Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

348 Pages·2005·1.15 MB·English

by  James Gustave Speth

Red Sky at Morning
James Gustave Speth
Red Sky
  
at Morning
America and the Crisis of the
Global Environment
With a new Afterword on climate change
  
   
First published 2004 by Yale University Press.
This Nota Bene edition published 2005 by Yale University Press.
Copyright © 2004, 2005 by James Gustave Speth. All rights reserved. This book
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from copyrighted works. From The Collected Poems ofWallace Stevens by Wallace
Stevens, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens.
Used by permission ofAlfred A. Knopf, a division ofRandom House, Inc.
From The Rain in the Trees by W. S. Merwin, copyright © 1988 by W. S. Merwin.
Used by permission ofAlfred A. Knopf, a division ofRandom House, Inc.
From The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, copyright © by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. 1971,
renewed 1999. Used by permission ofRandom House Children’s Books, a di-
vision ofRandom House, Inc. All rights reserved. From Silent Spring by Rachel
Carson. Copyright © 1962 by Rachel L. Carson, renewed 1990 by Roger Christie.
Reprinted by permission ofHoughton Mi›in Company. All rights reserved.
From “We Who Prayed and Wept” by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems:
1957–1982, by Wendell Berry. Reprinted by permission ofNorth Point Press,
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ISBN 0-300-10776-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Cameron
and
The students ofthe Yale School ofForestry & Environmental Studies
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future ofthe world depends. Wallace Stevens
Contents
Preface ix
Prologue: 1980 1
Part One. Environmental Challenges Go Global ... 11
1. A World ofWounds 13
2. Lost in Eden 23
3. Pollution and Climate Change in a Full World 43
Part Two. ... And the World Responds 75
4. First Attempt at Global Environmental Governance 77
5. Anatomy ofFailure 98
Part Three. Facing Up to Underlying Causes 117
6. Ten Drivers ofEnvironmental Deterioration 119
7. Globalization and the Environment 140
Part Four. The Transition to Sustainability 149
8. Attacking the Root Causes 151
9. Taking “Good Governance” Seriously 172
10. The Most Fundamental Transition ofAll 191
Afterword 203
Resources for Citizens 231
List ofAbbreviations 257
Notes 261
For Further Reading: A Bookshelf 299
Index 307
Preface
As I write this preface, an unusually severe blizzard is bearing down on
Connecticut. Yale is shutting down. My wife is worrying about the chil-
dren driving, even though they have all been adults for years. The bliz-
zard is forecast to continue through most ofthe night and to set records.
It hardly seems the moment for me to begin fretting again about global
warming, but I check the NASA Web-site, and there it is: the bitterly
cold January we just su¤ered through in the Northeast was actually
the second warmest January on record globally, going back to 1880.
And only a fortnight ago, two Harvard scientists pointed out in an op-
ed article in the Boston Globe that dramatically colder weather in the
North Atlantic region is one possible consequence ofglobal warming
because the warming could disrupt the GulfStream. There is a lesson
here. To get it right we should trust science more than our senses, but the
science is complicated, often confusing, and sometimes counterintuitive.
It is easy to long for the clarity ofthe early days ofthe modern envi-
ronmental movement when the problems could be seen and smelled
and the villains were obvious. Those insults led me and others, fresh
out oflaw school in 1969, to help found the Natural Resources Defense
ix