A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest
- ISBN-10
- 0199779104
- ISBN-13
- 9780199779109
- Category
- Science
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-04-01
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- William Debuys
Description
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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2013-05-01
- 369 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
Similar books
-
The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss
By William DebuysWritten in a vivid and nuanced style evocative of John McPhee or Peter Matthiessen, The Trail to Kanjiroba offers a surprising and revitalizing new way to think about Earthcare, one that may enable us to continue the difficult work that ...
-
Salt Dreams: Land & Water in Low-down California
By William DebuysReclamation would build its main diversion at Laguna Weir , near the Pot Holes , where Rockwood had originally intended his diversion to be . Laguna Dam would be stronger , safer , and more reliable than the intake and delivery system ...
-
Introduction to International and Global Studies, Third Edition
By Shawn C. Smallman, Kimberley BrownTelling the story of hundreds of Inuit, sick with TB, who were shipped to Hamilton. CBC News, November 9. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/telling-the- ...
-
Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range. Revised and Expanded Edition.
By William DebuysBidwell, Percy. “The Agricultural Revolution in New England. ... Edited by Lansing B. Bloom. New Mexico Historical Review 8–13 (1933–1938): n.p. Bowden, ... Brown, David E., and Neil B. Carmony, eds. Aldo Leopold's Southwest.
-
The Walk
By William DebuysSet, like River of Traps, on a small farm in a New Mexican mountain valley that the author has tended since 1977, The Walk explores the illuminating ways in...
-
The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
By Dahr JamailLike no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this ...
-
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines
By Michael E. MannSee principal component analysis PC (principal component) time series, 43 Pearce, Fred, 222, 342n64 Pearson, Ben, 186 Pearson, Karl, 305n16 peer review, 78–80, 122 Penn Future, 231, 235, 245 Penn State, 234 Peterson, Tom, 181 Phillips, ...
-
Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife
By Philip L. Fradkin... 27n, 152 politics, 18, 19n, 124, 128–29 Pollock, Joe, 156 Porter, Clayton, 241n61 Posey War, 252n48 Poulton, Donna L., ... Anasazi, 2, 3, 4, 181 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 45 Rockefeller, Michael, 8 Rockport, 127, 272 index.
-
The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water
By Charles FishmanExplores every facet of water and examines the issues surrounding water scarcity and what can be done to ensure that humans have plenty of clean water in the future. By the best-selling author of The Wal-Mart Effect. Reprint.
-
First Impressions: A Reader's Journey to Iconic Places of the American Southwest
By William Debuys, David J. WeberEditorial Board Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Past President of Yale University William J. Cronon, University of Wisconsin–Madison Philip J. Deloria, University of Michigan John Mack Faragher, Yale University ...