Earth Then and Now records the dramatic way our planet has changed over the past century. On one page is a specific part of the world as it was 5, 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. On the facing page is the same place as it looks today. Each stark visual comparison tells a compelling story -- a melting glacier, an expanding desert, an encroaching cityscape, a natural disaster.
Earth Then and Now reminds us that nothing is without a cost. Highly topical and thought provoking chapters in this book include:
<ul> <li>Environmental change: Bearing witness to the effects of global warming</li> <li>Industrialization: Revealing the hidden costs of "progress"</li> <li>Urbanization: Showing the effects of our spreading cities</li> <li>Natural disasters: Reminding us of the power of nature</li> <li>War: Using comparisons to show the impact of armed conflict</li> <li>Travel and tourism: Illustrating the predatory nature of development.</li> </ul>Concise captions explain the facts and then allow the reader to draw personal conclusions. Anyone concerned about the environment will enjoy and appreciate Earth Then and Now.
]]>From the ingenuity of the highland people of Chile's Atacama desert who use giant nets to capture water from clouds of fog, to the ancient wisdom that protects the grazing lands of Kenya's Masai, this beautifully illustrated book tells the diverse stories about people in very hot, very cold, or very high places, who spend their lives collecting, chasing, piping, and trapping the water that life requires--all the while taking great care that no form of life, plant or animal, benefits at the expense of another.
In a world of finite resources, where the struggle for shrinking sources of water intensifies daily, these stories--collected over three years by photographers, writers, and scientists from four continents--are a source of hope and wonder. This book contains a wealth of information and images designed to further awareness of the vast array of life that is carried on precariously yet proudly on the earth's dryest lands.
]]>It doesn't have to be this way, according to Fred Pearce. A veteran science news correspondent, Pearce has for over fifteen years chronicled the development of large-scale water projects like China's vast Three Gorges dam and India's Sardar Sarovar. But, as he and numerous other authors have pointed out, far from solving our water problems, these industrial scale projects, and others now in the planning, are bringing us to the brink of a global water crisis.
Pearce decided there had to be a better way.
To find it, he traveled the globe in search of alternatives to mega-engineering projects. In Keepers of the Spring, he brings back intriguing stories from people like Yannis Mitsis, an ethnic Greek Cypriot, who is the last in his line to know the ways and whereabouts of a network of underground tunnels that have for centuries delivered to farming communities the water they need to survive on an arid landscape. He recounts the inspiring experiences of small-scale water stewards like Kenyan Jane Ngei, who reclaimed for her people a land abandoned by her government as a wasteland. And he tells of many others who are developing new techniques and rediscovering ancient ones to capture water for themselves.
The solution to our water problems, he finds, may not lie in new technologies but in recovering ancient traditions, using water more efficiently, and better understanding local hydrology. Are these approaches adequate to serve the world's growing populations? The answer remains unclear. But we ignore them at our own peril.
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