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商品の説明
内容説明
With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.
In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years.
Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.
Praise for River of Traps:
"Brims with gifts of language and vision."
--Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review
"An irresistibly engaging story...deBuys is a storyteller of poetic breadth with a discerning eye for subtle, sensitive associations."
--The Nation
In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years.
Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.
Praise for River of Traps:
"Brims with gifts of language and vision."
--Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review
"An irresistibly engaging story...deBuys is a storyteller of poetic breadth with a discerning eye for subtle, sensitive associations."
--The Nation
著者について
William deBuys is the author of six books, including River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction in 1991; Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range; The Walk (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize in 2008), and Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California. An active conservationist, deBuys has helped protect more than 150,000 acres in New Mexico, Arizona, and North Carolina. He lives and writes on a small farm in northern New Mexico.
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カスタマーレビュー
Amazon.com で最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー (beta)
Amazon.com:
9件のカスタマーレビュー
4 人中、4人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Excellent and Moving Study of the Southwest
2012/2/10
形式:ハードカバー|Amazonが確認した購入
William DeBuys offers an unsettling description of the developing climate crisis in the Southwest. It's especially disturbing as those events are indicators of future crises in other regions. His book is a heartfelt study of a distressing man-made and climate-made downward spiral of this beautiful and fragile land and its inhabitants. It's a poignant plea to take adaptive conservation action in the Southwest now. A must read for those who love the Southwest, and a should read for all others.
3 人中、3人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
"The Story of the West is Essentially A Story About Water, And It's Lack"
2012/2/8
形式:Kindle版|Amazonが確認した購入
William deBuys has written an environmental history of the American Southwest. He explores the history and present of the region so that he can offer a prognosis on what a warmer, drier world will mean for this region in the future. And that prognosis does not look good based on demographic and environmental trends.
In the history section, using archaeological records and other sources, deBuys explores the failed civilizations of the American southwest. He shows how they succumbed to the mega droughts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The drier world of the time led to the civilization of the time facing economic and demographic collapse. Some turned to violence. Others gave up on their homes and moved. When writing about these failed civilizations, there is a certain sadness to the author's voice that is quite touching. These were technologically advanced civilizations for the time period. And yet they could not do anything in the face of a warming world.
In the sections on the present, the author is at his best. The author systematically constructs the modern world that we live in, showing how policy, demographics, agriculture, immigration, and economics all interact to create a society that is using more water than is sustainable. And what an eye opener it is. No society can survive for long when it uses more water than is replaced. And yet according to the author, the American Southwest continues to add new people. But no new water is being added. Just the opposite. And that is just a demographic timebomb waiting to happen.
The author shows how present society's 'hydraulic cornucopia' is just a mirage in the desert. Eventually reality will set in. And then how will the society of the American Southwest deal with it? The author offers no solutions. He just describes the issues at hand. Though his book is one solution - education is a way forward. And the book does an excellent job of educating its readers to the problems at hand. There are no easy solutions, but the idea of balance between humanity and the environment is something that policy makers will need to look at - how to reach an equilibrium in a warming area where both humans and the environment can coexist and thrive.
In the history section, using archaeological records and other sources, deBuys explores the failed civilizations of the American southwest. He shows how they succumbed to the mega droughts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The drier world of the time led to the civilization of the time facing economic and demographic collapse. Some turned to violence. Others gave up on their homes and moved. When writing about these failed civilizations, there is a certain sadness to the author's voice that is quite touching. These were technologically advanced civilizations for the time period. And yet they could not do anything in the face of a warming world.
In the sections on the present, the author is at his best. The author systematically constructs the modern world that we live in, showing how policy, demographics, agriculture, immigration, and economics all interact to create a society that is using more water than is sustainable. And what an eye opener it is. No society can survive for long when it uses more water than is replaced. And yet according to the author, the American Southwest continues to add new people. But no new water is being added. Just the opposite. And that is just a demographic timebomb waiting to happen.
The author shows how present society's 'hydraulic cornucopia' is just a mirage in the desert. Eventually reality will set in. And then how will the society of the American Southwest deal with it? The author offers no solutions. He just describes the issues at hand. Though his book is one solution - education is a way forward. And the book does an excellent job of educating its readers to the problems at hand. There are no easy solutions, but the idea of balance between humanity and the environment is something that policy makers will need to look at - how to reach an equilibrium in a warming area where both humans and the environment can coexist and thrive.
2 人中、2人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
A Warning to Heed
2012/3/14
形式:ハードカバー|Amazonが確認した購入
A Great Aridness is a beautifully written book about, at least to me, a very sad subject. If you want to know why Arizona is in a precarious balancing act with its water supply, read this book.
If you want to know factors causing the increase in forest fires, read this book.
If you want to find the connections of these facts to global warming/climate change read this book.
You will also will also learn, in almost poetical fashion, how all the above affects the Indian tribes of Arizona & New Mexico and many other people of the Southern Colorado Plateau/southwestern U.S. desert
I can't describe how much I have learned and how much I have been fascinated with this book.
John P. Jones
Helena, MT
If you want to know factors causing the increase in forest fires, read this book.
If you want to find the connections of these facts to global warming/climate change read this book.
You will also will also learn, in almost poetical fashion, how all the above affects the Indian tribes of Arizona & New Mexico and many other people of the Southern Colorado Plateau/southwestern U.S. desert
I can't describe how much I have learned and how much I have been fascinated with this book.
John P. Jones
Helena, MT
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