happening on the ground, much less about the root causes of the conflict, and that is the reason why it has been looked at from a political perspective rather than from a scientific one. It has been described by many as genocide, resembling the tragedy of the 21st century.A tragedy of climate change explains how the adverse of climate change has affected Darfur since the 1970s, and how the affect has intensified since the 1980s when the region witnessed a severe drought and famine. These symptoms include the expanding desertification, the decreased rainfall, and the land degradation left dire consequences. As a result, more Darfurians are competing for access to land, water, and other natural resources than at any other time. The increased competition only further aggravates the already uneasy political, social, and ethnic relationships in the Darfur region. This book seeks to critically analyze the role of climate change in intrastate conflicts in less developed countries, and links between climate change and the untraditional concept of security threats.