References
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- [2] Bryson, R.A., and Murray, T.J. 1977. Climates of Hunger. Madison [WI]: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 48; 171.
- [3] Summary of: Hodell, D.A., Curtis, J. H., and Brenner, M. 1995. Possible role of climate in the collapse of the Classic Maya Civilization. Nature 375: 391-394., Retrieved: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_mayan.html (accessed 8 May 2015).10.1038/375391a0
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- [8] Vadinleanu, A. 2001. Decision-making and decision support systems for balancing Socio-Economic and Natural Capital Development. Observatorio Medioambiental 4: 19-47; p. 21.
- [9] Op cit., pp. 21-22.
- [10] Ibid.
- [11] Ibid.
- [12] Op cit., p. 23.
- [13] Op cit., p. 25.
- [14] Op cit., p. 26.
- [15] Ibid; To see discussion of the varied stances of the “Club of Rome” (which calls for limits to growth to obtain ecological balance since human-made climate change is real and serious) and the “Club of Growth” (which denies that climate change is serious even if human-induced) and its implications for the adoption (or not) of sustainability policies. (See: Owen, S. M. 2007. Project demonstrating excellence: Power, culture, and sustainability in the making of public policy in an Appalachian Headwaters Community; Thesis (Ph.D.), Union Institute & University). In it, Owen quoted Herman Daly (Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development 1996, p. 215), who said that in the United States, limits-to-growth debates stopped “precisely when people [i.e., the economic elite] realized that limits to growth implied limits to inequality . . . [so] let us therefore reject the premise of finitude and entropy and return to the unlimited-growth vision that does not call for political impossibilities . . . [t]hat it called for physical impossibilities instead can be overlooked since most [US] voters have never heard of the laws of thermodynamics” (in Owen, p. 55).
- [16] Boulding, K. E. 1971, May. The dodo didn’t make it: survival and betterment. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 19-22; 19. In Boulding, K. E. 1970. A primer on social dynamics: History as dialectics and development (New York: Free Press), Boulding introduced his “Threat/Integry/Exchange schema, which argues that human behaviour is structured by concerns of harm (threat), concerns of tribe/family/friend relations (Integry) and concerns of individuals seeking to “rationally” optimise profits and lower costs (exchange). In Boulding’s view, only a balanced vision of combined human motivation, tilted towards Integry, is ecologically sustainable.10.1080/00963402.1971.11455362
- [17] Cutts, Steve. “Man”. Retrieved: https://stevecutts.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/man/ (accessed 8 May 2015).
- [18] See, for example: Podesta, J., and Ogden, P. 2007. The security implications of climate change. The Washington Quarterly 31 (1): 115-38. They state, that however optimistic or pessimistic the science of climate change in the Anthropocene epoch may turn out, poor countries will bear most of the burdens: “That said, science only tells part of the story. The geopolitical consequences of climate change are determined by local political, social, and economic factors as much as by the magnitude of the climatic shift itself. As a rule, wealthier countries and individuals will be better able to adapt to the impacts of climate change, whereas the disadvantaged will suffer the most. An increase in rainfall, for example, can be a blessing for a country that has the ability to capture, store, and distribute the additional water. It is a deadly source of soil erosion for a country that does not have adequate land management practices or infrastructure” (pp. 115-16). Even so, publics in developed countries, the authors claim, face a unique danger driven by their media surplus of constant “scare” messages about climate change, of sensory overload and subsequent desensitization [if not outright disinformation]. “Ultimately, the threat of desensitization could prove one of the gravest threats of all, for the national security and foreign policy challenges posed by climate change are tightly interwoven with the moral challenge of helping those least responsible to cope with its effects. If the international community fails to meet either set of challenges, it will fail to meet them both” (p. 134).
- [19] Taleb, N. N. 2007. The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable. New York: Random House.