diff --git a/_index.db b/_index.db index 56fbc53b6..31ffcbaff 100644 Binary files a/_index.db and b/_index.db differ diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nature_Conservation_Review-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nature_Conservation_Review-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f35d06564 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nature_Conservation_Review-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: "A Nature Conservation Review" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nature_Conservation_Review" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:23.117562+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +A Nature Conservation Review is a two-volume work by Derek Ratcliffe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1977. It set out to identify the most important places for nature conservation in Great Britain. It is often known by the initials NCR, and sites listed in it are termed "NCR sites". +The approach adopted by Ratcliffe was adapted and applied to the selection of sites important for geological conservation in the Geological Conservation Review. A Marine Nature Conservation Review has also been published. +Volume 1 set out the rationale and methods used, and gave descriptions of the major habitat types. +Volume 2 consisted entirely of a site inventory. Sites were grouped into six major habitat types: + +Coastal sites - 135 sites +Woodlands - 234 sites +Lowland grasslands, heaths and scrub - 159 sites +Open waters - 99 sites +Peatlands - 116 sites +Upland grasslands and heaths - 101 sites + + +== See also == +List of NCR sites + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Book-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Book-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..cf3b9e6eb --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Book-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "An Inconvenient Book" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Book" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:57.427791+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems is a 2007 political narrative written and edited by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. + + +== Explanation of the book's title == +The title of An Inconvenient Book is a parody of the title of Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. One section of the book provides a critical response to Gore's views on global warming. + + +== Issues discussed == +Beck discusses his political views on a number of subjects. Issues include Beck’s claims that the free market provides the best way to fight global warming, divorce rates, Beck's perceptions of liberal bias on school campuses, the income gap, perceived anti-Americanism of the United Nations, and illegal immigration. + + +== Reception == +Publishers Weekly described An Inconvenient Book as "a good read for conservatives," referring to Beck's often lighthearted tone, "at his best when most absurd, and funniest when he's his own target." On the content, the reviewer says "While often informative, as in his chapter on global warming, Beck is sometimes tedious, particularly when dealing with Islam and education (France is literally teetering on the edge, and our biggest ally, England, is about to be turned inside out as well)." +An Inconvenient Book entered The New York Times Best Seller List at Number 1 under the category Hardcover Nonfiction, and stayed in the list for 17 weeks. + + +== References and quotations == + + +== External links == +Glenn Beck's book page \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Sustainable_Development-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Sustainable_Development-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..71e32ddb3 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Sustainable_Development-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +--- +title: "An Introduction to Sustainable Development" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Sustainable_Development" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:58.610884+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +An Introduction to Sustainable Development is a 2007 Earthscan book which presents sustainable development as a process that "meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". This textbook examines the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable development by exploring changing patterns of consumption, production, and distribution of resources. Case studies include coastal wetlands; community-based water supply and sanitation systems; and sustainable energy, forest, and industrial development. +Author Peter P. Rogers is a Professor of Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, USA. Co-authors Kazi F. Jalal and John A. Boyd are lecturers at Harvard's Extension School. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e69de29bb diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..5e02a29b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Hell and High Water (book)" +chunk: 1/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:53.984226+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do is a book by author, scientist, and former U.S. Department of Energy official Joseph J. Romm, published December 26, 2006. The author is "one of the world's leading experts on clean energy, advanced vehicles, energy security, and greenhouse gas mitigation." +The book warned of dire consequences to the U.S. and the world if wide-scale environmental changes are not enacted by the U.S. government. It reviewed the evidence that the initial global warming changes would lead to feedbacks and accelerated warming. According to Romm, the oceans, soils, Arctic permafrost, and rainforests could become sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The book claimed that, without serious government action, sea levels would rise high enough to submerge numerous coastal communities and inland areas on both U.S. coasts and around the world by the year 2100. +In 2008, Time magazine wrote that "On [Romm's] blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming." Romm was interviewed on Fox News on January 31, 2007, about the book and the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report climate report. + +== Summary of the book == +Part I, comprising the first four chapters of the book, reviews the science of climate change, setting forth the evidence that humans are causing an unprecedented increase in carbon emissions that is, in turn causing global warming. The book describes the consequences of unchecked climate change, such as destruction of coastal cities due to rising sea levels and mega-hurricanes; increasing droughts and deadly water shortages; infestation of insects into new ranges; and increased famines, heat waves, forest fires and desertification. The book sets forth the research on "feedback loops" that would contribute to accelerating climate change, including: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b5dcbb5c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: "Hell and High Water (book)" +chunk: 2/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:53.984226+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +melting ice at the poles that means less reflection of sunlight by white ice and more absorption of the sun's heat by ocean water and dark land; +an increasing amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (water vapor is a greenhouse gas); +melting permafrost in the Arctic, where more carbon is locked in Arctic permafrost than in all of the Earth's atmosphere and where methane, which is about 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas, is being released by permafrost in the Arctic faster than scientists previously thought it would; +the death of algae and phytoplankton from heat and acidity in the oceans, reducing the CO2 being absorbed by them; and +the reduced ability of tropical forests to absorb CO2 as they are destroyed. +Romm proposes an eight-point program, based on existing technologies, to counter and then reverse the trend toward catastrophic global warming: performance-based efficiency programs; energy efficiency gains from industry and power generation through cogeneration of heat and power; building wind farms; capturing carbon dioxide from proposed coal plants; building nuclear plants; greatly improving the fuel economy of our vehicles using PHEVs; increasing production of high-yield energy crops; and stopping tropical deforestation while planting more trees.(pp. 22–23) +Part I then offers extrapolations, based on various models and analyses, of what will happen to the U.S. and the world by 2025, 2050 and 2100 if decisive action is not taken quickly. Treehugger.com called this "an explanation that is both comprehensive and comprehensible." The book claimed that without serious government action within the following ten years, sea levels will eventually rise high enough to submerge numerous coastal communities and inland areas on both U.S. coasts and around the world causing over 100 million "environmental refugees" to flee the coasts by the year 2100. +Part II, comprising the next six chapters, discusses the politics and media issues that the author says are delaying such decisive action (and how this has a negative influence on the behavior of other countries, particularly China) and also discusses the currently available technological solutions to global warming. The book asserts that there has been a disingenuous, concerted and effective campaign to convince Americans that the science is not proven, or that global warming is the result of natural cycles, and that there needs to be more research. The book claims that, to delay action, industry and government spokesmen suggest falsely that "technology breakthroughs" will eventually save us with hydrogen cars and other fixes. It asserts that the reason for this denial and delay is that "ideology trumps rationality. ... Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming – strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies into the market."(p. 107) Romm says that the media have acted as enablers of this program of denial in the misguided belief that the pursuit of "balance" is superior to the pursuit of truth - even in science journalism. The book describes how this has led to skewed public opinion and to congress cutting funds for programmes aimed at accelerating the deployment into the American market of cost-effective technologies already available. +The book spends many pages refuting the "hydrogen myth" (see also Romm's previous book, The Hype about Hydrogen) and "the geo-engineering fantasy". In Chapter 7, the book describes technology strategies that it claims would permit the U.S., over the next two decades, to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by two-thirds without increasing the energy costs of either consumers or businesses. These include launching "a massive performance-based efficiency program for homes, commercial buildings and new construction ... [and] a massive effort to boost the efficiency of heavy industry and expand the use of cogeneration ... [c]apture the CO2 from 800 new large coal plants and store it underground, [b]uild 1 million large wind turbines ... [and] [b]uild 700 new large nuclear power plants". +The book's conclusion calls on voters to demand immediate action. The conclusion is followed by over 50 pages of extensive endnotes and an index. +Tyler Hamilton, in his review of the book for The Toronto Star, summarizes the book's contents as follows: "Whereas the first third of Romm's book presents overwhelming and disturbing evidence that human-caused greenhouse gases are the primary ingredients behind global warming, the pages that follow offer alarming detail on how the U.S. public is being misled by a federal government (backed by conservative political forces) that is intent on inaction, and that's also on a mission to derail international efforts to curb emissions." + +In his book Hell and High Water, Romm discusses the urgency to act and the sad fact that America is refusing to do so. ... Romm gives a name to those such as ExxonMobil who deny that global warming is occurring and are working to persuade others of this money-making myth: they are the Denyers and Delayers. They are better rhetoriticians than scientists are. .. Global warming is happening now, and Romm... gives us 10 years to change the way we live before it’s too late to use existing technology to save the world. "...humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. The tragedy, then, as historians of the future will most certainly recount, is that we ruined their world not because we lacked the knowledge or the technology to save it but simply because we chose not to make the effort”(Romm, 25). \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d7086bfdb --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "Hell and High Water (book)" +chunk: 3/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:53.984226+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Challenges and solutions identified by the book == +The book claims that U.S. politicians who deny the science and have failed to take genuine action on conservation and alternative energy initiatives are following a disastrous course by delaying serious changes that he says are imminently needed. Romm also criticizes the media for what he says is sloppy reporting and an unwillingness to probe behind political rhetoric, which he says are lulling Americans into accepting continuing delays on implementing emission-cutting technologies. The book argues that there is a limited window of opportunity to head off the most catastrophic effects of global warming, and it calls upon Americans to demand that our government "embrace an aggressive multi-decade, government-led effort to use existing and near-term clean energy technologies." (p. 230) +Romm writes that strategies to combat climate change with current technologies can significantly slow global warming and buy more time for the world to develop new technologies and take even stronger action. The book lays out a number of proposed solutions to avoiding a climate catastrophe, including: + +launching massive energy efficiency programs for homes, office buildings, and heavy industry; +increasing the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks to 60 miles per gallon while also equipping them with advanced plug-in hybrid technology; +building 1 million large wind turbines; and +ceasing tropical deforestation and reversing the trend by planting trees. +The book states, "The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report this year (2007) will present a much stronger consensus and a much clearer and darker picture of our likely future than the Third Assessment – but it will almost certainly still underestimate the likely impacts. The Fifth Assessment, due around 2013, should include many of the omitted feedbacks, like that of the [carbon emissions caused by] defrosting tundra, and validate the scenarios described on these pages." (p. 94) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6866ca95e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Hell and High Water (book)" +chunk: 4/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water_(book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:53.984226+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Critical response == +The Toronto Star's January 1, 2007 review of the book says that Romm "convincingly shoots down the arguments of those who claim global warming is a hoax or some kind of natural cycle not associated with human activities." The review laments that the "'Denyers and Delayers' are winning the political battle in the United States, the world's highest emitter of greenhouse gases and a saboteur of Kyoto talks" and that the media's policy of "giving 'equal time' to Denyers gives the public the wrong impression about our understanding and level of certainty around global warming science." The review concludes, "The book itself is a short and easy read, not as intimidating as some other works, and it hits all the main points on the science and politics behind global warming, and the policy and technological solutions to minimize damage to the planet, economy and humanity." +A review in the Detroit Free Press's Freep.com stated, "Joseph Romm's Hell and High Water is a great book for people who want to understand the complexities of global warming and, perhaps more important, what we could be doing about it other than wringing our hands or sticking our collective head in the sand." Technology Review concluded, "His book provides an accurate summary of what is known about global warming and climate change, a sensible agenda for technology and policy, and a primer on how political disinformation has undermined climate science." BooksPath Reviews commented, Hell and High Water is nothing less than a wake-up call to the country. It is a searing critique of American environmental and energy policy and a passionate call to action by a writer with a unique command of the science and politics of climate change. Hell and High Water goes beyond ideological rhetoric to offer pragmatic solutions to avert the threat of global warming – solutions that must be taken seriously by every American. On February 21, 2007, Bill Moore at EV World.com wrote: "...it seemed every paragraph, every page revealed some new outrage that just got my dander up. If it doesn't do the same to you, I'll really be surprised." +Grist's blog "Gristmill" noted, "Joseph Romm's Hell and High Water may be the most depressing book on global warming I've ever read. ... My hope is that a lifetime spent in insider elite politics causes him to underestimate what a bottom-up grassroots movement can accomplish. ... A coalition that supported real action on global warming, as part of movement that supported real solutions on these other issues too, would have a much better chance of winning than a single-issue group. It would have a broader base and could offer more immediate relief from problems; because global warming wouldn't be its only or even main issue, it would produce quicker results in the lives of ordinary people. ... Technically, Romm is sound." The writer amended his statement as follows: "I referred to the book as 'depressing', but the tone is frank, not truly gloomy.... Romm... is known as a level-headed, optimistic analyst. His book is no exception – he documents the problem and the (quite mainstream) solutions he endorses thoroughly and meticulously." The Foreign Policy in Focus article "An Inconvenient Truth II" cites the book with approval and references its analysis twice. +The blog "Political Cortex" wrote: "Hell and High Water might be the Global Warming work of most interest to the politically engaged (Democratic and/or Republican). Romm lays a strong case as to how Global Warming could be the death sentence for the Republican Party as reality becomes ever blatantly at odds with Republican Party rhetoric. ... Romm also highlights how, in an ever more difficult world in the years to come, either the United States figures out how to lead in dealing with mitigating/muting Global Warming and its impacts or risks becoming a pariah nation, with dire implications for the Republic and its citizens." Booklist's reviewer wrote that the book "presents a clear and effective primer on climate science. But the most salient aspects of this provocative expose involve Romm's documentation of what he calls the Bush administration's irresponsible and backward energy policies, the censorship of legitimate and urgent information pertaining to global warming, and the threats rising temperatures pose to "the health and well-being of this nation and the world. Romm explains that we already possess the technologies and know-how we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." +In 2008, the Greenpeace staff blog noted, "If you’re concerned about global warming and want to do something about it, Joseph Romm’s Hell and High Water ...is a fantastic primer. ... Romm clearly and concisely details the technologies and policies we need to adopt to avoid the worst consequences of global warming". + +== See also == + +== References == + +== External links == +Publisher webpage +Romm's January 25, 2007 piece in Salon.com about global warming \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Ecology,_Human_Economy-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Ecology,_Human_Economy-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..776a1afc3 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Ecology,_Human_Economy-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: "Human Ecology, Human Economy" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Ecology,_Human_Economy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:55.169070+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Human Ecology, Human Economy: Ideas for an Ecologically Sustainable Future is a 1997 book edited by Mark Diesendorf and Clive Hamilton. The authors' intent is to "develop some of the basic ideas, concepts and tools that are needed to create a set of preferred futures for the Earth". According to the editors, the book provides equal measures of human ecology and ecological economics, in order to assist the process of working towards a better future. +Human Ecology, Human Economy has been reviewed in Ecological Economics and The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. + + +== See also == +List of Australian environmental books +Sustainability +Ecologically sustainable development + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Matter_of_Survival-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Matter_of_Survival-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3733c7ba8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Matter_of_Survival-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: "It's a Matter of Survival" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Matter_of_Survival" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:59.844866+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +It's a Matter of Survival is a 1990 book by Anita Gordon and David Suzuki. Written for the general reader, the book looks ahead 50 years and explores the condition of human society and the environment. Suggestions are given about how to improve the future. The book originated as a radio series aired in 1989 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. + + +== Overview == +In the series and the book, described how the "first global scientific consensus" that the world was "entering an era of unprecedented climate change" had emerged in the June 1988 international Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere chaired by Stephen Lewis, and with 300 scientists from around the world in attendance. +On the webpage of the David Suzuki Foundation—a non-profit organization environmental organization headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that he co-founded in 1991, Suzuki said that the response to the CBC radio show was the catalyst for the establishment of the Foundation. + + +== See also == +List of books by David Suzuki + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Company-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Company-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c8fe66644 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Company-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Killer Company" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Company" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:00.949596+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed is a 2009 Australian book by journalist Matt Peacock. + + +== Overview == +The book documents how the use of harmful asbestos fibre in building materials produced by James Hardie Industries "led to the deaths of thousands of workers and customers, who were never informed of the dangers". Working with asbestos products, such as "fibro", resulted in medical abnormalities, such as asbestosis. The book opens with the story of Bernie Banton, former James Hardie employee, who suffered from asbestos-induced fibrosis and later died. +According to Peacock, James Hardie Industries circumvented the rules and regulations designed to protect the community from serious health hazards. Peacock states that "Hardie embarked on a cold, calculated strategy to maximise profits, minimise compensation and conceal the culprits". + + +== Awards and legacy == +Killer Company was a finalist for the Walkley non-fiction book of the year in 2009. +Devil's Dust, a docudrama based on Killer Company, was released in 2012, with Ewen Leslie portraying Peacock. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..388649d2d --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +--- +title: "Last Chance to See" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:02.112529+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Last Chance to See is a 1989 BBC radio documentary series and its accompanying book, written and presented by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. In the series, Adams and Carwardine travel to various locations in the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction. The book was published in 1990. +In 2009, the BBC broadcast a television follow-up series of the same name, with Stephen Fry replacing the late Adams. +In 1985, Douglas Adams went to Madagascar in search of the (possibly extinct) lemur the aye-aye. The trip was part of a project by the World Wide Fund for Nature and British Sunday newspaper The Observer, sending well-known authors to remote places to seek endangered species and write articles for The Observer Magazine, to help raise awareness of ecological issues. Adams was met in Madagascar by zoologist Mark Carwardine (who was working for the WWF at the time). The Observer project was successful, and Adams and Carwardine developed a radio series around the same concept for BBC Radio 4. Carwardine later said: + +"We put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere he fancied going, I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were, and we made a journey out of every place that had two pins." +The journeys undertaken were to see: + +The aye-aye in Madagascar +The Komodo dragon on the island of Komodo in Indonesia +The kākāpō in New Zealand +The mountain gorilla in Zaire +The northern white rhinoceros in Zaire +The Yangtze river dolphin in China +The Rodrigues fruit bat on the island of Rodrigues, Mauritius +The Amazonian manatee in Brazil +The Juan Fernández fur seal on the Juan Fernández Islands, Chile + + +== Radio == + +The aye-aye programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 1 November 1985 as a pilot; six further episodes were then broadcast in 1989: + +The kākāpō - 4 October +The Yangtze river dolphin - 11 October +The Amazonian manatee - 18 October +The Rodrigues fruit bat - 25 October +The Komodo dragon - 1 November +The Juan Fernández fur seal - 8 November +The mountain gorilla and northern white rhino, although the subject of chapters in the book, did not appear in the radio series. + + +== Book == +In 1990, an accompanying book was published in the UK, describing the various adventures that duo had encountered on journeys, often with a comic tone. The book covers most of the radio episodes, but excludes the Juan Fernández fur seal and the Amazonia manatee. It includes some colour photographs taken by Carwardine. +The first American hardcover edition was published by Harmony Books in 1991 (under ISBN 0-517-58215-5) and the first German paperback edition was published in 1992 by Heyne (under ISBN 3-453-06115-2). These editions carry slightly different photographs of the journeys. An abridged audiobook, read by Adams, was also published. +In the posthumous biography and essay collection, The Salmon of Doubt, Adams describes Last Chance to See as his favourite work. + + +== CD-ROM == + +The Voyager Company also published a two CD-ROM set (for Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System 6), in 1992, featuring over 800 still photographs, Adams reading the nearly complete book, Carwardine reading fact files on the species they searched - like side bars, and extracts from the BBC Radio 4 series. + + +== Television series == + +In 2009, the BBC broadcast a television follow-up series, in which Stephen Fry, a friend of the late Adams, accompanies Carwardine on a journey to see what has changed in the 20 years since the radio broadcasts. The series excludes the Rodrigues fruit bat, the Yangtze river dolphin, which is "in all probability extinct", and the Juan Fernandez fur seal, which had proved embarrassingly easy for Adams and Carwardine to find. + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Book extracts: +"BBC Last Chance to See – About – Brazil extract". Retrieved 4 June 2009. +"BBC Last Chance to See – About – Madagascar extract". Retrieved 4 June 2009. +"BBC Last Chance to See – About – New Zealand extract". Retrieved 4 June 2009. +Adams, D., Carwardine, M., Last Chance to See (Windows CD-ROM set), ISBN 1-55940-427-2 The Voyager Company, New York, 1992. +Gaiman, N., Don't Panic – Douglas Adams & the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ISBN 1-84023-742-2 Titan Books, London, 1993 +"BBC – h2g2 – Last Chance To See – the Radio Series and Book". Retrieved 4 June 2009. + + +== External links == + +Last Chance to See - BBC programme guide +Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything – Douglas Adams gives a talk centered around the book Last Chance to See \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Child_in_the_Woods-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Child_in_the_Woods-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..02058f466 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Child_in_the_Woods-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: "Last Child in the Woods" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Child_in_the_Woods" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:03.271621+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder is a 2005 book by author Richard Louv that documents decreased exposure of children to nature in American society and how this "nature-deficit disorder" harms children and society. The author also suggests solutions to the problems he describes. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2008. + + +== Synopsis == +In the book, Louv argues that modern children are increasingly separated from nature compared to previous generations and that direct outdoor experience is essential for healthy development. He draws on research suggesting that reduced exposure to natural environments contributes to behavioral and emotional problems in children and that exposure can be therapeutic for children and adults suffering from traumatic stress, depression, obesity and many other disorders. Louv introduces the term "nature-deficit disorder" to describe the growing disconnection and writes that it affects "health, spiritual well-being, and many other areas, including [people's] ability to feel ultimately alive." +Louv argues imaginative outdoor play have been displaced by organized activities such as sports, electronic media, and parental fears about safety. He attributes these shifts to cultural anxieties, media sensationalism, and restrictions that limit children's access to natural spaces. Louv notes that these government imposed restrictions, such as regulations on treehouse construction and limits that discourage children from roaming in the nearby woods, further reduce opportunities for unstructured outdoor play. Louv argues that classrooms have likewise become increasingly sanitized, with outdoor learning and natural sciences removed or reduced to make room for preparation for standardized testing. Demonstrating the appeal of indoor activities, one fifth grader stated, "I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are." Louv further asserts that statistical dangers associated with outdoor play are very low and that media sensationalism has fueled disproportionate fears about children's safety. + + +== Reception == +The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for best paper nonfiction. The author received the Audubon Medal "for sounding the alarm about the health and societal costs of children's isolation from the natural world—and for sparking a growing movement to remedy the problem." +During the second Obama administration, Sally Jewell, a CEO of REI and Obama's secretary of the interior, took an REI daypack filled with copies of Louv's book, went to the White House, and handed them out to staff and the President. + + +== Versions == +English: The Last Child in the Woods, +Hardcover (April 15, 2005), ISBN 978-1-56512-391-5 +Paperback Updated and Expanded (April 10, 2008), ISBN 978-1-56512-605-3 +audio CD: Recorded Books; Unabridged edition (December 20, 2007), ISBN 978-1-4281-6967-8 +Japanese: Anatano Kodomoniwa Shizenga Tarinai, Hardcover (July 20, 2006), ISBN 978-4152087515 + + +== Children & Nature Network == +The success of Last Child in the Woods inspired the creation of Children & Nature Network co-founded and chaired by the book's author, Richard Louv, to encourage and support the people and organizations working to reconnect children with nature. + + +== Green Hour == +Green Hour is an organization that provides information on how to reverse Nature-Deficit Disorder, and encourages parents to let their children explore and reconnect with the outdoors. + + +== See also == +Nature Cat, a TV series inspired by the story + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Official website for the book +Today Show. July 16, 2008. +Morning Edition, National Public Radio. May 25, 2005 +KQED. May 12, 2008 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..814dcae74 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: "Livestock's Long Shadow" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:06.734046+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on 29 November 2006, that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation". It stated that livestock accounts for 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, a figure which FAO changed to 14.5% in its 2013 study Tackling climate change through livestock. +The report was a source of controversy at the time of its publication: both because some scholars thought that the report underestimated the impact of livestock on climate change, while Meat industry stakeholders both publicly critiqued the report and influenced meat producing countries to complain to FAO. + + +== Report == +Livestock's Long Shadow is an assessment of research, taking into account direct impacts of livestock production, along with the impacts of feed crop cultivation. The report states that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to serious environmental problems. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. +Senior author Henning Steinfeld stated that livestock are "one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action is required to remedy the situation." +Following a life-cycle analysis approach, the report evaluates "that livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions." Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arise from feed production (e.g. chemical fertilizer production, deforestation for pasture and feed crops, cultivation of feed crops, feed transport and soil erosion), animal production (e.g. enteric fermentation and methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure) and as a result of the transportation of animal products. Following this approach the report estimates that livestock "is responsible for 18 percent" of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. The main sources of emissions were found to be: + +Land use and land use change: 2.5 Gigatonnes carbon dioxide equivalent; including forest and other natural vegetation replaced by pasture and feed crop in the Neotropics (CO2) and carbon release from soils such as pasture and arable land dedicated to feed production (CO2) +Feed Production (except carbon released from soil): 0.4 Gigatonnes CO2 equivalent, including fossil fuel used in manufacturing chemical fertilizer for feed crops (CO2) and chemical fertilizer application on feed crops and leguminous feed crop (N2O, NH3) +Animal production: 1.9 Gigatonnes CO2 equivalent, including enteric fermentation from ruminants (CH4) and on-farm fossil fuel use (CO2) +Manure Management: 2.2 Gigatonnes CO2 equivalent, mainly through manure storage, application and deposition (CH4, N2O, NH3) +Processing and international transport: 0.03 Gigatonnes CO2 equivalent + + +== Controversy == +A 2009 article in the Worldwatch Institute magazine by authors Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, then employed at the World Bank, claimed that the FAO report was too conservative and that livestock sector accounts for much more of global GHG emissions, at least 51%, taking into account animal respiration and photosynthetic capacity of the land used for feeding and housing livestock. A 2011 response to this was published by FAO and an international coalition of scientists, discrediting the magazine article and upholding the 2006 assessment. +But this response was fully answered back in the journal Animal Feed Science and Technology (AFST), and they reiterated their estimate while FAO scientists declined to continue the debate despite AFST's Editor's invitation. +In 2013 FAO publicly partnered with International Meat Secretariat and the International Dairy Federation and many of the same authors of the first report published a subsequent (2013) study for the FAO, revising their estimate of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions due to livestock downward to 14.5% without addressing any of the alleged errors pointed out in Goodland and Anhang's report or in the ensuing peer-reviewed debate. +The results of Livestock's Long Shadow had an error in methodology as the authors only evaluated the tailpipe emissions of cars, while for meat production a comprehensive life-cycle assessment was used to calculate livestock's green house gas effect. This underestimated transportation therefore inflating meat productions contribution. This issue was raised by Dr. Frank Mitloehner from the University of California, Davis. In an interview with BBC Pierre Gerber, one of the authors of Livestock's Long Shadow, accepted Mitloehner's criticism. "I must say honestly that he has a point - we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport, we just used the figure from the IPCC..." he said. However, this information was the inspiration behind movements such as "Meatless Monday" +Mitloehner is the author of a 2009 study on the topic of livestock and climate change. Five percent of the funds for said study were provided by the livestock industry, according to a press release by Mitloehner's university. FAO cites him as a representative of the International Feed Industry Federation, whose "vision is to provide a unified voice and leadership to represent and promote the global feed industry as an essential participant in the food chain that provides sustainable, safe, nutritious and affordable food for a growing world population." Between 2002 and 2021 Mitloehner and his research center received $12.5 million in funding from industry groups. 2019 they coordinated efforts to discredit the EAT Lancet report. Later they led the campaign #yes2meat on social media. + + +== References to the report == +The report was the main scientific source for the documentary Meat The Truth, narrated by Marianne Thieme (2007). +It was frequently cited in the documentary Cowspiracy (2014). + + +== See also == +Environmental issues with agriculture +Stock-free agriculture +Veganism + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, T.; Castel, V.; Rosales, Mauricio; De Haan, C. (2006). Livestock's Long Shadow – Environmental Issues and Options. Food and Agriculture Organisation. ISBN 92-5-105571-8. +Bland, Alastair (August 1, 2012). "Is the Livestock Industry Destroying the Planet?". Smithsonian. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_in_the_Hothouse-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_in_the_Hothouse-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..fb3d36499 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_in_the_Hothouse-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Living in the Hothouse" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_in_the_Hothouse" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:07.884081+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Living in the Hothouse: How Global Warming Affects Australia is a 2005 book by Professor Ian Lowe which is a sequel to his Living in the Greenhouse (1989). The book presents a detailed analysis of climate change science and the likely impact of climate change in Australia. Living in the Hothouse also offers a critical overview of the Howard government's policy response to climate change in Australia. +Ian Lowe, AO, is a scientist, environmental policy analyst, and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, who has served on many federal, state and local government committees. +Other books by Ian Lowe include Reaction Time and A Big Fix. + + +== See also == + +List of Australian environmental books +Climate change in Australia + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Peace_with_the_Planet-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Peace_with_the_Planet-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6a5063900 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Peace_with_the_Planet-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +--- +title: "Making Peace with the Planet" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Peace_with_the_Planet" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:12.522174+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Making Peace With the Planet is a 1990 book by Barry Commoner. Commoner argues that, despite billions of dollars spent to save the environment, America is still in a deep environmental crisis. The book argues that environmental pollution can be prevented only through fundamental redesign of the way we produce goods. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Eaters_of_Kumaon-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Eaters_of_Kumaon-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a543fe4b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Eaters_of_Kumaon-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +--- +title: "Man-Eaters of Kumaon" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Eaters_of_Kumaon" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:16.139383+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Man-Eaters of Kumaon is a 1944 book written by hunter-naturalist Jim Corbett. It details the experiences that Corbett had in the Kumaon region of India from the 1900s to the 1930s, while hunting man-eating Bengal tigers and Indian leopards. One tiger, for example, was responsible for over 400 human deaths. Man-Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, and contains 10 stories of tracking and shooting man-eaters in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of the twentieth century. The text also contains incidental information on flora, fauna and village life. Seven of the stories were first published privately as Jungle Stories. + + +== Book contents == +Introduction by Sir Maurice Hallett +Preface by Lord Linlithgow +Authors Note: Causes of Man-eating in Tigers and Leopards +Champawat Man-eater: The story of the first man-eating tiger shot by Corbett in 1907. Reportedly the man-eater claimed 436 human victims in Nepal and India +Robin: Stories of Corbett's hunting companion Robin, his faithful spaniel. +The Chowgarh tigers: The first of three man-eaters Corbett was to shoot on government request at a 1929 district conference. It turned out to be a pair of two tigers, a mother and its grown cub, which had together killed 64 people between 1925 and 1930. The cub was shot in April 1929 and the mother on 11 April 1930. +The Bachelor of Powalgarh: The exciting tale of how Corbett shot the much sought after trophy tiger (non man-eater) in 1930. +The Mohan Man-eater: The second of the three man-eaters Corbett was requested to shoot at the 1929 conference. Shot in May 1931. +Fish of my Dreams: Corbett reflects on the joys of fishing for Mahseer (Indian river trout) in submontane rivers. +The Kanda Man-eater: The third of the three man-eaters requested for dispatch at the 1929 conference. Shot in 1933. +The Pipal Pani Tiger: Corbett traces 15 years of history of a local tiger (non man-eater), from its tracks in the mud as a cub, up until its death 15 years later +The Thak Man-eater: The last man-eater Corbett shot in November 1938 (aged 63) +Just Tigers: Corbett talks about the importance of conservation and his love of photographing tigers in the place of shooting them + + +== Origins == +After much prompting by friends and family in 1935 Corbett finally put to paper seven accounts of his jungle encounters. These were then made into a small book and 100 copies were privately published under the title Jungle Stories and distributed amongst friends. The stories were titled, "Wild Life in the Village: An Appeal", "The Pipal Pani Tiger", "The Fish of My Dreams", "A Lost Paradise", "The Terror that Walks by Night", "Purnagiri and Its Mysterious Lights", and "The Chowgarh Tigers". +In 1943, whilst Corbett was recovering from typhus fever, his close friend and manager of India's branch of Oxford Press, R.E. Hawkins, convinced him to write a book for publishing. Using the 1935 Jungle Stories as a basis, Corbett wrote Man-Eaters of Kumaon (10 stories) which was first published by Oxford University Press in 1944. + + +== Notable editions == +1944 – First publication in India by Oxford University Press – with 8 black and white photographs +1946 – Published in UK and USA by Oxford University Press – with 5 black and white photographs +1948 – Abridged Educational Edition published for schools under the title 'The Mohan Man-Eater and Other Stories' – illustrated by C.H.G. Moorhouse +1952 – Published in UK by Oxford University Press – illustrated by Raymond Sheppard (no photographs) +1953 – Published in USA by Pennant Paperbacks +1955 – Published in Paperback by Penguin +1962 – Published in Paperback by Bantam +1990–1995 Limited 1,500 Red Leather Bound set of Corbett's Complete works published by John Culler & Sons + + +== Legacy == + + +=== Sales and success === + +By May 1946 over half a million copies of Man-Eaters of Kumaon were in print. The book had been translated into four Western languages (including Spanish, Czech and Finnish) as well as six Indian languages. By 1980 the book went on to sell over four million copies worldwide. + + +=== Chhindwara court case === +In Chhindwara, India 1949 Jim Corbett's Man-Eaters of Kumaon was read out in court by defense for a murder charge. A villager by the name of Todal was found dead in the forest on 19 September 1949. The police's theory was that the accused conspired to murder the victim as he was in love with his wife, the defense was that the victim was killed by a man-eating tiger. Thus the defense produced Corbett's book and read passages relating relevant wounds and circumstances of an attack. The accused was later found not guilty. + + +=== Film adaptations === +In 1946 Universal Pictures brought the rights to the book and made the film Man-Eater of Kumaon (1948). The movie bore no relation to the book and centred on an American played by Wendell Corey who wounds a tiger and is later killed by it. Corbett saw the movie and claimed that the best actor was the tiger. In 1986, the BBC produced a docudrama titled Man-Eaters of India with Frederick Treves in the role of Jim Corbett. An IMAX movie, India: Kingdom of the Tiger, based on Corbett's books, was made in 2002. Corbett was played by Christopher Heyerdahl. + + +== See also == +Bengal tigers in literature +Tiger attack +Tiger attacks in the Sundarbans + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Man-Eaters of Kumaon at Faded Page (Canada) +Man-Eaters of Kumaon at Internet Archive (scanned books) +Man-Eaters of Kumaon at IMDb \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Nature-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Nature-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e39eeccaf --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Nature-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: "Man and Nature" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Nature" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:14.993059+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, first published in 1864, was written by American polymath scholar and diplomat George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882). Marsh intended his text to show that "whereas [others] think the earth made man, man in fact made the earth." He warned that humans could destroy both themselves and the Earth if they failed to restore and sustain global resources and to raise awareness about their actions. The book is one of the earliest works to document the effects of human action on the environment, and it helped to launch the modern conservation movement. +Marsh is remembered by scholars as a profound and observant student of men, books, and nature, with a wide range of interests ranging from history to poetry and literature. His wide array of knowledge and outstanding natural powers of mind gave him the ability to speak and write about every topic of inquiry with the assertive authority of a genuine investigator. He initially got the idea for "Man and Nature" from his observations in his New England home and his foreign travels devoted to similar inquiries. Marsh wrote the book with the view that human life and action are transformative phenomena, especially in relation to nature and due to personal economic interests. He felt that men were too quick to lessen their sense of responsibility, and he was "unwilling to leave the world worse than he found it." +The book challenges the myth of the inexhaustibility of the earth and the belief that human impact on the environment is negligible by drawing similarities to the ancient civilization of the Mediterranean. Marsh argued that ancient Mediterranean civilizations collapsed through environmental degradation. Deforestation led to eroded soils that led to decreased soil productivity. Additionally, the same trends of environmental degradation and resource depletion could be found occurring in the United States, as evidenced by deforestation and soil erosion in various regions. The book was one of the most influential books of its time, next to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), inspiring conservation and reform in the USA since it documented what happened to an ancient civilization when it depleted and exhausted its resources. The book was instrumental in the designation of Adirondack Park in New York in 1892 and in the development of the United States National Forest from 1891 onwards. Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the United States Forest Service, called the work "epoch-making," and Stewart Udall wrote that it was "the beginning of land wisdom in this country." + + +== Contents == +The book is divided into six chapters. + +Chapter I: Introductory +Chapter II: Transfer, Modification, and Extirpation of Vegetable and of Animal Species +Chapter III: The Woods +Chapter IV: The Waters +Chapter V: The Sands +Chapter VI: Projected or Possible Geographical Changes by Man + + +== See also == +Anthropocene +Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Rutkow, Eric (2012). American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Scribner. pp. 93–98. ISBN 978-1-4391-9354-9. + + +== External links == +Man and Nature at Internet Archive (digital editions) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maralinga b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maralinga new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e69de29bb diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Lands-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Lands-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..80217dfcb --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Lands-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "Memory Lands" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Lands" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:18.401128+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence is a 2018 book by Williams College history professor Christine DeLucia. The book was published by Yale University Press's Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity. It looks at over three hundred years of Indigenous history from King Philip's War to the present day, mostly in the North American Northeast, as well as in Bermuda. The book focuses on the role of place and details the continued presence of Indigenous peoples and memory in Bastoniak (Boston), Narragansett (roughly overlapping with Rhode Island), along the middle of the Kwinitekw (Connecticut River) Valley, and Bermuda. + + +== Reception == +Memory Lands has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the 2019 Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize from the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the 2020 Lois P. Rudnick Prize from the New England American Studies Association. It also won an honorable mention from the National Council on Public History in 2019. The book has been discussed and reviewed widely, including with DeLucia in conversation with WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti and by a group of scholars for H-Environment Roundtable Reviews. + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Bilodeau, Christopher J. (2019). "Review of Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast". Journal of American Ethnic History. 38 (3): 126–127. doi:10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.3.0126. ISSN 0278-5927. JSTOR 10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.3.0126. +Cohen, Matt (2019). "A Conversation with Lisa Brooks about Our Beloved Kin". Native American and Indigenous Studies. 6 (1): 157–164. doi:10.5749/natiindistudj.6.1.0157. ISSN 2332-1261. JSTOR 10.5749/natiindistudj.6.1.0157. S2CID 194356798. +Kolodny, Annette (2018). "Review of Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast". Native American and Indigenous Studies. 5 (2): 151–153. doi:10.5749/natiindistudj.5.2.0151. ISSN 2332-1261. JSTOR 10.5749/natiindistudj.5.2.0151. +Nelson, John William (1 April 2019). "Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast". Ethnohistory. 66 (2): 385–386. doi:10.1215/00141801-7300132. S2CID 166967248. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..27e65e82c --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +title: "Merchants of Doubt" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:19.641008+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. +Oreskes and Conway write that, in each case, the overall strategy of those opposing action is to "keep the controversy alive" by continuing to spread doubt and confusion long after a scientific consensus has been reached. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on a wide variety of contemporary issues. +Some of the book's subjects have been critical of the book, but most reviewers received it favorably. It was made into a film, Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner, released in 2014. + +== Themes == + +Oreskes and Conway write that a handful of politically conservative scientists, with strong ties to particular industries, have "played a disproportionate role in debates about controversial questions". The authors write that this has resulted in "deliberate obfuscation" of the issues which has had an influence on public opinion and policy-making. +The book criticizes the so-called Merchants of Doubt, some predominantly American science key players, above all Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer. All three are physicists: Singer was a space and satellite researcher, whereas Nierenberg and Seitz worked on the atomic bomb. They have been active on topics like acid rain, tobacco smoking, global warming and pesticides. The book says that these scientists have challenged and diluted the scientific consensus in the various fields, as of the dangers of smoking, the effects of acid rain, the existence of the "ozone hole", and the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Seitz and Singer have been involved with institutions such as The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and George C. Marshall Institute in the United States. Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these organizations have opposed many forms of state intervention or regulation of U.S. citizens. The book lists similar tactics in each case: "discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt". +The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow were all fiercely anti-communist and they viewed government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. The authors argue that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives. Oreskes and Conway state that the longer the delay the worse these problems get, and the more likely it is that governments will need to take the draconian measures that conservatives and market fundamentalists most fear. They say that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow denied the scientific evidence, contributed to a strategy of delay, and thereby helped to bring about the situation they most dreaded. The authors have a strong doubt about the ability of the media to differentiate between false truth and the actual science in question; however, they stop short of endorsing censorship in the name of science. According to the authors, the journalistic norm of balanced reporting has been undermined to amplify the misleading messages of the contrarians through false balance. Oreskes and Conway state: "small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power". +The main conclusion of the book is that there would have been more progress in policy making if not for the influence of the contrarian "experts", who tried for ideological reasons to undermine trust in the science base for regulation. Similar conclusions were already drawn, among others on Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg in the book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change (2010) by Australian academic Clive Hamilton. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..dc8ab9667 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +title: "Merchants of Doubt" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:19.641008+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Reception == +Most reviewers received Merchants of Doubt enthusiastically. +Philip Kitcher in Science says that Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway are "two outstanding historians". He calls Merchants of Doubt a "fascinating and important study". Kitcher says that the apparently harsh claims against Nierenberg, Seitz, and Singer are "justified through a powerful dissection of the ways in which prominent climate scientists, such as Roger Revelle and Ben Santer, were exploited or viciously attacked in the press". +In The Christian Science Monitor, Will Buchanan says that Merchants of Doubt is exhaustively researched and documented, and may be one of the most important books of 2010. Oreskes and Conway are seen to demonstrate that the doubt merchants are not "objective scientists" as the term is popularly understood. Instead, they are "science-speaking mercenaries" hired by corporations to process numbers to prove that the corporations' products are safe and useful. Buchanan says they are salesmen, not scientists. +Bud Ward published a review of the book in The Yale Forum on Climate and the Media. He wrote that Oreskes and Conway use a combination of thorough scholarly research combined with writing reminiscent of the best investigative journalism, to "unravel deep common links to past environmental and public health controversies". In terms of climate science, the authors' leave "little doubt about their disdain for what they regard as the misuse and abuse of science by a small cabal of scientists they see as largely lacking in requisite climate science expertise". +Phil England writes in The Ecologist that the strength of the book is the rigour of the research and the detailed focus on key incidents. He said, however, that the climate change chapter is only 50 pages long, and recommends several other books for readers who want to get a broader picture of this aspect: Jim Hoggan's Climate Cover-Up, George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning and Ross Gelbspan's The Heat is On and Boiling Point. England also said that there is little coverage about the millions of dollars which ExxonMobil has put into funding groups actively involved in promoting climate change denial and doubt. +A review in The Economist calls this a powerful book which articulates the politics involved and the degree to which scientists have sometimes manufactured and exaggerated environmental uncertainties, but opines that the authors fail to fully explain how environmental action has still often proved possible despite countervailing factors. +Robert N. Proctor, who coined the term "agnotology" to describe the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, wrote in American Scientist that Merchants of Doubt is a detailed and artfully written book. He set it in the context of other books which cover the "history of manufactured ignorance": David Michaels's Doubt is their Product (2008), Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science (2009), David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz's Deceit and Denial (2002), and his own book Cancer Wars (1995). +Robin McKie in The Guardian states that Oreskes and Conway deserve considerable praise for exposing the influence of a small group of Cold War ideologues. Their tactic of spreading doubt has confused the public about a series of key scientific issues such as global warming, even though scientists have actually become more certain about their research results. McKie says that Merchants of Doubt includes detailed notes on all sources used, is carefully paced, and is "my runaway contender for best science book of the year". +Sociologist Reiner Grundmann's review in BioSocieties journal, acknowledges that the book is well researched and factually based, but criticizes the book as being written in a black and white manner whereas historians should write a more nuanced description. The book depicts special interests and contrarians misleading the public as being mainly responsible for stopping action on policy. He says this shows a lack of basic understanding of the political process and the mechanisms of knowledge policy, because the authors assume that public policy would follow on from an understanding of the science. While the book provides "all the [formal] hallmarks of science", Grundmann sees it less as a scholarly work than a passionate attack and overall as a problematic book. + +== Authors == + +Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at Harvard University. She has degrees in geological science and a PhD in Geological Research and the History of Science. Her work came to public attention in 2004 with the publication of "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," in Science, in which she wrote that there was no significant disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of global warming from human causes. Erik M. Conway is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. + +== See also == +Climate change controversy +Climate change policy of the United States +Fear, uncertainty and doubt +Greenhouse Mafia +Health effects of tobacco +List of books about the politics of science +Scientific consensus on climate change +Manufactured controversy +Media coverage of climate change +Scientific consensus +Tobacco control movement +Tobacco industry playbook +Tobacco politics +Charney Report + +=== Other books on the same theme === +Triumph of Doubt (2020) by David Michaels +Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand (2011) by Haydn Washington and John Cook +Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (2009) by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore +Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (2008) by David Michaels + +== References == + +== External links == +Official website +Merchants of Doubt, Public Lecture (2010), University of NSW, The Science Show, ABC Radio National, January 8, 2011. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Capitalism-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Capitalism-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2b9decedf --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Capitalism-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +title: "Natural Capitalism" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Capitalism" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:20.771108+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution is a 1999 book on environmental economics co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was the subject of a Harvard Business Review summary. + + +== Content == +In Natural Capitalism the authors describe the global economy as being dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services that nature provides. Natural Capitalism is a critique of traditional "Industrial Capitalism", saying that the traditional system of capitalism "does not fully conform to its own accounting principles. It liquidates its capital and calls it income. It neglects to assign any value to the largest stocks of capital it employs – the natural resources and living systems, as well as the social and cultural systems that are the basis of human capital." +Natural capitalism recognizes the critical interdependency between the production and use of human-made capital and the maintenance and supply of natural capital. The authors argue that only through recognizing this essential relationship with the Earth's valuable resources can businesses, and the people they support, continue to exist. +Their fundamental questions concern the theoretical properties of an economy that, among other tenets, organizes around a more realistic ideation of the principles of business and industry, and envisioning a world in which this is a reality is a key concern of the argument. +The authors of Natural Capitalism claim that these choices are possible and "such an economy would offer a stunning new set of opportunities for all of society, amounting to no less than the next industrial revolution." +According to the authors, the "next industrial revolution" depends on the espousal of four central strategies: "the conservation of resources through more effective manufacturing processes, the reuse of materials as found in natural systems, a change in values from quantity to quality, and investing in natural capital, or restoring and sustaining natural resources". +While traditional industrial capitalism primarily recognizes the value of money and goods as capital, Natural Capitalism extends recognition to natural capital and human capital. Problems such as pollution and social injustice may then be seen as failures to properly account for capital, rather than as inherent failures of capitalism itself. +The fundamental assumptions of Natural Capitalism are as follows: + +The limiting factor to future economic development is the availability and functionality of natural capital, in particular, life-supporting services that have no substitutes and currently have no market value. +Misconceived or badly designed business systems, population growth, and wasteful patterns of consumption are the primary causes of the loss of natural capital, and all three must be addressed to achieve a sustainable economy. +Future economic progress can best take place in democratic, market-based systems of production and distribution in which all forms of capital are fully valued, including human, manufactured, financial, and natural capital. +One of the keys to the most beneficial employment of people, money, and the environment is radical increases in resource productivity. +Human welfare is best served by improving the quality and flow of desired services delivered, rather than by merely increasing the total dollar flow. +Economic and environmental sustainability depends on redressing global inequities of income and material well-being. + + +== Meaning of book's title == +In a 2009 interview, Paul Hawken described his motivation behind the title Natural Capitalism. He stated that it was intended to be a pun on "natural capital", a term originally coined by E. F. Schumacher in 1973. Hawken endorsed the underlying concept of natural capital, and its implications for society, so added an "-ism" at the end of that word as a double entendre. +Despite this intention from Hawken, many readers interpreted this wordplay in the opposite way. There was dissent from readers who misunderstood the title, believing that Capitalism was the operative word, and that the authors were therefore justifying or defending the concept of capitalism. Hawken later expressed regret at this confusion, and stated that while he endorses the spirit of commerce and entrepreneurship, he does not endorse the "pathological" qualities inherent in pure capitalism. + + +== Other editions == +Zi4 ran2 zi1 ben3 lun4, Chinese (simplified characters) edition of Natural Capitalism (2000, Shanghai Popular Science Press) ISBN 7-5427-1846-0 +Capitalismo naturale (2001, Edizione Ambiente, Milano), ISBN 88-86412-80-0 +Japanese edition of Natural Capitalism (2001, Nikkei, Tokyo) ISBN 4-532-14871-5 +Chinese (complex characters) edition of Natural Capitalism (2002, CommonWealth, Taipei) ISBN 957-0395-61-3 +Öko-Kapitalismus: Die industrielle Revolution des 21. Jahrhunderts (2002, Riemann, München) ISBN 978-1-4000-3941-8 +Loodus-kapitalism: uue tööstusrevolutionsiooni algus (2003 [Estonian]) ISBN 9985-62-131-X +Capitalismo Natural (Editora Cultrix, São Paulo), ISBN 85-316-0644-6 +Natural Capitalism: Comment réconcilier économie et environnement (2008, Scali, Paris) ISBN 978-2-35012-221-2 +Korean edition of Natural Capitalism (~2011, Gongjon, Seoul) + + +== See also == +Climate Capitalism +Eco-capitalism +Media coverage of climate change +Merchants of Doubt + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Book Excerpts and Downloadable Chapters +Natural Capitalism — Mother Jones article on book. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Nebraska-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Nebraska-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..18ce4f260 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Nebraska-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "Nuclear Nebraska" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Nebraska" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:25.434525+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn't Be Bought is a 2007 book by Susan Cragin which follows the controversy about a proposed low level nuclear waste dump, which was planned for Boyd County, Nebraska. +In 1989, two multinational corporations and several government agencies proposed a waste dump and offered payment of $3 million per year for 40 years. The residents of the Boyd County farming community resisted the offer and controversy followed for almost two decades. During this time, the community was transformed "from a small group of isolated farmers to a defiant band of environmentalists". The opposition of the community eventually succeeded, and the license to build the dump was denied. +Several governors became embroiled in the controversy, as well as legislators, bureaucrats and the community. One central figure went to jail and others were dismissed from their jobs. For many years, there was extensive coverage of the event by the news media. +U.S. Senator Ben Nelson wrote the foreword to the book. + + +== See also == +List of books about nuclear issues +Central Interstate Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact + + +== References == + +"Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn't Be Bought.(Brief article)(Book review)". Booklist. 2007-09-15. Retrieved 2008-11-11. +"Review of "Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn't Be Bought"". California Bookwatch. March 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-11. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3e18e520f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: "Nuclear Power and the Environment" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:27.770135+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Nuclear Power and the Environment, sometimes simply called the Flowers Report, was released in September 1976 and is the sixth report of the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, chaired by Sir Brian Flowers. The report was dedicated to "the Queen's most excellent Majesty." "He was appointed "to advise on matters, both national and international, concerning the pollution of the environment; on the adequacy of research in this field; and the future possibilities of danger to the environment." One of the recommendations of the report was that: + +"There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of longlived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future." +The "Flowers Report" was prompted by a proposal in 1975 to set up an international nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Windscale. Windscale is a large nuclear facility on the coast of Cumbria in Northwest England that was built after World War II to produce plutonium for England's nuclear weapons program. The facility suffered a leak in 1973, which put it out of commission until the plans for the international nuclear fuel reprocessing plant were proposed. This proposal was met with strong resistance after it became known to the public and as a result, the plans to build the nuclear reprocessing plant were never acted upon. +Radioactive waste management and disposal strategies have been enacted since the publishing of "The Flowers Report". This put the responsibility of disposing radioactive waste into the hands of those who are producing it. It was not until 1982 that the Department of the Environment, after their previous method proved to be not as effective as they had hoped, decided to enact stronger guidelines and rules regarding radioactive waste. The responsibility of disposal was then passed over to the government. This led to the Department of the Environment gaining a few new responsibilities: securing the disposal process at an establishment, making sure the method of disposal is safe and well researched, and lastly, keeping the waste secured and away from the public after it has been disposed of. +In the United States, as of 2008, uranium ore reserves are primarily kept in Wyoming and New Mexico, totaling an estimated one billion, 227 million pounds. This uranium ore will be turned into fuel that will be used in the operation of nuclear power plants, creating low-levels of radioactive waste. "Spent" uranium fuel becomes radioactive waste as a result of the fission process. This "spent" fuel must be removed and replaced from nuclear power plants every 18 to 24 months; it is then shipped to specifically designed and licensed disposal sites. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Transportation carefully control and regulate the management, packing, transport, and disposal of waste. + +== The Flowers Report == +The Flowers report is composed of eleven chapters in a compilation of over 200 pages. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects and topics related to radioactive activity. + +== Chapter One: Introduction == +The Flower's Report introduction chapter consists of six pages. The report introduces the topics of nuclear technology, future projections on commercial reactors, concerns for left over radioactive waste, other uses of nuclear technology (that will not be the focus of the report), and concerns with development of nuclear reactors. +This chapter also gives an arrangement of the entire report's information that acts as an outline for the information presented, including later chapters' topics and main points. + +== Chapter Two: Radioactivity and Radiobiology == +The focus of the first half of the chapter is designed to provide basic information about atoms and radiation to aid in later chapters. The first half covers the basics on atoms such as: an atom consists of Neutrons, Protons, and Electrons; the atomic number of an atom determines the amount of protons in one atom; and that protons are roughly 2000 times heavier than electrons (see atom). The concept of radiation is introduced through ionization which is the process of adding one or more electrons to, or removing one or more electrons from, atoms or molecules, thereby creating ions. From there certain particles can cause ionization. The ionizing particles are alpha particles (a type of ionizing radiation ejected by the nuclei of some unstable atoms that are large subatomic fragments consisting of two protons and two neutrons), beta particles (subatomic particles ejected from the nucleus of some radioactive atoms that are equivalent to electrons), gamma particles (electromagnetic energy photon) and energetic neutron radiation (energy released from an atom in the form of neutral particles called neutrons). The second half focuses on knowledge of radiation introduced into the environment and humans. Flower's and his team concluded in 1976 that low levels over a long exposure time can prevent a cell from dividing or further damaging genetic information. +Other topics covered are the effects of plutonium in the body. For instance, animals being susceptible to radiation causes birth defects among the litter. Chapter two concludes with a concern of radiation affecting an entire species of animals as opposed to a group. + +== Chapter Three: Nuclear Power == +Chapter Three focuses on nuclear power. This chapter main concentration is on nuclear reactors and the basic physical principals of which reactor operation is based. An understanding of the different types of reactors that are in use or plan to be used is given. It also accounts for the nuclear fuel cycle and the operations that are involved in the fabrication and treatment of nuclear fuel. It begins with the extraction of uranium from the mine to the fuel fabrication plant and then to reactors. Furthermore, it incorporates the removal of spent fuel and its treatment to extract material suitable for incorporation of fresh fuel along with the treatment and disposal of wastes. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..1feba3543 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: "Nuclear Power and the Environment" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_and_the_Environment" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:27.770135+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Chapter Four: Major Issues Raised by Nuclear Power == +Chapter Four emphasizes on major issues raised by nuclear power. The reason why chapter two and chapter three are so detailed in the effects of radioactivity and the principles of nuclear power along with the nuclear fuel cycle is so that there could be a better understanding on the problems that could cause environmental effects. Concerns about nuclear development, which is considered in detail in other chapters, centers on a few major issues. This chapter focuses on issues as a whole to ensure that they can be seen in the perspective that allows people to understand the underlying social and ethical questions that they raise. It begins with the world energy demand, the problem scale of nuclear development, and nuclear hazards that stem from other technological developments. The advantages must be weighed against the fears and risks attached to nuclear power, which can lead to many people disregarding nuclear power as an acceptable means of energy, also referred to as "the Faustian bargain." Certainly these fears must be taken seriously and can not be disregarded. This chapter concludes with the concerns of the future and the fact that the world is on the threshold of a huge commitment to fission power, which if fully entered into, it may be effectively impossible to reverse for a century or more. + +== Chapter Five: International and National Control Arrangements == +Chapter Five focuses on the internal and national control arrangements. It begins by accepting that the hazards of ionizing radiation are well appreciated by anyone who works in the field and that there is, and has been, an elaborate system at the national and international level to minimize these risks. Although there are many questions to be answered, much has been learned and there has been a stricter management with respect to ionizing radiation and protecting the health of both radiation workers and the general public. It suggests that greater resources should be allocated to a critical group that is most exposed to a particular pollutant in order to determine a safe discharge criteria. This chapter also focuses on the organizational arrangements of responsibility, which may still be unclear. If a rapid expansion in the near future occurs, new problems are likely to rise; thus, creating new changes in the allocation of responsibilities. It focuses on the present arrangements, their efficacy, and recommendations that arise in order to sustain efficacy and effectiveness. It does not discuss discharges of radioactivity to the environment, but rather presents arrangements that are made in order to ensure protection to the general public and the environment. + +== Chapter Six: Reactor Safety and Siting == +Chapter Six stresses on reactor safety and compares the risks of reactor accidents with those arising from other activities or events. It clearly states that absolute safety cannot be ensured and that the advancing scale and complexity of technology tends to increase the possible consequences of serious accidents as well as the problems by which these accidents may be caused. Accordingly, all that can be expected is that the techniques and disciplines used to ensure safety are enough to reduce accidents to acceptable rates. The biggest concern in this chapter is the environmental effects of possible reactor accidents. The focus is on looking into the principles that are applied in seeking reactor safety. + +== Chapter Seven: Security and the Safeguarding of Plutonium == +Chapter Seven focuses on security and the safeguarding of plutonium. Much of the concern that is presented with nuclear power is not strictly on the effects of normal operations, but to those that might be created by illicit activities directed towards nuclear installations or materials. The issues that arise within this chapter are the safeguarding of society, security arrangements, and the viewpoint of the ordinary citizen about the restrictions on their freedom that might result from security measures. One of the risks discussed is the sabotage of nuclear installation which could release harmful substances into the environment along with radioactivity. Another risk is the diversion of plutonium which could be made into a bomb or dispersed deliberately and will only increase along with the reliance of plutonium in fast conductors. Lastly, in regards to whether or not the measures necessary to protect society against these risks are going to interfere with civil liberties. + +== Chapter Eight: Radioactive Waste Management == +Chapter Eight focuses on radioactive waste management which is generated at various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. This chapter focuses more strictly on radioactive waste, specifically on the waste that presents particularly difficult problems regarding its disposal and management. It also covers the harms that are present in the storage of nuclear waste along with the steps that are being taken to ensure that no harm is caused to the environment. Furthermore, this chapter considers the possibilities that exist for a safe disposal of these wastes and the organization needed to pursue the search and judge its results. + +== Chapter Nine: Energy Strategy and the Environment == +Chapter Nine focuses on energy storage and the environment along with the implications of a large nuclear power program. This chapters seeks and attempts to provide some understanding of those issues that bear on the question of whether great future dependence on nuclear fission power must be regarded as inevitable. It also helps understand if these implications should be accepted and what other alternate strategies might be available along with their economic, social, and environmental consequences. Some examples mentioned as acceptable means of energy are wave power and CHP systems. + +== Chapter Ten: Nuclear Power and Public Policy == +Chapter Ten reflects on nuclear power and public safety. This chapter draws the line on which policy should be adopted towards the development of nuclear power. Due to the popular belief that the spread of technology is responsible for the environment progressively deteriorating, nuclear power is highly opposed in some countries. This chapter mainly focuses on the United States and how the debate between the nuclear industry and the environmental movement has become increasingly controversial. One side of the spectrum sees technology as "blind to the dangers of the world", whereas the other side believes they "are making an essential contribution to the well-being of humanity." Also, this issue brings about the concerns of large scale nuclear power leading to a nuclear war on account of the connection of civil and military uses of nuclear power with the expansion of nuclear development. + +== Chapter Eleven == +Chapter Eleven is a summary of principal conclusions and recommendations. + +== See also == +List of books about nuclear issues +Nuclear or Not? +Environmental impact of nuclear power +Acute Radiation Syndrome + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_or_Not-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_or_Not-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..ab0d5627e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_or_Not-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Nuclear or Not?" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_or_Not?" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:26.596618+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Nuclear or Not? Does Nuclear Power Have a Place in a Sustainable Energy Future? is a 2007 book edited by Professor David Elliott. The book offers various views and perspectives on nuclear power. Authors include: + +Paul Allen from the Centre for Alternative Technology +Dr Ian Fairlie, who served on the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) +Stephen Kidd of the World Nuclear Association +Professor Elliott calls for continued debate on the nuclear power issue. He has worked with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority before moving to the Open University where he is Professor of Technology Policy and has developed courses on technological innovation, focusing in particular on renewable energy technology. + + +== See also == +List of books about nuclear issues +Nuclear Power and the Environment +Reaction Time +Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power +Non-Nuclear Futures + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Non-nuclear sustainable energy futures for Germany and the UK \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Planet-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Planet-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3ad9c4b8e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Planet-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: "Only Planet" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Planet" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:31.172561+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Only Planet is a book by environment entrepreneur Ed Gillespie about his flight-free adventure around the world. Published in June 2014 by Wild Things Publishing, the book embraces environmentally-sustainable slow travel. + + +== Plot summary == +Gillespie and his then-girlfriend Fiona set out on a year-long global circumnavigation of the world without flying, eliminating flying-associated carbon emissions while rediscovering the joys of travelling through the world and not just over it in a plane. Their journey covers over 40,000 miles in 31 countries. Throughout his journey, Gillespie gains different perspectives on climate change, globalisation, and society's role in shaping the future, while also gaining first-hand insight into the way our planet is changing. +Each chapter explores a different topic relevant to that part of the journey. For example, while in Japan overfishing is focused upon. + + +== Reviews == +Only Planet has been well received by reviewers. The Independent described the book as both "witty" and "thought-provoking", with the essence of the book showing how "slow travel allows time for the flaws, degradation and struggles of the world, as well as its breathtaking beauty and indefatigable human spirit, to seep into the soul." TreeHugger recounts the way in which the book's "humorous cross-cultural encounters and descriptions of stunning geography" are coupled with "a passionate conversation about climate change." Geographical Magazine said that the slow travel enables a "transformative" journey in a "way that air travel can never be." + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..66c2fc1dd --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:32.398461+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth is a short book by R. Buckminster Fuller, first published in 1969, following an address with a similar title given to the 50th annual convention of the American Planners Association in the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., on 16 October 1967. +The book relates Earth to a spaceship flying through space. Noting the lack of any user manual to help Earthians steward this ship, Fuller offers some reflections, prognostications, and guidance, based on contemporary concepts of linked relationships, that may help in the understanding, management, sustainment, and creation of a plan to preserve spaceship earth for the future of humanity. The spaceship has a finite amount of resources and cannot be resupplied. + +== Chapters == +Comprehensive propensities +Origins of specialization +Comprehensively commanded automation +Spaceship Earth +General systems theory +Synergy +Integral functions +The regenerative landscape + +== Main themes == + +=== History === +Fuller describes two epochs within modern and contemporary history. +The first epoch was one run by "Great Pirates" or "great outlaws." The source of their power is that they are the only masters of global information in a time where people are focused locally. They were aware that resources weren't evenly distributed around the world, so that items which are abundant in one area are scarce in another. This gives rise to trade which the Great Pirates exploit for their own advantage. They established sea-trade routes to connect previously isolated populations throughout the globe. As these people took to the sea they left the local, regional laws of their original communities and entered a transitional space where they invented their own laws based on their interests in retaining special access to the Earth's dispersed resources and to gaining power through trade. The Great Pirates had a special ability to comprehend and activate a wide range of skills and knowledges required to generalize, translate, navigate, and integrate existing systems. +Fuller posits that these Great Pirates established governments in various areas and supported leaders who will defend their trade routes. By providing the leaders with special access to global resources, the Great Pirates controlled regional politicians, military, and leaders; these puppet leaders served the role of facilitating the Great Pirates' work, and in exchange for providing the Great Pirates with special privileges the Great Pirates would reward them with a cut of their profits. This historical era found a vast increase in the circulation and advancements of tools, goods, and services. +Power struggles for waterways ensue, requiring people such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to design better defenses for the Great Pirates. As engineers become involved with the Great Pirates many new concepts appear, but the main one was of the Navy. As the size of the people in the Great Pirates' employment grow, training becomes a necessity, and the beginnings of schools and colleges ensue. Monarchs are encouraged to develop civil service systems to provide secure but specialized employment for their brightest subjects, which prevents them from competing with the Great Pirates in their lucrative global trading. Thus the Great Pirates guarded the advantages that their unique global perspective revealed. +This previous epoch set in place the current system of political organization rooted in the concept of sovereign nations which control the planet's natural resources and distribution networks. Fuller describes this as an outdated and illogical structure. This structure is based on colonization, imposing servility on anyone born outside of the borders of the privileged nations, and installing "identity classification" based on race, birth-nation, and citizenship as a status quo, and encouraging competitive ideologies based on politics, science, and religion. +Fuller describes that these separate sovereign nations with their competitive identities led to World War I and continued through World War II. World War I emerged from the struggle between the 'out-pirates' (electronic and chemical warfare) and the 'in-pirates' (electromagnetics). This change from the visible to the invisible forced the Great Pirates to rely on experts, which causes the end of the Great Pirates (who previously had been the only ones that were truly multi-disciplined). The public is unaware that Great Pirates had been ruling the earth, and the role falls back to kings and politicians, though the frameworks of trade, rating and accounting remain. Fuller declares that the Great Pirates society became extinct as a result of advances in industrial production and technology. Yet the systems that they had created were not altered. National leaders assumed the role of the Great Pirates, without having the necessary skills and experiences of a generalized world view. By default they reinforced the outdated systems of sovereignty. +In the current era, Fuller predicts that "planners, architects, and engineers take the initiative". + +=== Education === + +==== Specializations ==== +One of the strategies used by the Great Pirates to control individuals by disconnecting them from comprehending the whole picture was the concept of specializations. Schools, colleges, and intellectual associations encourage individuals to devote themselves to a specialization at a young age. Fuller describes that "specialization is... only a fancy form of slavery wherein the 'expert' is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position." Specializations were used as a way to fragment society by dividing individuals into only having one place in society, and to discourage them from understanding how their job relates to other disciplines and feeds into the larger picture. This form of control is used to limit one's experience, knowledge, focus, viewpoint, and network within only one segment, subservient to their specific organized societies. Specialists are discouraged from comprehension; Wide-ranging ambitions that span across larger networks, and are controlled by their superiors. Specialization is described as a loss of general adaptability, and leads to extinction. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4ff9efd23 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,65 @@ +--- +title: "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:32.398461+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Life fellowship ==== +Since many jobs will be replaced by automation, and the sustainability of human life would no longer be dictated by labor, humans could be free to engage in other pursuits. To realize potential wealth each person who is or becomes unemployed should be provided with a life fellowship in research and development, or just simply have the freedom to experience and experiment. Fuller states that for every 100,000 fellowships given out one person will come up with something so valuable that it will pay for the remaining 99,999 fellowships. + +=== Economics === +The economic accounting systems that are most widely in use only measure physical matter, which is only actually one quality of wealth. + +==== Access to vital resources ==== +Fuller critiques the prevalence of poverty throughout the entire publication. He states that one of the qualities that make humans unique is their inventiveness. Human inventiveness is driven by curiosity, desire to communicate, adaptability, resourcefulness, and intellectual capabilities. Poverty injures all of Earth's population, by limiting a large percentage of the population's ability to realize their potential and engage in the furthering and betterment of the world's population. So far many of the solutions activated have been short-sighted and superficial, aimed at removing poverty from view. +It is also an outdated concept that tries to dictate which people are allowed to live the fullest lifespan possible. + +==== Wealth ==== +Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is only ever transformed. Thus the concept that energy is "spent" and that the universe could run out of energy is outdated. There is a finite amount of energy available to us that lives within a closed system where it cannot be expended with. The concepts of "spending" energy and of entropy are used to support outdated systems of thought which believe that in order for one group of lifeforms to survive, others must be made extinct. +Fuller argues instead that "Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of matter by the mind." Wealth is rather better defined as the potential that one has to survive. +There is enough wealth in the world to satisfy all of the world's needs. + +==== Industry ==== +Contemporary industry requires the coordination of international networks and access to global resources. + +=== Technology === +Defines tools as either craft tools that can be invented by one man, such as bows and arrows, and industrial tools that cannot be produced by one man, such as the S.S. Queen Mary. Finds language to be the first industrial tool. States that craft tools were used to create industrial tools. + +==== Automation ==== +The new technology of the computer allows the computer to specialize and allow humans to overcome their former roles, as specialists and laborers, and gain freedom to focus instead on their special abilities to comprehend and invent. +Fuller acknowledges that one of the largest critiques against automation comes from humans themselves, who fear the loss of their livelihoods, and thus their lives. This issue is easily solved through universal basic income. + +==== Communication ==== +Humans are uniquely driven by the desire to communicate. New technologies will enhance our ability to develop and strengthen connections. + +=== Ecology === +One of the keys to survival of the human species involves further understanding of how to sustain life through managing energy in sustainable ways. The idea of the Earth as a spaceship alludes to it as a mechanical vehicle that requires maintenance, and that if we do not keep it in good order it will cease to function. Fuller critiques the pollution of air, water, and information as counter to survival. + +==== Fossil fuels ==== +Throughout this book Fuller heavily critiques the continued use of fossil fuels. Our scientific understanding of the planet Earth has taught us that not only is the continued use of fossil fuels unsustainable, it is self-destructive as well. Additionally, Fuller refers to fossil fuels as our savings account; if we burn through the finite amount available rather than reserving it, our energy potential will only become bankrupt. +He encourages instead the harvesting of regenerative sources, specifically the Sun's radiation and Moon's gravity via wind, solar, and water tools. Fuller states that we "must operate exclusively on our vast daily energy income from the powers of wind, tide, water, and the direct Sun radiation energy". + +=== Systems theory === +It is not possible to identify the whole of the system through only analyzing its parts. + +==== Synergy ==== +Fuller describes synergy as the "behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any sub-assembly of the systems' parts." + +== See also == +Spaceship Earth +Critical Path (book) + +== Notes == + +== Reading links == +Fuller, Buckminster (2020) [1969]. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers. ISBN 978-3-0377-8126-5. + +== External links == + +Copy of the manual at Design Science Lab +Copy of the manual at futurehi.net +Another copy from the Buckminster Fuller Institute \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Angry_Earth-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Angry_Earth-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..1c2b685e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Angry_Earth-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +title: "Our Angry Earth" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Angry_Earth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:33.566698+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991) is a non-fiction book and polemic against the effects of humankind on the environment by the science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl. In his last non-fiction book, Asimov co-writes with his long-time friend science fiction author Frederik Pohl, and deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer. +It suggests monumental disasters are threatening to destroy humankind and argues that "it is too late to save our planet from harm". The book has four sections: "The Background", "The Problems", "The Technocures" and "The Way to Go". + +The coming of doom is because of deeds that do not seem evil on the face of it. Because we are concerned with the improving of the health of mankind and its security, our population has increased markedly, especially in the last hundred years, to the point where the Earth cannot support us all. Because we have industrialised ourselves in order to lift the curse of physical labour from our backs we have poured the poisons produced by the internal combustion engine into our atmosphere and dirtied it to the point where we can scarcely breathe it. Because we have learned to make new materials for the greater convenience of mankind, we have produced chemical toxins that have saturated our soil and water. Because we have found a new source of energy, and destruction, in the atomic nucleus, we face the threat of nuclear war or, even if we avoid that, the permeation of our environment with dangerous radiation and nuclear wastes. +It was first published by Tor Books in 1991, ISBN 0-312-85252-5. A 2018 edition (after both authors had died) includes a new introduction and afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..438ab0216 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +--- +title: "Our Common Future" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:34.737719+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). +Its targets were multilateralism and interdependence of nations in the search for a sustainable development path. The report sought to recapture the spirit of the Stockholm Conference of 1972, which had introduced environmental concerns to the formal political development sphere. Our Common Future placed environmental issues firmly on the political agenda: it aimed to discuss the environment and development as one single issue. +The document was the culmination of a "900-day" international exercise which catalogued, analysed, and synthesised written submissions and expert testimony from "senior government representatives, scientists and experts, research institutes, industrialists, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and the general public" held at public hearings throughout the world. + +The report's definition of "sustainable development" is possibly the best-known definition of this concept:Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. + + +== Content == +The Brundtland Commission's mandate, officially adopted at its inaugural meeting in Geneva on 1–3 October 1984, was to: + +Re-examine the critical issues of environment and development and to formulate innovative, concrete, and realistic action proposals to deal with them; +[S]trengthen international cooperation on environment and development and to assess and propose new forms of cooperation that can break out of existing patterns and influence policies and events in the direction of needed change; and +[R]aise the level of understanding and commitment to action on the part of individuals, voluntary organizations, businesses, institutes, and governments. +The report noted that the Commission had "focused its attention in the areas of population, food security, the loss of species and genetic resources, energy, industry, and human settlements - realizing that all of these are connected and cannot be treated in isolation one from another". +The report recognized that human resource development in the form of poverty reduction, gender equity, and wealth redistribution was crucial to formulating strategies for environmental conservation, and it also recognized that environmental-limits to economic growth in industrialized and industrializing societies existed. The Brundtland Report claimed that poverty reduces sustainability and accelerates environmental pressures – creating a need for the balancing between economy and ecology. + + +== Impact == +The publication of Our Common Future and the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development laid the groundwork for the convening of the 1992 Earth Summit and the adoption of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration, and led to the establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development. +In addition, key contributions of Our Common Future to the concept of sustainable development included the recognition that the many crises facing the planet are interlocking crises that are elements of a single crisis of the whole, and of the vital need for the active participation of all sectors of society in consultation and decisions relating to sustainable development. +However, in 1988, the Norwegian politician Helge Ole Bergesen wrote that this report is perceived by the Third World elites as green imperialism. + + +== See also == +National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Ahmed, Faiz (2008). An Examination of the Development Path Taken by Small Island Developing States (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-03. Retrieved 2012-04-19. (pp. 17–26) +Iris Borowy, Defining Sustainable Development: the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission), Milton Park: earthscan/Routledge, 2014 +WBGU (the German Advisory Council on Global Change) (10 July 2019). Our common digital future – a draft charter for a sustainable digital age (PDF). Berlin, Germany: German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). Retrieved 2020-03-04. PDF version. + + +== External links == + +Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Plundered_Planet-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Plundered_Planet-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e0b3a4147 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Plundered_Planet-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Our Plundered Planet" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Plundered_Planet" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:35.936199+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Our Plundered Planet is a book published in 1948 by American conservationist Fairfield Osborn about environmental destruction by humankind. With a focus on soil, the book is a critique of humankind's poor stewardship of Earth. It typifies the earliest apocalyptic environmental literature, in which human beings are seen as destroyers of the natural world. +Our Plundered Planet, along with William Vogt's Road to Survival, also published in 1948, launched a Malthusian revival in the post-WWII era, and would inspire Anne Howland Ehrlich and her colleague and husband Paul R. Ehrlich, authors of The Population Bomb, The Dominant Animal and more than 30 other books on overpopulation and ecology. + + +== Influences == +In writing this book, Osborn was influenced by Guy I. Burch and Elmer Pendell's overpopulation tract Population Roads to Peace or War (1945) and Paul Sears' analysis of dust bowls in Deserts on the March (1935). He had also been influenced by various "New Deal" initiatives in the public planning of land use and restoration, such as the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Civilian Conservation Corps and various policies to address the "Dust Bowls" of the time. Osborn, as well as his famous father, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was also heavily influenced by the eugenics movement before World War II. + + +== Editions == +US edition: Little, Brown and Company, 1948. +UK edition: Faber and Faber, London, 1948. +French translation published in 1949 (La planète au pillage). +German edition: 1950, Pan-Verlag, Zürich, Switzerland, translated by Fritz Levi, foreword: Paul Reiwald (Univ. Genf), title: Unsere ausgeplünderte Erde, 161 pages. +Our Plundered Planet has been reprinted at least eight times and been translated into over a dozen languages since original publication. + + +== See also == +Road to Survival, a 1948 book by William Vogt on similar topics + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-0.md index f03b4901f..d99212526 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-0.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-0.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/4 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:19:02.890632+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:38.349527+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-1.md index bf64c2491..6604ec3e7 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-1.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-1.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 2/4 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:19:02.890632+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:38.349527+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-2.md index e696ae951..a8c8023c1 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-2.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-2.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 3/4 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:19:02.890632+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:38.349527+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-3.md index 4f15b15b0..b07b61624 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-3.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)-3.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 4/4 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:19:02.890632+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:38.349527+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..1e28adf3f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 1/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida. +Scion of New England clergy, Stowe keenly felt a sense of Christian responsibility that was expressed in her letters. She considered it her duty to help improve the lives of newly emancipated blacks and detailed her efforts to establish a school and church in Mandarin toward these ends. Parts of the book relate the lives of local African-Americans and the customs of their society. Stowe described the charm of the region and its generally moderate climate but warned readers of "excessive" heat in the summer months and occasional cold snaps in winter. Her audience comprises relatives, friends, and strangers in New England who ask her advice about whether or not to move to Florida, which at the time was still mostly wilderness. Although it is a minor work in Stowe's oeuvre, Palmetto Leaves was one of the first travel guides written about Florida and stimulated Florida's first boom of tourism and residential development in the 1880s. + +== Background == + +=== Stowe buys an estate === + +By the time Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) moved to Florida in 1867, she was already internationally famous for authoring Uncle Tom's Cabin, published as a serial between 1851 and 1852. The novel expounded upon her abolitionist views and was extraordinarily influential in condemning slavery in the United States. Stowe's opposition to slavery sprang from a moral passion based on her Christian faith. She had grown up the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, Lyman Beecher; seven of her brothers became ministers in Calvinist or Congregational denominations, and she married a minister. +In 1860, Stowe's son Frederick "Fred" William Stowe enlisted in the First Massachusetts Infantry Regiment when Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers in anticipation of the Civil War. Much beloved, yet troubled, Fred Stowe had developed a problem with alcohol as early as sixteen. He took to army life, however, and was promoted to lieutenant. After receiving a head wound at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, he endured severe headaches and was forced to resign his commission. His alcoholism worsened, and he may have compounded it with a liberal use of opiates and narcotics, which were widely available. +In 1866, Fred encountered two young farmers in Connecticut who had spent time on duty as Union soldiers in Florida during the war. He learned from them that land there was plentiful and cheap, and many recently emancipated blacks were available at low wages to work it. When he shared this information with his mother, Stowe and her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe considered it a prime opportunity to hasten their son's rehabilitation. For $10,000 ($153,500 in 2009) she purchased a cotton plantation near Orange Park, south of Jacksonville, named Laurel Grove, that was originally established by slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley in 1803 and managed in part by his African wife, Anna Madgigine Jai, until 1811. + +Stowe intended that Fred would manage the estate as he recovered from his wounds and addictions. As an extension of her abolitionist ideals, she wrote to her brother Charles Beecher, however, about her potential role in the endeavor: My plan ... is not in any sense a mere worldly enterprise. I have for many years had a longing to be more immediately doing Christ's work on earth. My heart is with that poor people whose cause in words I have tried to plead, and who now, ignorant and docile, are just in that formative state in which whoever seizes has them. +Corrupt politicians are already beginning to speculate on them as possible capital for their schemes and to fill their poor heads with all sorts of vagaries. Florida is the State into which they have, more than anywhere else, been pouring. Emigration is positively and decidedly setting that way; but as yet it is mere worldly emigration, with the hope of making money, nothing more. +Charles Stowe, her son, later wrote that his mother searched for higher purpose in everything she did, from growing potatoes to writing. She wrote that the prospect of setting up a series of churches along the St. Johns River would be the best way to train former slaves, remarking "I long to be at this work and cannot think of it without my heart burning within me". Florida was little populated and developed: it had just a fraction of the population of Georgia and Alabama. South of Ocala, approximately two people lived per square mile. +Florida's school system was in disarray at the end of the Civil War; in 1866 a Northerner named A. E. Kinne noted there were fewer schools for white children than freedmen's schools for black children. In 1860, there were no official schools for black children and slaves were prohibited from any education. At the same time, there were 97 public schools for white children and 40 private academies for them, some of which appeared to get public funding. In May 1865, the total Florida population was 154,000, and an estimated 47% of it was black, almost all of whom were former slaves. A difference in attitudes about education between the races was apparent as freed blacks saw education as the key to increasing their opportunities, or at least escaping conditions they had endured during servitude. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..45d2bae17 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 2/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Transformation and failure === + +In the late winter of 1867, Stowe followed her son to Florida, finding that the warmer weather allowed her to spend more time on two novels she was writing. Her first weeks in Orange Park utterly transformed her and she became enchanted with Florida at once, writing that she felt she had sprouted wings and become "young & frisky". She accompanied her son one day to collect the mail, which was deposited in Mandarin, about 3 miles (4.8 km) across the St. Johns River. They rowed to the eastern shore and Stowe fell in love with a cottage in Mandarin, attached to an orange grove. Stowe's transformation in Florida was rooted in her identification and familiarity with Puritan New England: industry and thrift in a climate where cold sharpened one's senses and values. The laid-back attitude of the people and warmth of the Southern climate were seductive. She at first attempted to persuade her brother Charles to purchase the land in Mandarin, writing to him and asking "How do you think New England theology would have fared had been landed here instead of Plymouth Rock?" She wrote about the land and climate intoxicating her and pondered the effect it might have had on literature when she posed an idea to her publisher: "I hate to leave my calm isle of Patmos—where the world is not and I have such quiet long hours for writing. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson could insulate himself here and keep his electricity. [Nathaniel] Hawthorne ought to have lived in an orange grove in Florida." +Within a year, Laurel Grove failed. Fred was inexperienced and made poor bargains with local merchants. Before the war, plantations had been largely self-sufficient, but Fred paid high prices for goods shipped in from Savannah and Charleston. He took days off at a time to visit saloons in Jacksonville. An unanticipated infestation of cotton-worm larvae (Helicoverpa zea) destroyed much of the cotton crop. Only two bales were produced by Laurel Grove; Stowe realized the venture was a failure. Fred committed himself to a rehabilitation asylum in New York, and at some point in 1867, Stowe purchased the cottage and the attached grove in Mandarin. +Citrus was distributed primarily in a regional market and was a luxury in northern cities; oranges in New York sold for about 50 cents per fruit. The acreage attached to the house Stowe purchased could produce an income of $2,000 a month ($30,700 in 2009). Stowe wrote to author George Eliot to update her on the progress of improvements to the house in Mandarin, putting up wallpaper, improving plaster, and building a veranda that wrapped around the structure. She took pains not to disturb a giant oak and instead built the veranda around the tree. The house could accommodate as many as 17 family members and friends. +From 1868 to 1884, Stowe split her time between her residence in Hartford, Connecticut, a mansion named Oakholm, and her house in Mandarin. A few weeks before Christmas each year, she would oversee arrangements to close Oakholm for the season, which involved preparing the house for the winter, packing all their clothes, living necessities, her writing materials, and the carpets in the house and shipping everything to Florida. Various family members would accompany her, living in the comfortable two-story house she modestly called a "cottage" or "hut". In Hartford she was barraged with requests and at the center of a whirl of activity. Mandarin was not connected to a telegraph line until the 1880s and mail was received only once a week by boat. Stowe was able to relax somewhat in Mandarin and write for at least three hours a day. + +== Description of text and publication == +Stowe remained active, attending speaking engagements, writing, traveling frequently and publishing several novels while she was wintering in Mandarin. Though she promised her publishers, J. R. Osgood, another novel, she instead compiled a series of articles about Florida and letters to relatives in New England about her daily life. Some of them were first published in Christian Union, a local New England newspaper established by her brother Henry Ward Beecher. In all, twenty chapters make up Palmetto Leaves that vary in tone depending upon Stowe's audience. "Buying land in Florida", "Florida for Invalids", and "Our Experience in Crops" are addressed more to general readers who may be considering moving to the region. Some essays are directed to describing the best sights in the area, such as "Flowery January in Florida", "Picnicking up Julington", "The Grand Tour up River", and "St. Augustine". A more personal touch is included in chapters entitled "A Letter to the Girls", "Letter-Writing", and "Our Neighbor Over the Way" as Stowe includes intimate details about her daily life in Mandarin. Her observations of the state and characteristics of emancipated slaves are mentioned intermittently in letters and essays, but the final two chapters, "Old Cudjo and The Angel" and "Laborers of The South", are dedicated solely to this topic. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7863b3ea7 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 3/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Palmetto Leaves was not Stowe's first travel memoir. In 1854 she published Sunny Memoirs of Foreign Lands about her first trip to Europe, a book unique as an American woman's view of Europe. She followed this with Agnes of Sorrento that appeared as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly from 1861 to 1862. Source material for Agnes of Sorrento was culled from her observations of and experiences in Italy, collected during her third trip to Europe, which she took with her family. Olav Thulesius, author of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, recognizes Stowe's tendency to spin everything she saw into something selectively positive. Stowe addressed this in the foreword to Sunny Memoirs of Foreign Lands, writing: If the criticism be made that every thing is given couleur de rose, the answer is, Why not? If there be characters and scenes that seem drawn with too bright a pencil, the reader will consider that, after all, there are many worse sins than disposition to think and speak well of one's neighbors. +The object of publishing these letters is, therefore, to give to those who are true-hearted and honest the same agreeable picture of life and manners which met the writer's own eyes. +Because little was known about the region, the elements of its climate, citrus, water, and general ideas about illness and health, Stowe was possibly first among several authors and advertising schemes that portrayed Florida as an exotic place of natural wonders and powers that could rejuvenate frail health. What travel writers published on Florida were exaggerated claims, readily accepted by audiences hungry for escapist literature. Biographer Forrest Wilson considers the finished product, Palmetto Leaves—published in 1873—to be the first promotional writing about Florida ever. Occasionally letters about the state were printed in local newspapers in the North, but because Florida was still very much a rugged wilderness, Northerners really had no concept of what the region was like. Rather besotted with the marvelous properties she saw in the orange, Stowe intended to call the book Orange Blossoms, but changed the title to better express the plant that proliferated the region the most. + +== Subject and themes == + +=== Duty and calling === + +In the first chapter of Palmetto Leaves, Stowe tells how she takes a steamer to Savannah, Georgia. On board is a stray dog who begs scraps of food and affection from the passengers. It finally becomes attached to a woman on board and follows her around. At Savannah, the dog is thrown into the street by the porters and waiters at the hotel, and is eventually left behind. Stowe compares the dog and the people who care for such stray animals to Christian ideals to take care of the poor and suffering. +The impressive orange tree served as a metaphor for Stowe in Palmetto Leaves. She calls it "the fairest, the noblest, the most generous, it is the most surprising and abundant of all trees which the Lord God caused to grow eastward in Eden", and compares it to her task of educating emancipated slaves. When she first arrived in Mandarin, from 1868 to 1870, religious services were held in the Stowes' home, with Calvin presiding and Stowe teaching Sunday School to both black and white children and sometimes serving as an acolyte during services. Stowe purchased a lot in 1869 to build a church for her neighbors that would double as a school to educate children, freed slaves, and anyone eager to learn. Though she encountered considerable frustration in dealing with the bureaucracy of the Freedmen's Bureau, construction was finished within a year and a teacher was in place, procured from Brooklyn, New York. Stowe had an organ that was rolled from her home to the church, but after it became too difficult to roll back and forth, they locked it in a closet in the school. The building burned down to Stowe's deep dismay, probably because of some drifters who spent the night in it and caught the southern pine wood on fire from carelessness, although Olav Thulesius suggests it was arson committed by Stowe's neighbors who did not appreciate her efforts to educate black children. After a frost in 1835, the orange trees in north Florida had been killed, even underground, but they sprouted back only to be assaulted by insects, yet they recovered. While her neighbors helped to raise funds to rebuild the church, Stowe and the small community handed spellers to local blacks who were eager to learn. She decried the delay in the children's education: "To see people who are willing and anxious to be taught growing up in ignorance is the sorest sight that can afflict one". + +=== Florida and daily life in Mandarin === \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..37f14e97e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 4/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +From her first sight of Florida, Stowe was greatly impressed. In Palmetto Leaves, she sings the praises of Florida in January as a beautiful land capable of producing superior citrus and flowers. In several letters Stowe describes the abundant plant life in the area, dedicating a chapter to yellow jessamines (Gelsemium sempervirens) and another to magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) flowers. She details watching sugarcane pressed into sugar crystals, going visiting with her elderly and obstinate mule named Fly, and discovering the myriad things to find in the woods and what can be made of them. She also keeps a cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) in a cage and four cats, but sadly reports later in the year that all four cats have died, to the relief and joy of Phœbus the cardinal. +Stowe attempts to disabuse readers of the notion that the region is perfect. She writes, "In New England Nature is an up-and-down smart, decisive, housemother that has her times and seasons and brings up her ends of life with a positive jerk" and contrasts that characterization with Nature in Florida, an "indulgent old grandmother, who has no particular time for any thing and does every thing when she happens to feel like it". Those who wish to live in Florida, Stowe warns, must also get to know its deficiencies: occasional freezing weather in winter, unsculptable lawns, insects and snakes, and people who disagree as they do everywhere else. Were Florida a woman, Stowe writes, she would be a dark brunette, full of jolly untidiness. Malaria is a fact of life, and Stowe cautions Northerners who may be lured to the region by tales of the mild climate to understand that temperature extremes are common, taking particular effort to address consumptives, or those afflicted with tuberculosis. Those who consider moving to the region should weigh all these issues before making their decisions. In The Journal of Southern History, Susan Eacker attests that Stowe's assignment of female characteristics to Florida coincided with her own gradual admission that she may be turning into a "woman's rights woman". + +Stowe recounts several sailing trips she takes on the St. Johns and Julington Creek and the animals she sees during her excursion, appreciating the alligators, "water-turkeys" (Anhinga anhinga), and "fish-hawks", or ospreys (Pandion haliaetus). Long an animal lover, she took her dogs, cats, and birds with her as part of the "earthquake" of the annual relocation from Hartford to Mandarin. She extended this care to other animals as well. In Naples, Italy, she once got out of a carriage to walk as it was being pulled up a steep hill by two beleaguered horses that were being whipped by the driver, and asked her companions and guide to do the same. Not only did she write the first travel guide to Florida, but Stowe also became the first defender of wild animals. She pays particular attention in Palmetto Leaves to hunters who shoot at anything they see. Not taking offense at hunting for the sake of eating, Stowe laments killing for its own sake: "it must be something that enjoys and can suffer; something that loves life, and must lose it". In 1877 she followed her book with a pamphlet that urged the cessation of the slaughter of Florida's wading birds, whose feathers were selling at the price of gold and used in women's hats. + +=== Emancipated slaves === \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a77a423e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 5/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The final two letters in Palmetto Leaves address the newly freed slaves in Florida. Two strong women who are less docile than Stowe is accustomed are included. One, a field hand turned domestic named Minnah, whom Stowe has tried in vain to teach how to do household chores, is so forthright in her speech that Stowe writes, "Democracy never assumes a more rampant form than in some of these old negresses, who would say their screed to the king on his throne if they died for it the next minute. Accordingly, Minnah's back was marked and scored with the tyrant's answers to free speech." Minnah eventually returns happily to the fields. Another, Judy, is complacent and enjoys taking mornings and afternoons off to see to her husband. Stowe attributes their work ethic to poor training and "the negligent habits inducted by slavery"; the truly talented and hard-working black laborers had moved on from homesteads to industry, able to demand their own price for their labors. +Although Stowe describes Minnah and Judy with some tempered exasperation, she praises a riverboat stewardess named Commodore Rose. Once a slave owned by the captain, Rose had since been freed for saving his life during a boating accident and continues to work for him following emancipation. She is as forthright as Minnah and Judy, but Rose knows every portion of the river as well as the houses and sites along the banks, and their histories. Her knowledge of the ship and its guests is unparalleled, and all the crew and guests revere her opinion in all matters. +In another story, Stowe and Calvin meet a man on a Mandarin dock who has been cheated out of much the land he was given by the government. Named Old Cudjo, he worked the small homestead on which he grew cotton for years. Where at first the neighbors surrounding the colony of former slaves from South Carolina were hesitant and suspicious, Old Cudjo and his colony were so industrious and honest that they won their white neighbors over. One who was a justice of the peace intervened on his behalf and Old Cudjo's land was returned to him. Stowe's final chapter is dedicated to defending the notion that blacks should be employed to help build the state of Florida to transform it from a wilderness into a civilization. They are better suited for work in the hot sun, more resistant to malaria, and are trustworthy and extremely eager to learn. She also dedicates a few pages to her interested observations on their culture as she details overhearing their festivities at night and sitting outside an informal church service. + +== Reception and criticism == + +Palmetto Leaves became a best-seller for Stowe and was released in several editions. It was published again in 1968 as part of Bicentennial Floridiana, a series of original facsimile texts about the history of the state. It was so popular that through publishing it, Stowe virtually ruined the peace and quiet she sought in Mandarin to be able to work. The year following the publication of Palmetto Leaves, Stowe reported that 14,000 tourists had visited North Florida. Two years after its initial publication, a writer working for Harper's magazine noted that Stowe was "besieged by hundreds of visitors, who do not seem to understand that she is not an exhibition". +Stowe's house, which was located on the bank of the St. Johns River, became a tourist attraction, as riverboats shuffling tourists from Jacksonville to Palatka or Green Cove Springs passed close by and slowed, so the captains could point out her home to their clients. Eventually a dock was built so that visitors could come ashore and peek into the windows of the home. One, who dared to pull down a tree branch covered with orange blossoms in full bloom over the Stowe's veranda, was chased off the property by Calvin. Local residents who held Stowe in less than high regard insinuated that she worked with the enterprising riverboat captains to pose for tourists. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4a5e58086 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 6/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Stowe was among several authors who wrote about Florida following the Civil War. By far, the majority were men who concentrated on hunting prospects, but the women who wrote about the region often used an adolescent narrator who was usually male as a device to describe their encounters with the novelty of what they saw. Stowe wrote simply as herself, something that may have been allowed because of her celebrity. Gene Burnett, author of Florida's Past: People and Events That Shaped the State writes: Harriet was probably never fully aware of how great had been her influence in advertising Florida to the country, turning it from an obscure down under tip on the map into a beckoning, lush, tropical paradise, to which tens of thousands would flock to help build a state over the following decades. She herself would doubtless have viewed it as a fitting Christian act to help restore a prostrate, defeated brotherland to its feet; Florida's first promoter was merely a Good Samaritan. +Uncle Tom's Cabin was clearly Stowe's magnum opus (although she considered Old Town Folks, which was written while she was in Mandarin, to have that designation), as Stowe family history recalls that Abraham Lincoln entertained the author during a visit to the White House, and greeted her by saying "So this is the little lady who made this big war?" Compared to it, Palmetto Leaves is considered a minor work and is rarely included in the canon of criticism about Stowe's writings. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature series on Stowe addresses it briefly, however, noting that the mixed essay and letter format make it "uneven in quality and unstable in stance". More assertive criticism was directed toward Stowe's portrayals of the local Mandarin blacks. Cambridge Introduction to Literature author Sarah Robbins called it "downright offensive" and declared that Stowe negated her own attempts to persuade her readers that emancipated slaves were industrious and could assist in rebuilding the South of their own volition by including unflattering descriptions of their physical features—comparing Old Cudjo to a baboon, for example—and writing that supervising and taking care of them was necessary. Susan Eacker agrees, writing that Stowe's views were representative of the majority of white Americans' ideas of where blacks should be in the social scheme of the New South. + +== Post-publication == + +The effects of Stowe's writings about Florida were duly noted by authorities. Her brother Charles purchased his own land upon her recommendation, not in Mandarin but in Newport near Tallahassee. During a visit to his home in 1874, she and a few Northern investors had an audience with Governor Marcellus Stearns. They were met by his cabinet and staff on the steps of the state capitol building—which was festooned with greenery and a large welcome sign for the occasion—and they gave Stowe a round of loud and exuberant cheers. +In 1882 Stowe purchased a plot of land in Mandarin on the St. Johns to build the Mandarin Church of Our Saviour, the dedication of which she attended. The windows of the church were installed by its benefactors. Calvin's health began to fade and in 1884 the Stowe family left Mandarin forever to spend the rest of their years in Hartford. He died two years later and Stowe asked to add a window in the Mandarin church in his memory, but it remained plain glass for 30 years. The church's parishioners remained so loyal to Stowe that they neglected to suggest an alternate plan for the window. Stowe declined into a childlike state after 1894, losing much of her memory but keeping her fascination with plants and flowers as she would wander Hartford exclaiming over those she came across. She died in 1896. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-6.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-6.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d8dc2cf78 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves-6.md @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +title: "Palmetto Leaves" +chunk: 7/7 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_Leaves" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:40.760325+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +A frost in 1886 killed much of the orange industry in Mandarin and the town saw an economic decline. In 1916, an ornate stained glass window constructed by Louis Comfort Tiffany was installed in the Church of Our Saviour, depicting a large oak tree overlooking the river. The church and Mandarin residents offered no more than $500 for the window; for three years ten cent subscriptions were raised around Mandarin, and notices were placed in New York magazines to solicit finances for it. Although scholars have stated that Stowe's efforts to educate local blacks were ultimately unsuccessful, the woman who spearheaded the fundraising effort for the memorial window noted that the project was enthusiastically supported by local black churches and residents, who gave what they could out of affection for Stowe, remembering that she taught some of them to read. The window probably cost Tiffany $850 ($18,206 in 2009), and though there is no record of exactly how much Tiffany was paid, he took the project on because he liked the design: the tree, the moss, the Southern motif, and because it was to memorialize the Stowes. He probably made no profit from it. +Beneath it read "In that hour, fairer than daylight dawning/ Remains the glorious thought, I am with Thee", part of a hymn penned by Stowe. The school Stowe sponsored closed in 1929. Following Stowe's departure, the next owners of the house turned it into a lodge named after her. It closed in the 1940s and was subsequently replaced by a spacious home; what survives is the 500-year-old oak tree, which the Stowes built around instead of removing. The oak had continued to grow and upset the foundation of the new home. +The stained glass window became a tourist attraction and the last memorial to Stowe in Florida; in later decades some of the parishioners and clergy had doubts about its "churchliness" as it was a rare depiction in an Anglican church not referencing a Biblical theme. In 1964 Hurricane Dora destroyed the Church of Our Saviour, including the stained glass window. Across the street, is the Mandarin Community Club, the former school sponsored by Stowe; the structure was given to Mandarin in 1936. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Mandarin has since grown into a suburb of the expansive city of Jacksonville. +Artist Christopher M. Still created an oil on linen painting named The Okeehumkee on the Oklawaha River that hangs in the Florida House of Representatives. It is one of a series of images that encompass symbols of cultural and historical significance to Florida that were commissioned by the State of Florida in 1999 and completed in 2002. Palmetto Leaves is shown lying next to a large alligator and hollowed tree trunk in front of a riverboat passing through a swamp. + +== Notes == + +== Citations == + +== Bibliography == +Robbins, Sarah (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-67153-1 +Stowe, Charles E. (1911). Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life, Houghton Mifflin Company. +Stowe, Harriet B. (1873). Palmetto Leaves, J. R. Osgood and Company. (Hosted by the Florida Heritage Collection) +Thulesius, Olav (2001). Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida: 1867 to 1884, McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0932-0 +Wilson, Forrest (1941). Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, J. B. Lippincott Company. + +== Further reading == +John T. Foster Jr. and Sarah Whitmer Foster, Beechers, Stowes, and Yankee Strangers: The Transformation of Florida, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999 ISBN 978-0-8130-1646-7. + +== External links == +Mandarin Community Club +The Okeehumkee on the Oklawaha - painting in its entirety with guide to symbols + Palmetto_Leaves public domain audiobook at LibriVox \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_on_Fire-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_on_Fire-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..cf0f8afcb --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_on_Fire-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Planet on Fire" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_on_Fire" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:45.375670+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown is a book authored by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton. It was published in 2021 by Verso Books and focuses on the climate crisis and the economy, advocating in favor of ecosocialism. + + +== Background == +At the time of the book's publication, both authors worked for think tanks, with Mathew Lawrence at Common Wealth and Laurie Laybourn-Langton at the Institute for Public Policy Research. + + +== Summary == + +Planet on Fire advocates for environmentalist movements to move toward ecosocialist politics. +A self-described "radical manifesto for how to deal with environmental breakdown," Planet on Fire offers challenges to the political status quo in the face of the "devastating and inequitably distributed consequences of the climate emergency." +It offers a roadmap for a "democratic and sustainable future." Laurie Laybourn-Langton and Mathew Lawrence argue that it is necessary to restructure the economy to create a way of life that can produces a healthy and flourishing environment for all. + + +== Reception == +Writing in the New Statesman, senior online editor George Eaton described Planet on Fire as offering "an urgent alternative" to the "broken model" driving a rapid rise in carbon emissions. A review in Jacobin by writer and climate activist Sam Knights described the book as "an essential vision of the future". +On the website of the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics, environmental policy researcher Flora Parkin characterized Planet on Fire as "credible, vital, and honest". She wrote that the book "encourages the reader to reimagine an economy that can foster a healthy and flourishing environment for all"; she noted that the authors' analysis uses "a dual approach", emphasizing the possibility for institutions to be created and abolished through law and politics while simultaneously arguing that economics should be reconnected to "nature, social relationships and fairness". +A June 2021 list of the "Top 10 books for a greener economy" assembled by Ann Pettifor for The Guardian included Planet on Fire as the tenth book. Pettifor wrote that the book "helps to unpick how the climate crisis relates to the other pressing challenges that we currently face" and that the authors "offer some worthwhile answers". + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..220fe2745 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +title: "Plows, Plagues and Petroleum" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:46.518591+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate is a 2005 book published by Princeton University Press and written by William Ruddiman, a paleoclimatologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He has authored and co-authored several books and academic papers on the subject of climate change. Scientists often refer to this period as the "Anthropocene" and define it as the era in which humans first began to alter the Earth's climate and ecosystems. Ruddiman contends that human induced climate change began as a result of the advent of agriculture thousands of years ago and resulted in warmer temperatures that could have possibly averted another ice age; this is the early anthropocene hypothesis. + +== Synopsis == +Ruddiman begins the book with a brief introduction to the science of climate change and the various individuals who have been key in influencing the field over the years. He also notes that the Earth's climate has been drifting toward cooler temperatures for the last 55 million years. The dominant hypothesis for this trend is that large volcanic eruptions have subsided while increasing amounts of carbon dioxide have been absorbed out of the atmosphere due to interactions between monsoon rains and ground-up rock exposed by India pushing into Asia and creating the Himalayas. Additionally, it is believed that the melting ice that produced higher sea levels resulted in the ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These two natural occurrences resulted in less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hence possibly producing the general cooling trend. +According to Ruddiman, beginning about 900,000 years ago the Earth has begun to go through regular glacial cycles in which glaciers or ice have covered approximately one-quarter of the Earth's total surface. These conditions typically last for about 100,000 years and are followed by brief interglacial periods of more temperate weather. Ruddiman cites various researchers in geology and astronomy who pioneered the understanding of Earth's climate as a function of its orbit. The various cycles of Earth's climate seem to be explained by the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit as well as cycles in the amount of solar radiation. Ruddiman primarily relies on the groundwork by Milutin Milankovitch to explain the effects of solar radiation and Earth's orbit on the climate. By examining ice cores from around the world scientists have been able to link levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane to the various cycles of Earth's climate history. The discovery of carbon dating aided a great deal in developing this understanding. Upon investigating the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the Earth's atmosphere in the most recent interglacial period—10,000 years ago—Ruddiman noticed that levels of carbon dioxide and methane were steadily rising despite the fact that the Earth's natural cycles determined that they should have been decreasing. It was this discovery that led to Ruddiman's search for an explanation and ultimately the creation of this book. +Ruddiman's central argument is that this most recent interglacial period has deviated from the natural cycle because of human activities, most importantly farming. Approximately 10,000 years ago the ice that once covered large portions of the Northern Hemisphere began to recede and gave rise to a new way of life for early humans. In the beginning, these early humans had little impact on the environment because they were primarily hunter-gatherer societies that moved from location to location allowing previously inhabited locations to be reclaimed by nature. However, about 8,000 years ago humans first developed agriculture and a domesticated lifestyle that allowed them to continually inhabit regions and build large civilizations. Ruddiman claims that carbon dioxide emission records indicate that levels in the atmosphere began to rise at about this same time. This process was intensified as the centuries passed and new technologies such as animal husbandry and the plow made their way into more and more cultures. These new technologies allowed for more efficient methods of clearing forests and making room for increasing populations. According to previous interglacial periods, the concentration of carbon dioxide should have fallen by about 20 parts per million instead of rising by 20 parts per million. Ruddiman uses estimates of population, the forest cleared per person and carbon emitted per square kilometer cleared to approximate the total impact and concludes that the magnitude is reasonably close to the extra carbon dioxide accumulated during the period. +Ruddiman also attributes the rise of methane gas in the atmosphere to human-related activities. The most notable of these activities is the cultivation of rice in artificial wetlands in Asia and increased animal waste due to increasing populations of domesticated animals. According to Ruddiman methane concentrations should have peaked about 11,000 years ago slightly above 700 parts per billion and then declined to about 450 parts per billion today. Methane levels followed this cycle at first, but about 5000 years ago they began to rebound and currently the concentration is about 275 parts per billion above the previous trends. +According to Ruddiman farming and related activities resulted in large amounts of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) being released into the atmosphere at a time when natural cycles of the Earth indicated they should have been falling. The result has been an unintended warming cycle that prevented the Earth from entering into another ice age. Ruddiman goes as far as to say that if these gases had not been released into the atmosphere, areas in northern Canada such as Hudson Bay and Baffin Island would currently be covered in ice today. +Throughout the record of carbon dioxide and methane emissions, there are drops and rises in the amount of concentrations present in the atmosphere. Ruddiman explains these "wiggles" by claiming that they appear at times of major outbreaks of disease such as the bubonic plague in the 1,300's and the prevalence of Old World diseases in the Americas after the arrival of Columbus. Both of these events resulted in large numbers of people dying and the land they once inhabited being reclaimed by the forest. This resulted in increased amounts of carbon dioxide being taken out of the atmosphere, hence causing global temperatures to cool down. Ruddiman claims that the Little Ice Age, starting in the 13th century and ending sometime in the early 19th century was caused by the decreased population and the re-forestation of previously cleared lands as a result of the diseases that killed off so many people. +The last aspect of Ruddiman's discussion of climate change relates to the future of petroleum use on Earth. It is commonly known that the world's supply of fossil fuels is rapidly depleting and even conservative estimates claim that the supply will not last much more than 150-200 more years. Ruddiman claims that when this source of natural fuels has been depleted, humankind will have to resort to using the large quantities of coal that still exist all over the planet. This, according to Ruddiman, will result in a continued warming trend that will only stop when technology either produces a new source of fuel or figures out a way to separate the carbon dioxide emissions prior to being released into the atmosphere. Ruddiman is quite skeptical of both scenarios in the near future because of the increased costs and technological advancements that would have to be made in such a short time. Eventually, carbon and methane emissions will be controlled and lowered a great deal and Ruddiman asserts when this happens the Earth will most likely begin an era of cooling temperatures. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3789d8f1e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: "Plows, Plagues and Petroleum" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:46.518591+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Critical assessment == +Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, described Ruddiman's ideas as intriguing, but the conclusions largely depended on a comparison of methane changes in the current warm period with those in the Vostok ice core which correlated with orbital changes, and more recent research indicated that these might not be applicable to present changes. The newer EPICA core showed only a small increase in methane during the last 5,000 years, which was generally attributed to the development of the boreal wetlands and major river deltas after the ice from the previous ice age melted and caused the sea level to rise to its current location. It was very uncertain that the relatively small human populations and cultivated areas could have made a significant difference. More research was needed to quantify relevant factors. + +== See also == +Milankovitch cycles +An Inconvenient Truth +Deforestation +Holocene +Environmental security +Ice caps +Effects of global warming +Carbon cycle +Carbon Disclosure Project +Guns, Germs and Steel + +== Notes == + +== References == +Ruddiman, W. F. (2005). Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum : how humans took control of climate. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12164-8. pdf +Suzane O'connell. Hartford Conn. and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. The Geological Society of America. Volume 12, Iss. 3 March 2002 +William F. Ruddiman. 2003. "The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands Of Years Ago" +William F. Ruddiman, Stephan J. Vavrus, John E. Kutzbach. Quaternary Science Reviews 24, 2005 +Gavin Schmidt. "Methane: A Scientific Journey From Obscurity To Climate Super-Stardom". Goddard Institute for Space Studies. New York, N.Y. Sept.2004 +Michael Williams. Deforesting the Earth From Prehistory to Global Crisis. The University of Chicago Press 2006 + +== Further reading == +Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website (IPCC) +Global Change Master Directory at website of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center +Carbon Disclosure Project website \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3d0bb194e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Political Animals and Animal Politics" +chunk: 1/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:47.722065+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics. +In part, Political Animals and Animal Politics arose from a workshop that Wissenburg and Schlosberg organised at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, though not all attendees contributed to the volume and not all contributors presented at the workshop. Footage of the workshop appeared in De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon), a 2012 documentary about the Dutch Party for the Animals. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. +Reviewers identified the contributions from Driessen, Flanders and Boyer as of particular interest, but challenged the inclusion of chapters focused on the environment. They criticised the book's failure to include contributions from, or sufficiently engage with the work of, the key voices in the politically focused animal ethics literature, such as Robert Garner, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Alasdair Cochrane, Kimberly Smith, or Siobhan O'Sullivan. Wissenburg's chapter was identified as the one that engaged most directly with this literature, but his approach was a negative one. Garner has written that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be praised for its trailblazing, but predicted that it would be superseded by stronger collections on the same theme. + +== Production and release == +The Dutch green political theorist Marcel Wissenburg and the American green political theorist David Schlosberg organised a workshop entitled "Political Animals and Animal Politics" at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, which was held at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, between 10 and 15 April 2012. The two had been talking for around a year about organising a conference broadly on the theme of "nature, animals and political theory". The workshop aimed to fill a gap in the political literature on the status of nonhuman animals, something, they claimed, previously considered only at the margins of work otherwise about the environment/resource management, or else by those more primarily interested in moral issues. Both Wissenburg and Schlosberg presented papers; papers were also presented by Manuel Arias-Maldonado (University of Granada), Susan Boonman-Berson (Wageningen University and Research), Kurtis Boyer (Lund University), Clemens Driessen (Utrecht University), Chad Flanders (Saint Louis University), Robert Garner (University of Leicester), Margareta Hanes (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Paul Lucardie (University of Groningen), Christopher Neff (University of Sydney), Kaspar Ossenblok (Ghent University), Simon Otjes (Leiden University), Christie Smith (University of Exeter), Mihnea Tanasescu (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Catherine Zwetkoff (University of Liège). For Schlosberg, the workshop, and the wide range of papers presented, illustrated the "coming-of-age of animal politics as a subfield of political theory". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..788e33b64 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Political Animals and Animal Politics" +chunk: 2/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:47.722065+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The workshop featured a lecture by Michel Vandenbosch, of the Belgian organisation Global Action in the Interest of Animals. On the second day, those involved were joined by Niko Koffeman of the Dutch Party for the Animals and Karen Soeters of that party's Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation think tank. Footage from that day of the workshop, shot by Joost de Haas, was included in the documentary film De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon, 2012). The film was created by de Haas, who was commissioned by the Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation. It focuses on the Party for the Animals's first ten years, including interviews with people associated with the party and explorations of the party's public reception. The film premiered on 28 October 2012, during a gathering to celebrate the party's 10th anniversary. It has since been made available in numerous languages. +Wissenburg and Schlosberg's workshop formed the basis of Political Animals and Animal Politics, a collection edited by Wissenburg and Schlosberg, earlier versions of many of the volume's chapters having been presented at that time. Originally, the editors had intended to have discussion of political theory, of movements for animals and of real-world politics, but the final volume was somewhat more theory-based than this. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan; it is part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, which is edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. This interdisciplinary series aims to explore the practical and conceptual challenges posed by animal ethics. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in hardback (ISBN 978-1-137-43461-6), softback (ISBN 978-1-349-68310-9), eBook (ISBN 978-1-349-68308-6), and online (doi:10.1007/978-1-349-68308-6) formats. +Political Animals and Animal Politics was the first edited collection devoted to the "political turn in animal ethics", and the first "book-length attempt at seeking to define the contours" of this literature. According to Siobhan O'Sullivan, the book may have been the first time that political turn in animal ethics—a phrase that had been used at European conferences for a number of years—appeared in print. This "animal political philosophy" is identified by the editors as an academic literature at the meeting point of animal ethics, political philosophy and real-world (but theory-driven) politics. Wissenburg and Schlosberg posit that this literature, though at one time only a small part of more morally focused animal ethics, has developed into a separate field of enquiry in its own right. They single out two key texts: Robert Garner's 2013 A Theory of Justice for Animals (Oxford University Press) and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's 2011 Zoopolis (Oxford University Press). Recognising the editors' identification of the political turn in animal ethics, Garner, writing with O'Sullivan and Alasdair Cochrane, argues that the literature is both made distinct and unified by its focus on justice; contributions to this literature, these authors argue, "imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals. Put simply, the essential feature of the political turn is this constructive focus on justice." + +== Synopsis == +Political Animals and Animal Politics has three key aims, and, correspondingly, its chapters are split into three sections. These aims are the analysis of three key "innovations" that the editors identify in the book's introduction. The first of these is the move, in animal ethics, from thinking about personal change to thinking about the implementation of rules or norms of conduct at the societal level. The second of these is a possible rapprochement between animal ethics and ecologism (environmental ethics and green political theory). The third is the increased presence of animal protection laws for the benefit of nonhuman animals themselves. Aside from the introduction, the book features ten single-authored chapters: three in Part I: The Politicization of the Animal Advocacy Discourse, three in Part II: The Rapprochement between Animal Ethics and Ecologism, and four in Part III: The Introduction of Laws and Institutions for the Benefit of Animals. + +== Contributions == +"Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene", Manuel Arias-Maldonado +Arias-Maldonado argues that traditional appeals to the value of nonhuman animals have failed to be sufficiently motivating, and that, instead, human/nonhuman relationships are appropriately grounded upon the ideas of human exceptionalism and human domination. These notions, he claims, can be the basis of political transformation for nonhuman animals. He argues that once these ideas are properly understood, they can ground an idea of human sympathy for nonhuman animals, which is just one part of a caring and sustainable Anthropocene. Even if an alternative politics might ultimately be preferable, Arias-Maldonado argues, a change to a focus on sympathy might be useful and realistic as a political strategy. + +"An Agenda for Animal Political Theory", Marcel Wissenburg + +For the purposes of his contribution, Wissenburg takes many standard contentions in animal ethics for granted. However, he challenges mainstream animal ethicists' tendency to adopt the language of liberalism, which he suggests misconstrues nonhuman animals as individuals and posits false dichotomies about their status. This adoption of liberal ideas can come in Tom Regan's "old" form or Donaldson and Kymlicka's "new" form. Wissenburg challenges Donaldson and Kymlicka's extension of citizenship to nonhuman animals, and instead sketches the outline of an alternative proposal that pays attention to individual animals' modes of being. This he labels, adapting a phrase from Robert Nozick, "liberalism for humans and feudalism for animals". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..49faa1b52 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Political Animals and Animal Politics" +chunk: 3/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:47.722065+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +"Public Reason and Animal Rights", Chad Flanders +Flanders argues that nonhuman animals could be "below" politics, in that they do not have politically considerable interests, or "above" politics, in that they have rights that trump political decision-making processes. Flanders argues that if animals are excluded from basic justice, as John Rawls held, they can be defended on metaphysical grounds (what Rawls refers to as on the basis of comprehensive doctrines, as opposed to the public reasons which must be used for arguments in the political realm). This is potentially liberating for animal advocates. Nonetheless, Flanders argues, animal issues may be matters of basic justice insofar as they affect humans or that animals themselves have rights. Alternatively, the wrongness of animal cruelty may be a "fixed point" in our political reasoning. Flanders concludes that Rawlsianism provides a good starting point for the inclusion of animals in political decision-making. + +"Articulating Ecological Injustices of Recognition", Christie Smith +Smith draws on Val Plumwood to argue that rather than solely think about resituating animals in ethical terms, what is needed is the resituation of humans in ecological terms; both are needed, she argues, as the two tasks are linked. Smith rejects the culture/nature dichotomy, and suggests that a politics of recognition is an appropriate way to think about relationships. She draws upon feminist and ecofeminist literature to conceive of recognition theory beyond intersubjective self/other relations, allowing recognition beyond the human self. Smith seeks to show that recognition theories should not be considered "soft" or "naive" as accounts of justice, and instead that they offer an appropriate mode for thinking about ecological and animal injustices. + +"Ecological Justice for the Anthropocene", David Schlosberg +Schlosberg's contribution, is partly a response to challenges made to his Defining Environmental Justice (2007). Schlosberg aims to step beyond previous accounts of animal rights or environmentalism as requirements of justice by deploying a mixed capabilities/deliberation approach applicable to both ecosystems and nonhuman animals. Schlosberg challenges criticisms of his capabilities approach (specifically, a capabilities approach that moves beyond humans) grounded in the existence of conflicts of capabilities, claiming that a form of deliberative democracy can overcome the problem posed by these conflicts. His mixed account, he claims, provides a form of justice appropriate for thinking about human and nonhuman individuals and collectives in the Anthropocene. + +"Animal Deliberation", Clemens Driessen + +Driessen explores ways in which nonhuman animals might be understood to be engaging in political deliberation. His claim is empirical rather than normative, as he presents nonhuman animals as already being in political dialogue with humans; rather than arguing that rights should be extended to animals, he calls for a recognition of how interactions with animals have always been political. This is particularly noticeable, he argues, when humans are involved in the development of new technologies, analysing the example (following Bruno Latour) of Gaston Lagaffe building a door in dialogue with his boss and the office cat, and of farmers and cows using milking robots. He argues that a recognition of this animal deliberation can lead to more thoughtful forms of both environmentalism and democracy. + +"Animal Party Politics in Parliament", Simon Otjes +Otjes's approach is more empirical than that of many contributors to Political Animals and Animal Politics. He examines the Dutch Party for the Animals (PvdD), which, in 2006, won two seats in the House of Representatives. Otjes explores whether the PvdD's presence has changed the amount of time more established parties spent on animal issues by examining both parliamentary speeches and motions before and after the introduction of the PvdD members. He finds that established parties began to talk more about animal issues in 2006, and that this could be attributed to conflict between the PvdD and the established parties. Though Otjes allows that his study's relevance may seem limited, he concludes that smaller parties can affect government agenda by remaining focused on their own primary concern. + +"The Limits of Species Advocacy", Kurtis Boyer +Boyer observes the distinction between how nonhuman animals can receive political protection as individuals and as species. He argues that the latter form of protection is motivated by a desire to preserve human experience of the species rather than the experiences of the nonhuman animals themselves. Politically motivated species advocacy, Boyer argues, is highly anthropocentric, as advocates present these animals as sharing in particular revered virtues; as a result, the likes of habitat and genetic health are the focus of advocates, rather than the nonhuman animals themselves. Using the example of polar bear preservation, Boyer illustrates how species advocacy becomes tied up with broader political goals concerning humans and competing visions of the value of animals. He concludes that the advancement of species advocacy can limit the achievement of the goals of the animal welfare or animal rights movements. + +"Slaughter and Animal Welfarism in Sweden 1900–1944", Per-Anders Svärd +Svärd, taking a more empirical approach than many other contributors, explores laws surrounding animal welfare in early 20th-century Sweden. He seeks to offer an empirical grounding for the argument that animal welfarism is problematic for animals, entrenching harmful use and speciesism. He analyses all official documentation from the Riksdag from 1900 to 1944 on the subject of animal slaughter and welfare drawing upon Foucauldian policy analysis and poststructuralist discourse analysis. He conceives of the debates as a political problematisation in which (drawing upon Lacanian psychoanalysis) animal cruelty was blamed on certain "other" groups (such as Jews and Sami). He argues that animal welfarism was not the natural continuation of an old anti-cruelty discourse, but that Sweden's 1937 regulation of slaughter and 1944 animal protection laws served to reconstitute, reaffirm, and expand speciesist relations, paving the way for animal exploitation's expansion. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d69f78cf3 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +title: "Political Animals and Animal Politics" +chunk: 4/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Animals_and_Animal_Politics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:47.722065+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +"The Rights of Nature: Theory and Practice", Mihnea Tanasescu +Tanasescu explores the idea of rights for nature, an idea that, though unorthodox, has seen success in implementation. He introduces the concept, with a focus on the differences between moral and legal rights, before examining the particular case of Ecuador's entrenchment of rights for nature in its 2008 constitution, which is compared with other real-world cases. He finally addresses what can be learnt from these theoretical and practical considerations. He concludes that much work on the topic is left to be done, but the key lesson to be learnt is the significance of innovation; environmental politics, he claims, should remain both inventive and optimistic. + +== Academic reception == + +Political Animals and Animal Politics was reviewed by Garner for Environmental Values, and the philosophers Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, Josh Milburn, and Dan Hooley for Environmental Ethics, the Political Studies Review and the Journal of Animal Ethics respectively. Garner lamented the absence of many of the key voices in the political theory literature on animal ethics—such as Cochrane, Donaldson and Kymlicka, O'Sullivan, Tony Milligan, Kimberly Smith or Garner himself—in the book, meaning that Political Animals and Animal Politics "takes on the role of an observer of this debate rather than directly contributing to it in a leading sense". He also felt that the book offered little consideration of the details of the work of these leading theorists, identifying the absence of discussion of Cochrane's interest-based rights approach, a superficial consideration of Regan's account of animal rights, an oversimplification of his own position and a lack of context to understand the respective work of Kimberly Smith and O'Sullivan. He considered Wissenburg's chapter to be the only one that engages with the debate about the political turn in general, but noted that Wissenburg's approach is a negative one; Garner considered this unsurprising, given that Wissenburg is a green political theorist with little sympathy for "animal political theory". +Bendik-Keymer praised the book as having a "report-from-a-cutting-edge-conference quality", characterising two conceptual divides as shaping the volume: first, the distinction between theories endorsing human exceptionalism and those not; and, second, the disconnect between theory and practice. For him, the essays of part three—effectively three case studies—illustrated ways that the "actual practice of politics evince psychological and pragmatic concerns that do not fit neatly into normative foundations". The core philosophical debate (about human exceptionalism) takes place in parts one and two. In part one, he suggested, essays assumed (and sometimes supported) human exceptionalism, sometimes framing it as the only justified way to include animals in politics, while human exceptionalism was denied in part two. It is Bendik-Keymer's view, in line with part one but against part two, that one need not reject anthropocentrism to "open up ecological thought". Anthropocentrism, he argued, can be "open to ecological identifications, having humane virtues, and showing responsibility for our behavior", though this is often denied in environmental ethics. Parts two and three, Bendik-Keymer felt, reveal "the need for a +viable politics of animals to be grounded in an adequate experience of community". The area of research that the book exposes, he argued, is animal community, and, in particular, whether animals' roles as co-creators of community (though not politics) calls for their recognition as political agents, rather than simply being included in politics through the ethical concern of human political agents. +Milburn questioned the success of the volume in achieving its second stated goal, concerning rapprochement between animal and environmental ethics; he considered the contributions respectively of Christie Smith, Schlosberg, and Tanasescu to be more clearly in the domain of environmental ethics than animal ethics, questioning the extent to which they belong in a volume about "animal politics". Similarly, Hooley argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics was "less of a work in the emerging field of animal politics than it is a collection of essays in the field of environmental politics". Alternatively, he claimed it could be viewed as a mixed work, noting that the contributions from Flanders, Otjes, Boyer and Svärd offered new contributions to the literature on animals and politics. Hooley thought it surprising that few authors engaged with the work of Donaldson and Kymlicka, and was critical of Wissenburg's discussion of the pair, which he claimed was "all too brief and ultimately disappointing". +Milburn thought that the opening chapters (and introduction) did well to establish the volume, and was happy with the inclusion of the more empirical contributions, given their potential theoretical significance. He picked out the chapters by Driessen, Boyer, and Wissenburg respectively as highlights, suggesting that the contributions of Driessen and Boyer seemed to challenge the volume's second stated goal, and noting that, though it was strong, he disagreed with the claims of Wissenburg's chapter. Garner highlighted the contributions of Flanders and Driessen, and commended the editors for putting together the book. Hooley concluded his review by claiming that the book offered something to those interested in the place of animals in politics, but that much of its contents would be of more interest for those looking to read about environmental political theory. + +== Legacy == +Garner identified Political Animals and Animal Politics as the first edited collection devoted to the political turn in animal ethics. Though he claimed that it was likely to be superseded, he argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be "welcomed for its trailblazing". Subsequent collections identified in reviews of the literature in the political turn include Garner and O'Sullivan's The Political Turn in Animal Ethics and Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade's Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Another publication identified in these reviews is the open access journal Politics and Animals; this published its first issue in 2015 with an "editorial collective" consisting of Boyer, Svärd, Katherine Wayne and Guy Scotton. + +== Notes == + +== References == + +== Further reading == +Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka (2011). Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. +Garner, Robert (2013). A Theory of Justice for Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. +Garner, Robert, and Siobhan O'Sulluvan, eds. (2016). The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. +Woodhall, Andrew, and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade, eds. (2017). Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Justice,_and_the_Environment-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Justice,_and_the_Environment-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..eb4da81c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Justice,_and_the_Environment-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +--- +title: "Power, Justice, and the Environment" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Justice,_and_the_Environment" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:50.154728+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement is a book edited by David Pellow and Robert Brulle. The impetus for the book came from presentations at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago. Divided into three parts, (Environmental Equity and Justice, New Strategies for Achieving Environmental Justice, and Environmental Justice and the Challenges of Globalization), the editors curate a collection of essays by academics, environmental practitioners, and advocates that critique strategies, tactics, organizational structures, and governance in the environmental justice movement, and pose questions about where the movement has been and where it may go. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Profit_and_Protest-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Profit_and_Protest-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c11550f53 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Profit_and_Protest-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "Power, Profit and Protest" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Profit_and_Protest" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:51.291452+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Power, Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation is a 2003 book by Verity Burgmann. +The book was originally published in 1993, and the 2003 edition is substantially expanded. It contains a new chapter on "social movements and social change", and another on the "anti-corporate globalisation movement". There is a new concluding chapter on globalisation as the "cancer stage of capitalism". +Cathie Jensen-Lee writes "This book provides an interesting and thoughtful analysis of several movements for change in Australian society; namely the Aboriginal movement, the women's movement, the green movement and the anti-capitalist/anti-corporate globalisation movements." + + +== See also == +Tasmania's Wilderness Battles + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Power, profit and protest : Australian social movements and globalisation / Verity Burgmann - Details - Trove +Informit - Labour History - Verity Burgmann, Power, Profit and Protest : Australian Social Movements and Globalisation [Book Review] (Business Collection) +O'Hara on Burgmann Power, profit and protest +Fighting for the Forests. Ron Chapman (PhD) 2008, p18. (in research) +The workers' flag is deepest green. Jeff Sparrow. Seminar, Australian National University, October 2004. (in teaching) +David Sprigg (in social policy research) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a62d2103f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +title: "Prosperity Without Growth" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:52.454462+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Prosperity Without Growth is a book by author and economist Tim Jackson. It was originally released as a report by the Sustainable Development Commission. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission's nine-year history when published in 2009. Later that year, the report was reworked and published as a book by Earthscan. A revised and expanded edition (Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow) was published in January 2017. + + +== Description == +By arguing that "prosperity – in any meaningful sense of the word – transcends material concerns," the book summarizes the evidence showing that, beyond a certain point, growth does not increase human well-being. Prosperity without Growth analyses the complex relationships between economic growth, environmental crises, and social recession. It proposes a route to a sustainable economy and argues for a redefinition of "prosperity" in light of the evidence on what contributes to people’s well-being. +The second edition expands on these ideas and sets out the framework for what he calls "the economy of tomorrow." By attending to the nature of enterprise as a form of social organisation, the meaning of work as participation in society, the function of investment as a commitment to the future; and the role of money as a social good, he demonstrates how the economy may be transformed in ways that protect employment, promote and facilitate social investment, reduce inequality and support both ecological and financial stability. + + +== Reviews == +Le Monde described the first edition as "one of the most outstanding pieces of environmental economics literature in recent years." The sociologist Anthony Giddens referred to it as "a must-read for anyone concerned with issues of climate change and sustainability – bold, original and comprehensive." The second edition received endorsements from Yanis Varoufakis, who referred to it as "essential reading for those refusing to succumb to a dystopic future." Noam Chomsky called it a "thoughtful and penetrating critique." Herman Daly praised it: "It is hard to improve a classic, but Jackson has done it... a clearly written yet scholarly union of moral vision, with solid economics." Rowan Williams called it "one of the most important essays of our generation: both visionary and realistic, rooted in careful research and setting out difficult but achievable goals, it gives what we so badly need – an alternative to passivity, short-term selfishness, and cynicism." + + +== Structure == +The second edition of Prosperity without growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow is organised into eleven chapters: + +The limits to growth +Prosperity lost +Redefining prosperity +The dilemma of growth +The myth of decoupling +The 'iron cage' of consumerism +Flourishing – within limits +Foundations for the economy of tomorrow +Towards a 'post-growth' macroeconomics +The progressive State +A lasting prosperity + + +== Translations == +Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (2009) has been translated into eighteen languages including Swedish (Välfärd utan tillväxt: så skapar vi ett hållbart samhälle, 2011), German (Wohlstand ohne Wachstum, 2011), French (Prospérité sans croissance, 2010), Greek (Ευημερία χωρίς ανάπτυξη, 2012), Spanish (Prosperidad sin crecimiento, 2011), Italian (Prosperità senza crescita, 2011), Dutch (Welvaart zonder groei, 2010) and Chinese (无增长的繁荣，2011). +The second edition, Prosperity without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow (2017), has been translated into German, French, Italian, and Danish. + + +== See also == +Degrowth +Post-growth +Steady-state economy +Stern Review +Material Concerns, a 1996 book by Jackson + + +== References == + + +== External links == + +Review in The Guardian (January 2010) +Routledge website for Prosperity Without Growth +Biography of Tim Jackson (official website) +Tim Jackson's Media Archive (official website) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e69de29bb diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f701fcd23 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: "Questioning Collapse" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:54.801036+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire is a 2009 non-fiction book compiled by editors Patricia A. McAnany and Norman Yoffee that features a series of eleven essays from fifteen authors discussing how societies have developed, evolved, and whether they have or have not collapsed throughout history, with a focus on how ancient and contemporary societies have advanced to the current global society and issues being faced in modern times. The collection of essays acts as a direct critique in the collective title and subject matter of Jared Diamond's book Collapse and, to a lesser extent, Guns, Germs, and Steel. +Begun as a concept at a 2006 special meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the book was further constructed after individual presentations at an October 2007 meeting of archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians in order to address each of the societies and locations brought up by Diamond in his books. These authors showcased how each society did not collapse, but merely changed culturally, politically, or geographically into a new form that followed chronologically with the same traditions and systems, focusing on the concept of resilience has kept together the same cultures even to modern day. This is expanded upon by including scientific research and vignettes from living members of the covered indigenous cultures. +Reviews of the book were overwhelmingly positive, with critics noting that the expanded data and discussion of broader context beyond just criticism of Diamond helped improve the book's message and themes and make it perfect for use in university level courses on the subject of historical societal evolution. Some reviewers wished for additional perspectives to be included beyond just resilience, as other representations of societal change have been used to critique Diamond's claims and these were not as well discussed in the book as they could have been, along with the desire for the current issue of climate change to be integrated more thoroughly in what was shown. A controversy occurred between the authors and Jared Diamond when he published a highly negative review of the book for the journal Nature as a part of its editorial staff without directly stating that Questioning Collapse was a critique of his books in particular, causing the authors alongside Cambridge University Press to call him out on his conflict of interest. + +== Background == +The idea for creating Questioning Collapse came about during a 2006 meeting at the American Anthropological Association that was specially organized to determine how to respond to the claims made in Diamond's books, particularly Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, and how to do so while explaining to the general public how society has actually progressed throughout history and led to our current world. The essays that make up the book were written to be presented at the meeting symposium and were also presented at a follow-up week long advanced seminar in October 2007 at the Amerind Foundation. The main claim in Diamond's works that was being addressed was that of self interest of leaders and geographic location being the factors that have determined the survival of past societies. The purpose of Questioning Collapse was to instead suggest that societies do not collapse based on such factors, but that societies are ever evolving entities that exhibit resilience and adapt into new forms with different names rather than dissolving entirely. + +== Content == +The book begins with an introductory chapter that introduces the focus of the following essays, which themselves are split into a series of case studies in three primary sections titled "Human Resilience and Ecological Vulnerability", "Surviving Collapse: Studies of Societal Regeneration", and "Societies in the Aftermath of Empire". All three sections address three "fundamental questions" in different aspects of society and history, specifically the questions of "why are ancient societies portrayed as either successful or failures in the popular media, how can contemporary society be characterized in the shadow of prior empires, and how are contemporary environmental issues, namely global climate change, similar to those of the past." In addition to criticizing Diamond's claims about human actions, the book also responds to other arguments by Diamond, such as overpopulation and environmental mismanagement, by disputing the factual basis of the claims over longer amounts of human societal time. The authors argue that the resilience of societies, even those that last for hundreds of years and collapse quickly, results in a society that migrates to a new form or location while retaining and changing their cultural traits. +Part one on resilience relating to ecology discusses environmental issues faced by past civilizations and how they have adapted to those challenges, with specific examples examining Rapa Nui, the Norse settlements in Greenland, and China's changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Part two is about the resilience of indigenous communities in Asia and the Americas, particularly those of Mesopotamia, the lowland Maya area, and the rapid social and ecological changes faced by tribes in the American Southwest. Lastly, part three reframes the themes into current environmental problems as a result of European colonialism and how those have affected societies including the Inca and countries including Rwanda, Hispaniola, Australia, and New Guinea. The book concludes with a final chapter written by J. R. McNeill that brings up the broader question of what the truth of sustainability is for our future endeavors. +The book also features inset sidebars that give photographic examples of living descendants of societies and populations that are being discussed, to reinforce the idea that their cultures only changed and were not destroyed. There are additional vignettes throughout each essay chapter that include work and discussion by indigenous scholars from the peoples being discussed and showcases research on their own cultures' histories. The work as a whole features 91 graphical figures, with 24 maps included. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..9db50a41c --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "Questioning Collapse" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:54.801036+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Critical reception == +Pacific Affairs reviewer James L. Flexner praised Questioning Collapse for its critical analysis of Diamond's works and debunking not of minor details, but of broad claims made in his works. Flexner notes that the essays are able to get across the idea that "transformation is likely the one inevitable factor in history" and instead of "tragic catastrophe and destruction", it is the perspective that "these processes, while sometimes accompanied by violent upheaval, usually reflect more of the resilience and adaptability of dynamic human cultures" that matters. In a review for the Journal of Cultural Geography, Ryan D. Bergstrom concluded that, while the book has successfully added to knowledge and understanding on the topic of societal collapses, the "truth of how and why societies collapse is likely found somewhere between the arguments made in this book and those of Diamond’s", but adds that those in the field of cultural geography would "applaud the truth-seeking process" and find the information useful. Writing for Transforming Anthropology, Luis Silva Barros complimented the book's explanation and use of the "process" view of societal development and collapse, as compared to Diamond's "results" view, suggesting that the book would be a "very useful addition to any upper-level undergraduate or graduate course syllabus" if supported with background material and in-class discussion. +Patrick Vinton Kirch in the Journal of Anthropological Research positively stated that the "collection of provocative essays" contained in Questioning Collapse furthers the conversation among scholars about what is the proper way to frame historical events and "whether they even should try to read lessons from the past in order to address contemporary problems". The Journal of World History's Emily Wakild pointed out that while the different authors involved makes separate essays somewhat uneven when reading them together, the thematic organization of the sections helps to smooth over the general tone issues and they manage to "incisively show the weaknesses of Diamond’s narrative(s)". Covering the book in Human Ecology, Joseph Tainter criticized how some of the authors went along with Diamond's "progressivist framework" on societies choosing to succeed or fail and should have more directly debunked Diamond's central claim as several of the other authors in the book did. Tainter concluded that it is a "difficult task" that the fifteen authors have taken to counter popular science misinformation, a " noble attempt to make an unfortunate situation better", and deserve "our respect and admiration" for it. +For the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Kirk S Lawrence considered the book perfect for college level courses and that it "deserved to be read," though with reading of both of Diamond's books required to properly understand the critiques and breakdowns of his arguments found in Questioning Collapse. Science's Krista Lewis praises that the book is much more than just "Diamond-bashing" on Diamond's historical and theoretical inaccuracies, but also gives "lively debate, critique, and engagement" on the broader issues brought up by Diamond in the first place, such as how his and other archaeological romanticism of the past has ignored "cultural and historical perspectives" of the indigenous peoples being talked about. While supporting the book for its focus on the "environmental context of human endeavors" against Diamond's claims, T. J. Wilkinson in American Antiquity wished that additional other perspectives and data that contradicted Diamond's claims had also been utilized, such as the emerging field of global change archaeology. Wilkinson hoped for an additional volume in the future that can tie together all of these other scientific perspectives into a single work for the public, but also more comprehensively integrate discussions of climate change into the historical narrative. + +=== Jared Diamond review controversy === +On February 17, 2010, Jared Diamond authored a joint book review of Questioning Collapse and Cynthia W. Shelmerdine's The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age in the journal Nature . In the review, Diamond heavily criticized Questioning Collapse, without mentioning that the book was meant to be a direct critique to his own works. The authors released an open letter on March 22, 2010 through Cambridge University Press calling out Diamond for his conflict of interest and for the multiple errors and misinformation in his Nature review regarding the content of the book. The publicist for Cambridge University Press, Caitlin Graf, stated that the open letter was originally sent to Nature to be published in response to the review, but it was refused. Therefore, the Press wanted to keep "with our mission to advance learning, knowledge, and research worldwide" and published the letter themselves, with Graf extending an invitation for Diamond to respond to the letter and "engage in a conversation". A different response by Patricia A. McAnany and Norman Yoffee was later accepted and published by Nature on April 14, 2010. + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Time_(book)-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Time_(book)-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f4b04b543 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Time_(book)-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: "Reaction Time (book)" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Time_(book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:55.965950+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Reaction Time: Climate Change and the Nuclear Option is a 2007 book by Professor Ian Lowe The book is about energy policy. + + +== Themes == +In his book he says: "the nuclear option does not make sense on any level: economically, environmentally, politically or socially. It is too costly, too dangerous, too slow and has too small an impact on global warming." + + +== Quote == +"Promoting nuclear power as the solution to climate change is like advocating smoking as a cure for obesity. That is, taking up the nuclear option will make it much more difficult to move to the sort of sustainable, ecologically healthy future that should be our goal." + + +== See also == + +Anti-nuclear movement in Australia +List of books about nuclear issues +Renewable energy commercialization +List of Australian environmental books +Quarterly Essay + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Is nuclear the answer? \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sky_at_Morning_(Speth_book)-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sky_at_Morning_(Speth_book)-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..92747b70b --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sky_at_Morning_(Speth_book)-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Red Sky at Morning (Speth book)" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sky_at_Morning_(Speth_book)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:58.336034+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment by James Gustave Speth, is a 2004 Yale University Press book whose central premise is that environmentalism, so far, has been unsuccessful in protecting the natural environment on Earth. Deprecating the past efficacy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the United Nations Development Programme — as well as the actions of the former George W. Bush administration – Speth writes (as cited in the TIME article listed in the "References" section): "The climate convention is not protecting climate, the biodiversity convention is not protecting biodiversity, [and] the desertification convention is not preventing desertification." +Potential for effective environmentalism, he says (as cited in the TIME article) now rests upon actions analogous to "jazz": volunteerism, and improvisation. He also notes, "Since the Montreal Protocol, [the United States] has not accorded global-scale environmental challenges the priority needed." (p.116) + + +== References == + +Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment. A Citizen's Agenda for Action, James Gustave Speth. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10232-1 +"Books: Storm Warnings Ahead." Linden, Eugene (2004, April 5). TIME, Vol. 163 (No. 14). pg. 79. Retrieved from: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993757,00.html + + +== External links == +Review by Hinkle Charitable Foundation \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_in_Bullough's_Pond-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_in_Bullough's_Pond-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..5116d6adc --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_in_Bullough's_Pond-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: "Reflections in Bullough's Pond" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_in_Bullough's_Pond" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:59.457703+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England is a book by Diana Muir, published in 2000. Providence Journal called Bullough’s Pond "a masterpiece", and Publishers Weekly called it "lyrical". The Massachusetts Center for the Book awarded it the 2001 Massachusetts Book Award, for the author's "engaging and accomplished storytelling". + + +== Thesis == +Muir makes a complex, Malthusian argument for the origin of an industrial revolution in New England independent of the English industrial revolution. Demonstrating that the economic model of colonial New England was large families of children on small-hold farms, producing sufficient wealth not only to live comfortably but to enable all of the children to purchase farms, she argues that a crunch point was reached when cheap, unsettled land ceased to be available. Focusing on the decades following 1790, she argues that families had accumulated wealth to set their children up on farms, but that land was not available until after the federal government broke the armed strength of Tecumseh in the Ohio country. During that twenty-year period, she demonstrates the development of numerous innovative techniques in the early stages of Interchangeable parts manufacturing and precision tool manufacturing, the aspects of industrialization in which southern New England was to lead the world. +Muir argues that, "The Agricultural Revolution saved hunters and gatherers from starving after they wiped out their bigger prey and populations grew too big to be supported by remaining food supplies. The Industrial Revolution saved the Yankees from poverty, but it depended on fossil energy, the by-products of which are polluting the earth. Muir thus argues that a Third Revolution is now necessary, one that will entail the discovery and deployment of new kinds of energy and materials." + + +=== Interchangeable parts === +Muir's most innovative argument is her tracing of the origins of Mass production manufacturing using Interchangeable parts to Eli Terry and the early Connecticut clock industry. She outlines a chain of transmission from Terry's mass production of wooden clockworks, through clockmaker Elisha Cheney to Simeon North, early mass-production gunmaker and inventor of the earliest milling machine capable of working metal. + + +== Pre-contact New England == +Muir’s treatment of Native Americans follows William Cronon’s understanding of native cultures as agents of change who interacted with the ecosystems they inhabited in complex ways. Her innovation here is the use of archaeological data to argue that the Iroquois expansion onto Algonquian lands was checked by the Algonquian adoption of agriculture enabling them to support populations large enough to include a body of warriors that could hold back the threat of Iroquois conquest. + + +== Economic history == +“With New England as the frame of her loom, Diana Muir has used a single shuttle--the dynamic of increasing human population and finite natural resources --to weave the economic and environmental stories of the past four centuries in this corner of North America. Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England suggests that the region has, repeatedly, reached and then exceeded the population that could be sustained by then-current economic subsistence strategies. It illuminates how New Englanders, from indigenous inhabitants to contemporary denizens, have answered the population-resource dilemma and, in doing so, generated both intentional outcomes and unintended – and potent – consequences.” Individual sections are devoted to farming, and to the machine tool and papermaking industries. + + +== Prizes and awards == +For Reflections in Bullough's Pond (University Press of New England, 2000) + +Massachusetts Book Award, 2001 + + +== Reading guide == +Massachusetts Center for the Book: A Reading and Discussion Guide + + +== References == +https://web.archive.org/web/20080720142823/http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2000/08/20000821_b_main.asp \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3c05bbe2e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +title: "The Improving State of the World" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:39:56.305170+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives On a Cleaner Planet (ISBN 1930865988) is a 2007 book by Indur M. Goklany, published by the Cato Institute. As per the title, it argues that the state of the world and humanity is rapidly improving. + + +== Contents == +The book lists many supporting statistics: + +The average person has never been better fed than today. Between 1961 and 2002, the world average daily food supply per person increased by 24% (38% in developing nations). Chronic undernourishment in developing nations declined from 37 to 17 percent of their population between 1969–71 and 2000–02. Greater agricultural productivity and international trade has caused inflation-adjusted prices of food commodities to decline by 75 percent since 1950. Access to safe water and sanitation has increased. +Before industrialization, at least one out of every five children died before reaching his or her first birthday, equivalent to more than 20%. In 2003 the worldwide rate was 5.7% which is approximately the same as the developed nations had in 1950. The progress is illustrated by that many developing nations, such as India, Peru, and Ghana, in 1998 had a lower infant mortality than the US had in 1913. +For much of human history, life expectancy used to be between 20 and 30 years. By 1900 it had increased to 31 years. By 2003 it was 66.8 years. Even in Africa, the poorest continent, it has increased to 45.6 years. Not only are people living longer, they are also healthier in old age. During the course of the 20th century, the average onsets of diseases such heart disease (9 years), respiratory disease (11 years), and cancer (8 years), have been delayed. +Between 1970 and the early 2000s, global illiteracy rates dropped from 36 to 18 percent. Globally, the percentage of relevant population enrolled in tertiary education increased from 6.8 to 25.6 percent between 1965 and 2001. +Worldwide child labor (age 10–14) has decreased from 24.9 percent in 1960 to 10.5 percent in 2003. +Total lifetime spent working for the average British worker declined from 50 to 20 percent of the total "disposable life hours" between 1856 and 1981. Due mainly to improved and cheaper lighting, the increase in free time is arguable even greater, since darkness previously greatly restricted available activities, especially for the poor. +In 1900 no country had universal suffrage and only 12.4 percent of the world's population had even limited suffrage. Today 44.1 percent of the world's population live in nations deemed free by Freedom House and another 18.6 percent in nations deemed partly free. +A common perception is that such progress from economic growth and technology is unsustainable due to worsening environmental problems. The book argues that this is wrong. In the early stages of economic and technological development environmental impact does increase. Improving access to factors such as food, shelter, and electricity is seen as more important than the environment. As development continues and these problems are tackled, the environmental impact becomes a higher priority, and then steps are taken to reduce it. This pattern can be seen for many environmental indicators, such as air quality, availability of safe water, sanitation, and DDT and PCB residues in human tissues, which initially declined with increasing development but have more recently improved. +On the other hand, "The reality ... is that the fight over environmental regulation, at least in the United States, was -- and remains -- a fierce one and that environmental skeptics and businesses have done their best to prevent regulations such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts from ever becoming law. It is also the case that without those regulations, the 'cleaner planet' Goklany sees today would not exist.... The point is that far from being the inevitable product of a strong economy, environmental improvement is often the result of political struggles that could very easily have gone the other way." says James Surowiecki in his review of the book. +Goklany in a reply stated "I am no more convinced than he is about the inevitability of progress" and that the book had stated "a democratic society, because it has the political means to do so, will translate its desire for a cleaner environment into laws, either because cleanup is not voluntary or rapid enough, or because of sheer symbolism. The wealthier such a society, the more affordable -- and more demanding -- its laws."[1] + + +== See also == +The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World +Global Crises, Global Solutions +Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming + + +== External links == + + +=== Interviews === +Spiked + + +=== Reviews === +Foreign Affairs - (Goklany's Reply on ForeignAffairs.org) +London Book Review +The Boston Globe +The Spectator \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Luna-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Luna-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e70537412 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Luna-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "The Legacy of Luna" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Luna" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:04.444711+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Legacy of Luna is a book written by Julia Butterfly Hill about her experiences while treesitting in a tree named Luna in the late 1990s. + + +== Book == +The book is based on true events and written like a diary of the two years Julia Butterfly Hill spent squatting in an ancient redwood in order to protect it. The tree had been named Luna by activists. +Hill began treesitting in December 1997 and stopped when she made a deal with the Pacific Lumber Company. In a first person narrative, Hill relates how she appealed to the universal spirit and spoke to the tree. All profits went to the Circle of Life Foundation. The book was published by HarperCollins in 2000. + + +== Reception == +Publishers Weekly found her book a "a remarkable inspirational document" whilst also disparaging her "mushy New Age ruminations". Other reviews also enjoyed the first person account of events and praised Hill's activism. + + +== Film adaptation == +Rachel Weisz was set to star as Hill in a film adaptation of The Legacy of Luna called Luna, directed by Deepa Mehta. She worked to get the project off the ground, but was unable to do so. She said "I've been desperately trying to get that movie together, but right now it's very hard to get money for dramas, particularly a drama with a female at the centre of it." + + +== See also == +Butterfly, a 2000 documentary film about Hill and her campaign + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d89bcb916 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 1/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Limits to Growth (LTG) is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth and human systems. +Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the study saw its findings first presented at international gatherings in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1971. The report's authors are Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, representing a team of 17 researchers. The model was based on the work of Jay Forrester of MIT, as described in his book World Dynamics. +The report's findings suggest that, in the absence of significant alterations in resource utilization and environmental destruction, it is highly likely that there will be an abrupt and unmanageable decrease in both population and industrial capacity. Although it faced severe criticism and scrutiny upon its release, the report influenced environmental reforms for decades. Subsequent analysis notes that global use of natural resources has been inadequately reformed to alter its expected outcome. Yet price predictions based on resource scarcity failed to materialize in the years since publication. +Since its publication, some 30 million copies of the book in 30 languages have been purchased. It continues to generate debate and has been the subject of several subsequent publications. +Beyond the Limits and The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update were published in 1992 and 2004 respectively; in 2012, a 40-year forecast from Jørgen Randers, one of the book's original authors, was published as 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years; and in 2022, two of the original Limits to Growth authors, Dennis Meadows and Jørgen Randers, joined 19 other contributors to produce Limits and Beyond. + +== Purpose == +In commissioning the MIT team to undertake the project that resulted in LTG, the Club of Rome had three objectives: + +Gain insights into the limits of our world system and the constraints it puts on human numbers and activity. +Identify and study the dominant elements, and their interactions, that influence the long-term behavior of world systems. +To warn of the likely outcome of contemporary economic and industrial policies, with a view to influencing changes to a sustainable lifestyle. + +== Method == +The World3 model is based on five variables: "population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources." At the time of the study, all these variables were increasing and were assumed to continue to grow exponentially, while the ability of technology to increase resources grew only linearly. The authors intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables under three scenarios. They noted that their projections for the values of the variables in each scenario were predictions "only in the most limited sense of the word" and were only indications of the system's behavioral tendencies. Two of the scenarios saw "overshoot and collapse" of the global system by the mid- to latter part of the 21st century, while a third scenario resulted in a "stabilized world." + +=== Exponential reserve index === +A key idea in The Limits to Growth is the notion that if the rate of resource use is increasing, the number of reserves cannot be calculated by simply taking the current known reserves and dividing them by the current yearly usage, as is typically done to obtain a static index. For example, in 1972, the amount of chromium reserves was 775 million metric tons, of which 1.85 million metric tons were mined annually. The static index is 775/1.85=418 years, but the rate of chromium consumption was growing exponentially at 2.6 percent annually. If instead of assuming a constant rate of usage, the assumption of a constant rate of growth of 2.6 percent annually is made, the resource will instead last + + + + + + + + ln + ⁡ + ( + 1 + + + 0.026 + × + 418 + ) + + 0.026 + + + ≈ + + 95 years + + + + {\displaystyle {\frac {\ln(1+0.026\times 418)}{0.026}}\approx {\text{95 years}}} + + +In general, the formula for calculating the amount of time left for a resource with constant consumption growth is: + + + + + y + = + + + + ln + ⁡ + ( + ( + r + s + ) + + + 1 + ) + + r + + + + + {\displaystyle y={\frac {\ln((rs)+1)}{r}}} + + +where: + +y = years left; +r = the continuous compounding growth rate; +s = R/C or static reserve; +R = reserve; +C = (annual) consumption. + +==== Commodity reserve extrapolation ==== +The chapter contains a large table that spans five pages in total, based on actual geological reserves data for a total of 19 non-renewable resources, and analyzes their reserves at the 1972 modeling time of their exhaustion under three scenarios: static (constant growth), exponential, and exponential with reserves multiplied by 5 to account for possible discoveries. A short excerpt from the table is presented below: + +The chapter also contains a detailed computer model of chromium availability with current (as of 1972) and double the known reserves, as well as numerous statements on the current increasing price trends for discussed metals: + +Given present resources consumption rates and the projected increase in the rates, the great majority of the currently important nonrenewable resources will be extremely costly 100 years from now. (...) The prices of those resources with the shortest static reserve indices have already begun to increase. The price of mercury, for example, has gone up 500 percent in the last 20 years; the price of lead has increased 300 percent in the last 30 years. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..79092eb42 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 2/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Interpretations of the exhaustion model ==== +Due to the detailed nature and use of actual resources and their real-world price trends, the indexes have been interpreted as a prediction of the number of years until the world would "run out" of them, both by environmentalist groups calling for greater conservation and restrictions on use and by skeptics criticizing the accuracy of the predictions. This interpretation has been widely propagated by media and environmental organizations and authors who, apart from a note about the possibility of the future flows being "more complicated," did not clearly constrain or deny this interpretation. +While environmental organizations used it to support their arguments, a number of economists used it to criticize LTG as a whole shortly after publication in the 1970s (Peter Passel, Marc Roberts, and Leonard Ross), with similar criticism reoccurring from Ronald Baily, George Goodman, and others in the 1990s. In 2011 Ugo Bardi, in "The Limits to Growth Revisited," argued that "nowhere in the book was it stated that the numbers were supposed to be read as predictions"; nonetheless, as they were the only tangible numbers referring to actual resources, they were promptly picked as such by both supporters and opponents. +While Chapter 2 serves as an introduction to the concept of exponential growth modeling, the actual World3 model uses an abstract "non-renewable resources" component based on static coefficients rather than the actual physical commodities described above. + +== Conclusions == +After reviewing their computer simulations, the research team came to the following conclusions: + + +If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. +It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential. +If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success. + +The introduction goes on to say: + +These conclusions are so far-reaching and raise so many questions for further study that we are quite frankly overwhelmed by the enormity of the job that must be done. We hope that this book will serve to interest other people, in many fields of study and in many countries of the world, to raise the space and time horizons of their concerns, and to join us in understanding and preparing for a period of great transition – the transition from growth to global equilibrium. + +== Criticism == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..011fdbca8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 3/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +LTG provoked a wide range of responses, including immediate criticisms almost as soon as it was published. +Peter Passell and two co-authors published a 2 April 1972 article in the New York Times describing LTG as "an empty and misleading work ... best summarized ... as a rediscovery of the oldest maxim of computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out." Passell considered the study's simulation simplistic and that it assigned little value to the role of technological progress in solving the problems of resource depletion, pollution, and food production. They charged that all LTG simulations ended in collapse, predicting the imminent end of irreplaceable resources. Passell also charged that the entire endeavour was motivated by a hidden agenda: to halt growth in its tracks. +In 1973, a group of researchers at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex concluded that simulations in Limits to Growth were very sensitive to a few key assumptions and suggested that the MIT assumptions were unduly pessimistic and the MIT methodology, data, and projections were faulty. However, the LTG team, in a paper entitled "A Response to Sussex," described and analyzed five major areas of disagreement between themselves and the Sussex authors. The team asserted that the Sussex critics applied "micro reasoning to macro problems" and suggested that their own arguments had been either misunderstood or wilfully misrepresented. They pointed out that the critics had failed to suggest any alternative model for the interaction of growth processes and resource availability, and "nor had they described in precise terms the sort of social change and technological advances that they believe would accommodate current growth processes." +During that period, the very idea of any worldwide constraint, as indicated in the study, was met with scepticism and opposition by both businesses and the majority of economists. Critics declared that history proved the projections to be incorrect, such as the predicted resource depletion and associated economic collapse by the end of the 20th century. The methodology, the computer, the conclusions, the rhetoric, and the people behind the project were criticised. Yale economist Henry C. Wallich agreed that growth could not continue indefinitely; however, he believed that a natural end to growth was preferable to intervention. Wallich stated that technology could solve all the problems the report was concerned about, but only if growth continued apace. According to Wallich's cautionary statement, prematurely halting progress would result in the perpetual impoverishment of billions. +Julian Simon, a professor at the Universities of Illinois and, later, Maryland, argued that the fundamental underlying concepts of the LTG scenarios were faulty because the very idea of what constitutes a "resource" varies over time. For instance, wood was the primary shipbuilding resource until the 1800s, and there were concerns about prospective wood shortages from the 1500s on. But then boats began to be made of iron, later steel, and the shortage issue disappeared. Simon argued in his book The Ultimate Resource that human ingenuity creates new resources as required from the raw materials of the universe. For instance, copper will never "run out." History demonstrates that as it becomes scarcer, its price will rise, more will be found, more will be recycled, new techniques will use less of it, and at some point a better substitute will be found for it altogether. His book was revised and reissued in 1996 as The Ultimate Resource 2. +To the US Congress in 1973, Allen V. Kneese and Ronald Riker of Resources for the Future (RFF) testified that in their view, "The authors load their case by letting some things grow exponentially and others not. Population, capital, and pollution grow exponentially in all models, but technologies for expanding resources and controlling pollution are permitted to grow, if at all, only in discrete increments." However, their testimony also noted the possibility of "relatively firm long-term limits" associated with carbon dioxide emissions, that humanity might "loose upon itself, or the ecosystem services on which it depends, a disastrously virulent substance," and (implying that population growth in "developing countries" is problematic) that "we don't know what to do about it." +In 1997, the Italian economist Giorgio Nebbia observed that the negative reaction to the LTG study came from at least four sources: those who saw the book as a threat to their business or industry; professional economists, who saw LTG as an uncredentialed encroachment on their professional perquisites; the Catholic Church, which bridled at the suggestion that overpopulation was one of mankind's major problems; and finally, the political left, which saw the LTG study as a scam by the elites designed to trick workers into believing that a proletarian paradise was a pipe dream. A UK government report found that "In the 1990s, criticism tended to focus on the misconception that Limits to Growth predicted global resource depletion and social collapse by the end of the year 2000." +Peter Taylor and Frederick Buttle’s interpretation of the LTG study and the associated system dynamics (SD) models found that the original SD was created for firms and set the pattern for urban, global, and other SD models. These firm-based SDs relied on superintending managers to prevent undesirable cycling and feedback loops caused by separate common-sense decisions made by individual sectors. However, the later global model lacked superintending managers to enforce interrelated world-level changes, resulting in undesirable cycles that led to exponential growth and collapse in nearly all models, regardless of the parameter settings. There was no way for a few individuals in the model to override the structure of the system, even if they understood it as a whole. This meant there were only two solutions: convincing everyone in the system to change the basic structure of population growth and collapse (moral response) and having a superintending agency analyzing the system as a whole and directing changes (technocratic response). The LTG report combined these two approaches multiple times. System dynamists constructed interventions into the world model to demonstrate how their proposed interventions improved the system to prevent collapse. The SD model also aggregated the world’s population and resources, which meant that it demonstrated crises emerging with a strictly global logic or form at similar times and in similar ways less effectively because of the unequal distributions of populations and resources. These issues indicate that the local, national, and regional differentiation in politics and economics surrounding socioenvironmental change was excluded from the SD used by LTG, making it unable to accurately demonstrate real-world dynamics. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..5317db3b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 4/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Positive reviews == + +In 1980, the Global 2000 Report to the President arrived at similar conclusions regarding expected global resource scarcity and the need for multilateral coordination to prepare for this situation. +In a 2008 blog post, Ugo Bardi commented that "Although, by the 1990s LTG had become everyone's laughing stock, among some the LTG ideas are becoming again popular". Reading LTG for the first time in 2000, Matthew Simmons concluded his views on the report by saying, "In hindsight, The Club of Rome turned out to be right. We simply wasted 30 important years ignoring this work." +Robert Solow, who had been a vocal critic of LTG, said in 2009 that "thirty years later, the situation may have changed... it will probably be more important in the future to deal intellectually, quantitatively, as well as practically, with the mutual interdependence of economic growth, natural resource availability, and environmental constraints." +In a study conducted in 2008, Graham Turner from CSIRO discovered a significant correlation between the observed historical data spanning from 1970 to 2000 and the simulated outcomes derived from the "standard run" limits of the growth model. This correlation was apparent across nearly all the reported outputs. The comparison falls comfortably within the range of uncertainty for almost all the available data, both in terms of magnitude and the patterns observed over time. Turner conducted an analysis of many studies, with a special focus on those authored by economists, that have consistently aimed to discredit the limits-to-growth concept over the course of several years. According to Turner, the aforementioned studies exhibit flaws and demonstrate a lack of comprehension regarding the model. +Turner reprised these observations in another opinion piece in The Guardian on 2 September 2014. Turner used data from the UN to claim that the graphs almost exactly matched the 'Standard Run' from 1972 (i.e., the worst-case scenario, assuming that a 'business as usual' attitude was adopted and there were no modifications of human behaviour in response to the warnings in the report). Birth rates and death rates were both slightly lower than projected, but these two effects cancelled each other out, leaving the growth in world population almost exactly as forecast. +In 2010, Nørgård, Peet, and Ragnarsdóttir called the book a "pioneering report" and said that it "has withstood the test of time and, indeed, has only become more relevant." +In 2012, Christian Parenti drew comparisons between the reception of The Limits to Growth and the ongoing global warming controversy. Parenti further remarked that despite its scientific rigour and credibility, the intellectual guardians of influential economic interests actively dismissed LTG as a warning. A parallel narrative is currently unfolding within the realm of climate research. + +In 2012, John Scales Avery, a member of the Nobel Prize-winning group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, supported the basic thesis of LTG by stating, Although the specific predictions of resource availability in Limits to Growth lacked accuracy, its basic thesis – that unlimited economic growth on a finite planet is impossible – was indisputably correct. + +== Legacy == + +=== Updates and symposia === + +The Club of Rome has persisted after The Limits to Growth and has generally provided comprehensive updates to the book every five years. +An independent retrospective on the public debate over The Limits to Growth concluded in 1978 that optimistic attitudes had won out, causing a general loss of momentum in the environmental movement. While summarizing a large number of opposing arguments, the article concluded that "scientific arguments for and against each position ... have, it would seem, played only a small part in the general acceptance of alternative perspectives." +In 1989, a symposium was held in Hanover, entitled "Beyond the Limits to Growth: Global Industrial Society, Vision or Nightmare?" and in 1992, Beyond the Limits (BTL) was published as a 20-year update on the original material. It "concluded that two decades of history mainly supported the conclusions we had advanced 20 years earlier. But the 1992 book did offer one major new finding. We suggested in BTL that humanity had already overshot the limits of Earth's support capacity." +Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update was published in 2004. The authors observed that "It is a sad fact that humanity has largely squandered the past 30 years in futile debates and well-intentioned, but halfhearted, responses to the global ecological challenge. We do not have another 30 years to dither. Much will have to change if the ongoing overshoot is not to be followed by collapse during the twenty-first century." +In 2012, the Smithsonian Institution held a symposium entitled "Perspectives on Limits to Growth". Another symposium was held in the same year by the Volkswagen Foundation, entitled "Already Beyond?" +Limits to Growth did not receive an official update in 2012, but one of its coauthors, Jørgen Randers, published a book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..baffbaf3d --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 5/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Comparisons and updated models === +In 2008, physicist Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia published a paper called "A Comparison of 'The Limits to Growth' with Thirty Years of Reality." It compared the past thirty years of data with the eleven scenarios laid out in the 1972 book and found that changes in industrial production, food production, and pollution are all congruent with one of the book's eleven scenarios—that of "business as usual." This scenario in Limits points to economic and societal collapse in the 21st century. In 2010, Nørgård, Peet, and Ragnarsdóttir called the book a "pioneering report." They said that "its approach remains useful and that its conclusions are still surprisingly valid ... unfortunately the report has been largely dismissed by critics as a doomsday prophecy that has not held up to scrutiny." +Also in 2008, researcher Peter A. Victor wrote that even though the Limits team probably underestimated the price mechanism's role in adjusting outcomes, their critics have overestimated it. He states that Limits to Growth has had a significant impact on the conception of environmental issues and notes that (in his view) the models in the book were meant to be taken as predictions "only in the most limited sense of the word". +In a 2009 article published in American Scientist entitled Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil, Hall and Day noted that "the values predicted by the limits-to-growth model and actual data for 2008 are very close." These findings are consistent with the 2008 CSIRO study, which concluded, "The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features ... [of the Limits to Growth] "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century." +In 2011, Ugo Bardi published a book-length academic study of The Limits to Growth, its methods, and historical reception and concluded that "The warnings that we received in 1972 ... are becoming increasingly more worrisome as reality seems to be following closely the curves that the ... scenario had generated." A popular analysis of the accuracy of the report by science writer Richard Heinberg was also published. +In 2012, writing in American Scientist, Brian Hayes stated that the model is "more a polemical tool than a scientific instrument". He went on to say that the graphs generated by the computer program should not, as the authors note, be used as predictions. +In 2014, Turner concluded that "preparing for a collapsing global system could be even more important than trying to avoid collapse." Another 2014 study from the University of Melbourne confirmed that data closely tracked the World3 BAU model. +In 2015, researchers undertook a calibration of the updated World3-03 model using historical data from 1995 to 2012 to better understand the dynamics of today's economic and resource system. The results showed that human society has invested more to abate persistent pollution, increase food productivity, and have a more productive service sector; however, the broad trends within Limits to Growth still held true. +In 2016, a group of MPs in the UK established an all-party parliamentary group on limits to growth. Its initial report concluded that "there is unsettling evidence that society is still following the 'standard run' of the original study—in which overshoot leads to an eventual collapse of production and living standards." The report also points out that some issues not fully addressed in the original 1972 report, such as climate change, present additional challenges for human development. +In 2020, an analysis by Gaya Herrington, then Director of Sustainability Services of KPMG US, was published in Yale University's Journal of Industrial Ecology. The study assessed whether, given key data known in 2020 about factors important for the "Limits to Growth" report, the original report's conclusions are supported. In particular, the 2020 study examined updated quantitative information about ten factors, namely population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, nonrenewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint, and concluded that the "Limits to Growth" prediction is essentially correct in that continued economic growth is unsustainable under a "business as usual" model. The study found that current empirical data is broadly consistent with the 1972 projections and that if major changes to the consumption of resources are not undertaken, economic growth will peak and then rapidly decline by around 2040. +In 2023, the parameters of the World3 model were recalibrated using empirical data up to 2022. This improved parameter set results in a World3 simulation that shows the same overshoot and collapse mode in the coming decade as the original business-as-usual scenario of the Limits to Growth standard run. The main effect of the recalibration update is to raise the peaks of most variables and move them a few years into the future. + +== Further reading == +Books discussing humanity's challenges and uncertain future have been consistently published over the years. The more notable of these, including the books mentioned above for reference, include: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6ef0d1d53 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +--- +title: "The Limits to Growth" +chunk: 6/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:05.601237+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus (1798); +Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh (1864); +The Coal Question by William Stanley Jevons (1865); +Our Plundered Planet by Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. (1948); +Road to Survival by William Vogt (1948); +The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich (1968); +Overshoot by William R. Catton (1980); +State of the World reports issued by the Worldwatch Institute (produced annually since 1984); +Our Common Future, published by the UN's World Commission on Environment and Development (1987); +Earth in the Balance by Al Gore (1992); +Straw Dogs by John Gray (2002); +Our Final Hour by Martin Rees (2003); +The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg (2003); +A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (2004); +Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (2005); +The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler (2005); +Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen, ISBN 9781608192007 (2009); +Requiem for a Species by Clive Hamilton (2010); +Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011); +The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014); +The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (2017); +The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord (2020); +Earth for All – A Survival Guide for Humanity (2022); + +== Editions == +ISBN 0-87663-165-0, 1972 first edition (digital version) +ISBN 0-87663-222-3, 1974 second edition (cloth) +ISBN 0-87663-918-X, 1974 second edition (paperback) +Meadows, Donella; Meadows, Dennis; Randers, Jorgen (1992). Beyond the Limits (Hardcover ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing. ISBN 0-930031-55-5. +Meadows, Donella; Randers, Jorgen; Meadows, Dennis (June 2004). Limits To Growth: The 30-Year Update (Paperback ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing. ISBN 193149858X. +Meadows, Donella; Randers, Jorgen; Meadows, Dennis (March 2005). Limits To Growth: The 30-Year Update (Hardcover ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing. ISBN 1931498512. + +== See also == + +== Notes == + +== References == + +== External links == + +The Limits to Growth 1972 edition, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license +Smithsonian: 40 years Limits of Growth on YouTube +Peak Oil model that correctly tracked the oil output, Scientific Study: Forecasting the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply: Validation; from John L Hallock Jr. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Soil-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Soil-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..297f7e1b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Soil-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "The Living Soil" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Soil" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:08.993698+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Living Soil (1943) by Lady Eve Balfour is considered a seminal classic in organic agriculture and the organic movement. The book is based on the initial findings of the first three years of the Haughley Experiment, the first formal, side-by-side farm trial to compare organic and chemical-based farming, started in 1939 by Balfour (with Alice Debenham), on two adjoining farms in Haughley Green, Suffolk, England. +The Living Soil was also published as The Living Soil and the Haughley Experiment. + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Soil And Health Library - full text repository for The Living Soil \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_Neptune's_Garden-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_Neptune's_Garden-0.md index 5ce5af36c..c6be897f8 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_Neptune's_Garden-0.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_Neptune's_Garden-0.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/1 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_Neptune's_Garden" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:10:42.117356+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:10.183636+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..789a992c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: "The Machine in the Garden" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:11.357187+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America is a 1964 work of literary criticism written by Leo Marx and published by Oxford University Press. The title of the book refers to a trope in American literature representing the interruption of pastoral scenery by technology due to the industrialization of America during the 19th and 20th century. For example, the trope notably appears in Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854) when the whistling sound of a steam locomotive disrupts the natural landscape of Walden Pond. Marx uses this literary metaphor to illustrate the relationship between culture and technology in the United States as depicted in the work of American authors such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Henry Adams, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. + + +== Synopsis == +Marx identifies a major theme in literature of the nineteenth century—the dialectical tension between the pastoral ideal in America and the rapid and sweeping transformations wrought by machine technology. This tension is expressed "everywhere" in literature by the recurring image of the machine in the garden—that is, the sudden and shocking intrusion of technology into a pastoral scene. "Within the lifetime of a single generation," Marx writes, "a rustic and in large part wild landscape was transformed into the site of the world's most productive industrial machine. It would be difficult to imagine more profound contradictions of value or meaning than those made manifest by this circumstance. Its influence upon our literature is suggested by the recurrent image of the machine's sudden entrance onto the landscape." +But Marx isn't interested so much in historical changes to the physical landscape. Instead, he looks at the interior landscape—"the landscape of the psyche"—and it is intelligently and well-written literature that he believes offers us the most useful and insightful direct access to the psyche. While popular culture traded on "puerile" and sentimental pastoralism—that is, the simple and unreflective urge to find a "middle ground" between the over-civilization of the city and the "violent uncertainties of nature" (28)—serious literature took a hard, careful look at the contradictions in American culture, and particularly at the conflict between the old bucolic image of America and its new image as an industrial power (26). It is the "role" of literature, argues Marx, to show us the "contradiction" of our commitments to both rural happiness and "productivity, wealth, and power." +One example of this image occurs in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Mark Twain's 1885 masterpiece, the garden is the raft, and the machine is the steamboat that smashes it apart—and along with it, the (impossible) dream of a free and independent existence for Huck and Jim. As the raft drifts ever southward, deeper and deeper into slave territory, it is increasingly clear that this existence is unsustainable. The raft, like Thoreau's cabin, represents an escape from society, freedom from restriction, and a sense of plenty all associated with the pastoral ideal. It "embraces all of the extravagant possibilities of sufficiency, spontaneity, and joy that had been projected upon the American landscape since the age of discovery." The steamboat represents the intrusion of social realities into this dream, and not just the intrusion of the reality of human enslavement. It is a representation of how machine technology conflicts with the pastoral ideal, and in the case of Huck and Jim, onto the southward-floating raft. +Marx concludes that literary artists—and Twain, Melville, and Hawthorne in particular—raised important issues and exposed important contradictions in American culture, showing how "the aspirations once represented by the symbol of an ideal landscape have not, and probably cannot, be embodied" and that "our inherited symbols of order and beauty have been divested of meaning." However, Marx does not believe that these artists offer any solutions to the problems they raise. They have "clarified our situation" but have not created the "new symbols of possibility" we need. Literature can expose problems, but for solutions we should look critically to politics for historical possibilities. + + +== See also == +Arcadia (utopia) +Virgin Land: The American West As Symbol and Myth +The Machine in Neptune's Garden: Historical Perspectives on Technology and the Marine Environment + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Bryant, John L. (Spring 1975). A Usable pastoralism: Leo Marx's method in the machine in the garden. American Studies. 16(1):63-72. JSTOR 40641112 (subscription required) +Decker, Jeffrey L. (Spring 1992). Dis-Assembling the Machine in the Garden: Antihumanism and the Critique of American Studies. New Literary History. 23(2): 281–306. JSTOR 469235 (subscription required) +Erbacher, Eric, Nicole Maruo-Schröder, and Florian Sedlmeier, eds. (2014). Rereading the Machine in the Garden. Nature and Technology in American Culture. Frankfurt/Main and New York: Campus. +Meikle, Jeffrey L. (January 2003). Leo Marx's "The Machine in the Garden". Technology and Culture. 44(1):147-159. JSTOR 25148061 (subscription required) +Robinson, David M. (December 2013). The Ruined Garden at Half a Century: Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden. Reviews in American History. 41(4):571-576. doi:10.1353/rah.2013.0105 +Ward, John William. 1955 Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age. New York: Oxford University Press. +Ward, John William. 1969 Red, White, and Blue: Men, Books, and Ideas in American Culture . New York: Oxford University Press +Wolf, Virginia L. (1996). The Historical Journey: American Myth. Little House on the Prairie: A Reader's Companion. Twayne Publishers. pp. 104–126. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2a9fda312 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 1/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Malay Archipelago is a book by the English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace which chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight-year period 1854 to 1862, of the southern portion of the Malay Archipelago including Malaysia, Singapore, the islands of Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies, and the island of New Guinea. It was published in two volumes in 1869, delayed by Wallace's ill health and the work needed to describe the many specimens he brought home. The book went through ten editions in the nineteenth century; it has been reprinted many times since, and has been translated into at least twelve languages. +The book describes each island that he visited in turn, giving a detailed account of its physical and human geography, its volcanoes, and the variety of animals and plants that he found and collected. At the same time, he describes his experiences, the difficulties of travel, and the help he received from the different peoples that he met. The preface notes that he travelled over 14,000 miles and collected 125,660 natural history specimens, mostly of insects though also thousands of molluscs, birds, mammals and reptiles. +The work was illustrated with engravings, based on Wallace's observations and collection, by the leading illustrators Thomas Baines, Walter Hood Fitch, John Gerrard Keulemans, E. W. Robinson, Joseph Wolf and T. W. Wood. +The Malay Archipelago attracted many reviews, with interest from scientific, geographic, church and general periodicals. Reviewers noted and sometimes disagreed with various aspects of his theories, especially the division of fauna and flora along what soon became known as the Wallace line, natural selection and uniformitarianism. Nearly all agreed that he had provided an interesting and comprehensive account of the geography, natural history, and peoples of the archipelago, which little was known about to readers at the time, in addition to the extensive breadth of specimens collected. The book is much cited, and is Wallace's most successful, both commercially and as a piece of literature. + +== Context == +In 1847, Wallace and his friend Henry Walter Bates, both in their early twenties, agreed that they would jointly make a collecting trip to the Amazon "towards solving the problem of origin of species". (Charles Darwin's book on the Origin of Species was not published until 11 years later, in 1859. It was based on Darwin's own long collecting trip on HMS Beagle, its publication precipitated by a famous letter from Wallace, sent during the period covered by The Malay Archipelago while he was staying in Ternate, which described the theory of evolution by natural selection in outline.) Wallace and Bates had been inspired by reading the American entomologist William Henry Edwards's pioneering 1847 book A Voyage Up the River Amazon, with a residency at Pará. Bates stayed in the Amazons for 11 years, going on to write The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863); however, Wallace, ill with fever, went home in 1852 with thousands of specimens, some for science and some for sale. The ship and his collection were destroyed by fire at sea near the Guianas. Rather than giving up, Wallace wrote about the Amazon in both prose and poetry, and then set sail again, this time for the Malay Archipelago. + +== Overview == +The preface summarises Wallace's travels, the thousands of specimens he collected, and some of the results from their analysis after his return to England. In the preface he notes that he travelled over 14,000 miles and collected 125,660 specimens, mostly of insects: 83,200 beetles, 13,100 butterflies and moths, 13,400 other insects. He also returned to England 7,500 "shells" (such as molluscs), 8,050 birds, 310 mammals and 100 reptiles. + +The book is dedicated to Charles Darwin, but as Wallace explains in the preface, he has chosen to avoid discussing the evolutionary implications of his discoveries. Instead he confines himself to the "interesting facts of the problem, whose solution is to be found in the principles developed by Mr. Darwin", so from a scientific point of view, the book is largely a descriptive natural history. This modesty belies the fact that while in Sarawak in 1855 Wallace wrote the paper On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species, concluding with the evolutionary "Sarawak Law", "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species", three years before he fatefully wrote to Darwin proposing the concept of natural selection. +The first chapter describes the physical geography and geology of the islands with particular attention to the role of volcanoes and earthquakes. It also discusses the overall pattern of the flora and fauna including the fact that the islands can be divided, by what would eventually become known as the Wallace line, into two parts, those whose animals are more closely related to those of Asia and those whose fauna is closer to that of Australia. +The following chapters describe in detail the places Wallace visited. Wallace includes numerous observations on the people, their languages, ways of living, and social organisation, as well as on the plants and animals found in each location. He talks about the biogeographic patterns he observes and their implications for natural history, in terms both of the movement of species and of the geologic history of the region. He also narrates some of his personal experiences during his travels. The final chapter is an overview of the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural divisions among the people who live in the region and speculation about what such divisions might indicate about their history. + +== Publication == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..fe5524299 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 2/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Malay Archipelago was largely written at Treeps, Wallace's wife's family home in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex. It was first published in Spring 1869 in two volumes by Macmillan (London), with a reprint (also in two volumes) marked 'second edition' the same year. The first US edition year by Harper & Brothers (New York) appeared in 1869 in a single volume. Wallace returned to England in 1862, but explains in the Preface that given the large quantity of specimens and his poor health after his stay in the tropics, it took a long time. He noted that he could at once have printed his notes and journals, but felt that doing that would have been disappointing and unhelpful. Instead, therefore, he waited until he had published papers on his discoveries, and other scientists had described and named as new species some 2,000 of his beetles (Coleoptera), and over 900 Hymenoptera including 200 new species of ant. The book went through 10 editions, with the last published in 1890. It has been translated into at least twelve languages. + +== Illustrations == + +The illustrations are, according to the Preface, made from Wallace's own sketches, photographs, or specimens. Wallace thanks Walter and Henry Woodbury for some photographs of scenery and native people. He acknowledges William Wilson Saunders and Mr Pascoe for horned flies and very rare longhorn beetles: all the rest were from his own enormous collection. +The original drawings were made directly on to the wood engraving blocks by leading artists Thomas Baines, Walter Hood Fitch, John Gerrard Keulemans, E. W. Robinson, Joseph Wolf, and T. W. Wood, according to the List of Illustrations. Wood also illustrated Darwin's The Descent of Man, while Robinson and Wolf both also provided illustrations for The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863), written by Wallace's friend Henry Walter Bates. + +== Contents == + +=== Volume 1 === +1 Physical Geography +Wallace sets out the scope of the book, describing what "To the ordinary Englishman" is "perhaps the least known part of the globe." The archipelago, he explains, stretches more than 4,000 miles east to west, and about 1,300 miles north to south, with over twenty sizeable islands and innumerable isles and islets. + +==== Indo-Malay Islands ==== + +2 Singapore +Wallace gives a lively description of the people of the town, and of the wildlife of the island. He finds the Chinese the most noticeable of the people, while in one square mile of forest he found 700 species of beetles including 130 longhorns. +3 Malacca and Mount Ophir. +He finds an attractive old Portuguese town, and beautiful birds such as the blue-billed gaper. The flora includes pitcher plants and giant ferns. There are tigers and rhinoceros, but the elephants had already disappeared. +4 Borneo—The Orang-Utan +He stays in Sarawak, and finds the Simunjon coal-works convenient, as the workers are happy to be paid a little for insects they find, including locusts, stick insects and about 24 new species of beetles each day. In all he collects 2000 species of beetle in Borneo, nearly all at the coal mine site; he also found a flying frog and orang-utans in the same place. + +5 Borneo—Journey in the Interior +Wallace returns to Sarawak, where he stays in the circular 'head-house' of a Dyak village, travels upriver, and describes the Durian, praising it as the king of fruits with exquisite and unsurpassed flavour, and the Dyak's slender bamboo bridges, as well as ferns and Nepenthes pitcher plants. On a mountain he finds the only place in his entire journey where moths are abundant; he collected 1,386 moths on a total of 26 nights, but over 800 of these were caught on four very wet and dark nights. He attributes the reason to having a ceiling that effectively trapped the moths; in other houses the moths at once escaped into the roof, and he recommends naturalists to bring a verandah-shaped tent to enable them to catch moths. +6 Borneo—The Dyaks +Wallace describes the Dyak people, expressing surprise that despite Thomas Malthus's predictions for the human population of the world, and the lack of any obvious restraints, the Dyak population appeared to be stable. +7 Java +Wallace stayed three and a half months in Java, where he admires the system of government and the contented people. The population is, he notes, rapidly increasing, from 3.5 million in 1800 to 5.5 million in 1826 and 14 million in 1865. He enjoys the fine Hindu archaeological sites, and the flora of the mountain tops which have plants resembling those of Europe, including the royal cowslip, Primula imperialis, endemic to one mountain top. +8 Sumatra +He visits Sumatra while the coastal forest of Nipa palms is flooded to a distance of several miles from the sea. The river houses at Palembang are built on rafts moored to piles, rising and falling with the tide. He admires the traditional houses of the villages, but had difficulty getting any food there, the people living entirely on rice through the rainy season. He discovers some new species of butterfly including Papilio memnon which occurs in different forms, some being Batesian mimics of Papilio coon. He admires the camouflage of a species of dead leaf butterfly, Kallima paralekta. He is pleased that one of his hunters brings him a male hornbill, shot at its nest hole while feeding the female. +9 Natural History Of The Indo-Malay Islands. +Wallace sketches the natural history of the islands to the West of the Wallace line, noting that the flora is like that of India, as described by the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in his 1855 Flora Indica. Similarly the mammals are similar to those of India, including the tiger, leopard, rhinoceros and elephant. The bird species had diverged, but the genera were mainly the same, and some species of (for example) woodpecker, parrot, kingfisher and pheasant were found from India to Java and Borneo, while many more were found both in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. + +==== The Timor Group ==== \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..56a9c5231 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 3/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +10 Bali And Lombock +Wallace is grateful for an involuntary stop in Bali, which he finds one of the most interesting places of his trip, as Hindu customs and religion are still practised, while on Lombok he finds Australian birds such as cockatoos, observing that this is the most westerly point of that family's range. +11 Lombock—Manners And Customs +On Lombok, Wallace observes how guns are made, witnessing the boring of gun barrels by two men rotating a pole which is weighted down by a basket of stones. He describes the Sasak people of the island, and the custom of running amok. +12 Lombock—How The Rajah Took The Census +The whole chapter is taken up with a legend, which Wallace calls an anecdote, about the rajah (king) of Lombok. It involves taxation, needles and sacred krisses. +13 Timor +Wallace describes the island of Timor, its abundance of fan-palms, its people who are like Papuans, and the Portuguese government which he considers extremely poor. On some hills he finds Eucalyptus (gum) trees, a genus from Australia; he finds the vegetation monotonous also. +14 Natural History of the Timor Group +He finds the mixture of bird species intermediate between those of Java and Australia, with 36 species actually Javan, and 11 closely related; while there are only 13 actually Australian, with 35 closely related. Wallace interprets this to mean that a small number of birds from Australia, and a larger number from Java, colonised Timor and then evolved into new species endemic to the island. The land mammals were very few in number: the six species were endemic or related to those of Java or the Moluccas, with none from Australia, so he doubts there was ever a land bridge to that continent. + +==== The Celebes Group ==== + +15 Celebes—Macassar +Wallace finds staying in the town of Macassar expensive, and moves out into the countryside. He meets the rajah, and is lucky enough to stay on a farm where he is given a glass of milk every day, "one of my greatest luxuries". +16 Celebes—Macassar +He catches some Ornithoptera (birdwings), "the largest, the most perfect, and the most beautiful of butterflies". He uses rotten jackfruit to attract beetles, but finds few birds. The limestone mountains are eroded into skittle-shaped pillars with narrow bases. +17 Celebes—Menado +Wallace visits Menado on the northeast coast of Celebes. The people of the Minahasa region are fair-skinned, unlike anywhere else in the archipelago. He stays high in the mountains by the coffee plantations, and is often cold, but finds that the animals are no different from those lower down. The forest was full of orchids, bromeliads, clubmosses and mosses. He experiences an earthquake, but the low timber-framed houses survive with little damage. He finds that the people, under the guidance of missionaries, are the most hard-working, peaceful and civilised of the whole archipelago. He obtains (apparently by purchase) skulls of the babirusa (pig-deer) and the rare sapiutan (midget buffalo). +18 Natural History of Celebes +He describes the range of species in each group in some detail, concluding that the birds are unlike those of any of the surrounding countries and are quite isolated, but are related to those of distant places including New Guinea, Australia, India and Africa; he thinks there is nowhere else where so many such species occur in one place. Similarly in the Nymphalidae (he mentions the English member, the purple emperor butterfly), there are 48 species of which 35 are endemic to Celebes. He concludes that the Celebes group of islands is a major faunal division of the archipelago. + +==== The Moluccas ==== +19 Banda +He finds Banda delightful, with a smoking volcano and a fine view from the top. The nutmeg trees are beautiful but he regrets the ending of the Dutch monopoly in the nutmeg trade, which avoided the need to levy direct taxes. The only indigenous animals, he thinks, are bats, except possibly for its opossum species. +20 Amboyna +He finds the inhabitants of Amboyna lazy, but the harbour contained the most beautiful sight, "a continuous series of corals, sponges, actiniæ, and other marine productions, of magnificent dimensions, varied forms, and brilliant colours." A large python has to be ejected from the roof-space of his house. He enjoys the true breadfruit, which he considers good in many dishes but best simply baked. + +=== Volume 2 === + +==== The Moluccas (continued) ==== +21 Ternate +Wallace takes on and repairs a house which he keeps for three years, drawing a plan of it in the book; it has stone walls 3 feet (1 metre) high, with posts holding up the roof; the walls and ceiling are made of the leaf-stems of the sago palm. He has a well of clean cold water, and the market provides "unwonted luxuries" of fresh food; he returns here to restore his health after arduous journeys. +22 Gilolo +He finds the large island rather dull, with much tall coarse grass and few species. In the forest he obtains some small "parroquets", brush-tongued lories, and the day-flying moth Cocytia d'Urvillei. + +23 Voyage to the Kaióa Islands and Batchian +He hires a small boat to go to the highly recommended island of Batchian and crosses to Tidore, where he sees the comet of October 1858; it spans about 20 degrees of the night sky. They sail past the volcanic island of Makian which erupted in 1646 and devastatingly again, soon after Wallace had left the archipelago, in 1862. In the Kaióa Islands he finds some virgin forest where the beetles are more abundant than anywhere he ever saw in his life, with swarms of golden Buprestidae, rose-chafers, and long-horned weevils, as well as longicorn beetles. "It was a glorious spot, and one which will always live in my memory as exhibiting the insect-life of the tropics in unexampled luxuriance." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..acaf7e490 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 4/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +24 Batchian +He is lent a house by the Sultan, who offers him tea and cakes but asks him to teach him to make maps and to give him a gun and a milking goat, "all of which requests I evaded as skilfully as I was able". His servant Ali shoots a new bird of paradise, Wallace's standardwing, "a great prize" and a "striking novelty". He is a little disappointed in the range of insects and birds, but discovers new species of roller, sunbird and is happy to see the racquet-tailed kingfisher. His house is burgled twice; a blacksmith manages to pick his locks and make him a new set of keys; and he discovers a new species of birdwing butterfly. +25 Ceram, Goram, and the Matabello Islands +He travels to Ceram, where he enjoys the company of a multilingual Flemish plantation owner. He finds few birds despite constant searching and wading through rivers; the water and the rough ground destroy both his pairs of shoes, and he returns home on the last day lame from walking "in my stockings very painfully". Sailing in the Matabello Islands, he is blown ten miles off course, his men fearing being swept on to the coast of New Guinea "in which case we should most likely all be murdered" as the tribes there are treacherous and bloodthirsty. He is sorry to see that even the smallest children here all chew betel-nut and are disfigured by sores from a poor diet. However he enjoys their palm wine which he finds more like cider than beer, and the "water" inside young coconuts, which, he explains, is nothing like the undrinkable contents of the old dry coconuts on sale in England. He buys a prau and surprises the people by fitting it out himself, using tools "of the best London make", but lacking a large drill the holes have to be made, very slowly, by boring with hot iron rods. Travelling round Ceram, the crew from Goram run away. He describes in detail the process of making sago. +26 Bouru +He finds he has arrived in the rainy season, seeing mainly mud and water. He complains that two months' work produce only 210 species of beetle, compared to 300 in three weeks at Amboyna. However one Cerambyx beetle was up to 3 inches (7.5 cm) long, with antennae up to 5 inches (12.5 cm) in length. He is amused at himself for finding his simple hut comfortable, once he has made a rough table and is in his rattan chair, with a mosquito net and "large Scotch plaid" to form a "little sleeping apartment". He gets 17 new (at least for the Moluccas) species of bird including a new Pitta bird. +27 The Natural History of the Moluccas +The only carnivore in the Moluccas is the Malayan civet (Musang), which he supposes has been introduced by accident as it is kept for its musk. The Celebes Babirusa is, oddly, found on Bouru, which he supposes it reached partly by swimming, citing Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology to confirm this ability. The other mammals are marsupial, so, he presumes, true natives. In contrast to the few mammals, there are at least 265 bird species, more than all of Europe, which had 257, but of these just three groups – parrots, kingfishers and pigeons – make up nearly a third, compared to only a twentieth of the birds of India. Wallace suggests this is because they came from New Guinea, which has a similar lack of some groups, and adds that many New Guinea birds have not reached the Moluccas, implying that the islands have been isolated for a long time. + +==== Papuan Group ==== + +28 Macassar to the Aru Islands in a Native Prau +Wallace decides to avoid the rainy season of Celebes by travelling to the Aru Islands, the source of pearls, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell for Europe, and edible birds' nests and sea-slugs for China, even though they are inhabited by "savages". He is excited despite the danger of a 1,000-mile (1600 km) voyage in a 70-ton Bugis prau with a crew of 50, considering the islands the "Ultima Thule of the East". His small cabin was the "snuggest" he ever had at sea, and he liked the natural materials and the absence of foul-smelling paint and tar. The Molucca sea was phosphorescent, like a nebula seen in a telescope. He sees flying fish near Teor, which is wrongly marked on the charts. +29 The Ké Islands +The prau is greeted by 3 or 4 long high-beaked canoes, about 50 men naked but for shells and long plumes of cassowary feathers, singing and shouting as they rowed, who board the prow with high exuberance "intoxicated with joy and excitement" asking for tobacco. It is at once clear to Wallace these Papuans are not Malays in appearance or behaviour. They are expert boat-builders, using only axe, adze and auger, fitting planks together so well that a knife-blade can hardly be inserted anywhere. They use no money, bartering for knives, cloth and "arrack" brandy, and bring many beetles including a new jewel beetle species, Cyphogastra calepyga, in return for tobacco. +30 The Aru Islands—Residence in Dobbo +On one day he captures about 30 species of butterfly, the most since he was in the Amazon, including the "large and handsome spectre-butterfly, Hestia durvillei", and a few days later +one of the most magnificent insects the world contains, the great bird-winged butterfly, Ornithoptera poseidon. I trembled with excitement as I saw it coming majestically towards me,... and was gazing, lost in admiration, at the velvet black and brilliant green of its wings, seven inches across, its golden body, and crimson breast... The village of Dobbo held that evening at least one contented man." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e57b33490 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 5/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +31 The Aru Islands—Journey and Residence in the Interior +He is brought a king bird-of-paradise, amusing the islanders with his excitement; it had been one of his goals for travelling to the archipelago. He reflects on how their beauty is wasted in the "dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness", but that when "civilized man" reaches the islands he will certainly upset the balance of nature and make the birds extinct. He finds the men the most beautiful of all the peoples he has stayed among, the women less handsome "except in extreme youth". +32 The Aru Islands—Second Residence in Dobbo +He sees a cock-fight in the street, but is more interested in a game of football, played with a hollow ball of rattan, and remarks the "excessive cheapness" of all goods including those made in Europe or America, which he believes causes idleness and drunkenness because there is no need to work hard to obtain goods. He admires a crimson-flowered tree surrounded with flocks of blue and orange lories. He is given some birds' nest soup, which he found almost tasteless. +33 The Aru Islands—Physical Geography and Aspects of Nature +The islands are completely crossed by three narrow channels which resemble and are called rivers, though they are inlets of the sea. The wildlife is much like that of New Guinea, 150 miles (240 km) away, which he supposes was once connected by a land bridge. Most flowers are green; large and showy flowers are rare or absent. +34 New Guinea—Dorey +He travels to New Guinea after long anticipation. The coastal village houses stand in the water; they have boat-shaped roofs, and often have human skulls hanging under the eaves, trophies of battles with their attackers, the Arfaks. The council house has "revolting" carvings of naked figures. He finds the inhabitants often very handsome, as they are tall with aquiline noses and heads of carefully combed "frizzly" hair. He failed to find the birds of paradise described by the French pharmacist and botanist René Primevère Lesson, but is pleased with the horned deer-flies, including Elaphomia cervicornis and E. wallacei. He injured his ankle and had to rest as it became an ulcer, while all his men had fever, dysentery or ague. When he recovers, birds are scarce, but he finds about 30 species of beetles each day on average; on two memorable days he finds 78 and 95 kinds, his personal record; it takes him 6 hours to pin and lay out the specimens afterwards. In all he collected over 800 species of beetle in Dorey. He leaves "without much regret" as he never visited a place with "more privations and annoyances." +35 Voyage from Ceram to Waigiou +He is blown far off course while trying to reach his assistant, Mr Allen, losing some men who went ashore, dragging anchor, running on to a coral reef, and guided by an incorrect map; it took 8 days "among the reefs and islands of Waigiou" to return to a safe harbour. He sends a boat to rescue his men; it returns 10 days later without them, but he pays them again, and on the second attempt it returns with his two men, who had survived for a month "on the roots and tender flower-stalks of a species of Bromelia, on shell-fish, and on a few turtles' eggs." +36 Waigiou +He builds a palm-leaf hut, which leaks badly until they increase the slope of the roof. He shoots a red bird-of-paradise. He supposes the people to be of mixed race. He sails to Bessir where the chief lends him a tiny hut on stilts, entered by a ladder, and not tall enough to stand up in. He learns to live and work "in a semi-horizontal position"; he is the first white man to come to the island. He trades goods for birds-of-paradise; the people do not shoot them with blunt arrows like Aru islanders, but set out fruit as bait on a forked stick, and catch the birds with a noose of cord that hangs from the stick down to the ground, pulling the cord when the bird arrives, sometimes after two or three days. +37 Voyage from Waigiou to Ternate +While sailing back to Ternate the boat is overtaken by a dozen waves which approached with a dull roaring like heavy surf, the sea being "perfectly smooth" before and after; he concludes these must have been earthquake waves as William Dampier had described. Later he learnt that there had been an earthquake on Gilolo that day. On the journey they lose their anchor, and their mooring cable is snapped by a squall. New wooden anchors are ingeniously made. The men believe the boat is unlucky and ask for a ceremony before travelling further. They are caught by a storm and lose the small boat they are towing. Wallace notes that in 78 days there was "not one single day of fair wind." (sic) +38 The Birds of Paradise +Wallace, pointing out that he often journeyed expressly to obtain specimens, describes the birds-of-paradise in detail, and the effects of sexual selection by the females. He covers the great, king, red, magnificent, superb, golden or six-shafted, standard wing, twelve-wired, and epimaque or long-tailed birds-of-paradise, as well as three New Guinea birds which he considers almost as remarkable. He suggests they could live well if released in the Palm House at Kew Gardens. In all he knows of 18 species, of which 11 are from New Guinea and 8 are endemic to it and Salwatty, or 14 in the general New Guinea area (1 being from the Moluccas and 3 from Australia). His assistant Mr Allen runs into trouble as the people were suspicious of his motives. A year of five voyages had produced only 5 of the 14 species in the New Guinea area. +39 Natural History of the Papuan Islands +New Guinea, writes Wallace, is mostly unknown, with only the wildlife of the northwestern peninsula partially explored, but already 250 land birds are known, making the island of great interest. There are few mammals, mostly marsupials, including a kangaroo (first seen by Le Brun in 1714). \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..61dc2e48e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 6/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +40 The Races of Man in the Malay Archipelago +Wallace ends the book by describing his views on the peoples of the archipelago. He finds the Malays, such as the Javanese, the most civilised, though he describes the Dyaks of Borneo and the Bataks of Sumatra, among others, as "the savage Malays". He quotes the traveller Nicolo Conti's 1430 account of them, with other early descriptions. He thinks the Papuan the opposite of the Malay, impulsive and demonstrative where the Malay is impassive and taciturn. He speculates about their origins, and in a note at the end, criticises English society. + +==== Appendix ==== +On Crania And Languages +Wallace mentions Huxley's theory, and Dr. Joseph Barnard Davis's book Thesaurus Craniorum, which supposed that human races could be distinguished by the shape of the cranium, the dome of the skull, of which theory Wallace is sceptical. However he lists measurements he had taken of the crania of "Malays" and "Papuans", noting that within the Malay group there was enormous variation. He had few skulls in the Papuan group and there were no definite differences between the two groups. +The language appendix lists 9 words (black, white, fire, water, large, small, nose, tongue, tooth) in 59 of the languages encountered in the archipelago, and 117 words in 33 of those languages, making it clear that many of the languages have many words in common. + +== Reception == + +=== Contemporary === +The Malay Archipelago was warmly received on publication, often in lengthy reviews that attempted to summarise the book, from the perspective that suited the reviewing periodical. It was reviewed in more than 40 periodicals: a selection of those reviews is summarised below. + +==== Anthropological Review ==== +The Anthropological Review notes that while the descriptions of animal life are "full of interest", "our readers, as anthropologists, will, however, take a keener interest" in the "great man-like ape of Borneo,—the orang-utan, or mias, as it is called by the aborigines". Two pages are taken up with a discussion of the orang utan. The review then turns to Wallace's observations on "the races of man" in the book, observing that the anthropological details given are useful but perhaps chosen to support "a particular theory", namely Wallace's belief that there were eastern and western races—"Malays" and "Papuans", though the boundary between them was east of the Wallace line. The review accepts Wallace's data on natural history, but suspects he was selective in recording details of individuals. It notes that Wallace agreed with French authors that the Polynesians (included in his Papuans) "had a local origin". The review remarks that "Mr Wallace relies more on the diversity of moral features to prove differences of race than on physical peculiarities, although he declares that these are strongly marked" and doubts the difference, and wonders whether the "Javan chief" and the Dyak do not differ more. The review, after ten pages of reflections on race, concludes by recommending the book to its readers as much better than ordinary travel books "and even in the absence of any very stirring incidents" that it will "amply repay the perusal" of both scientific and general readers. + +==== Journal of the Ethnological Society of London ==== + +The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London focussed exclusively on the ethnology in the book, praising the value both of the information and of Wallace's "thoughtful and suggestive speculation". The review notes that Wallace identified two "types of mankind" in the archipelago, "the Malayan and the Papuan", and that he thought these two had "no traceable affinity to each other". It remarks that Wallace greatly extends knowledge of the people of Timor, Celebes, and the Maluccas, while also adding to what is known of the Malays and Papuans, reprinting his entire description and his engraving of a Papuan. The reviewer remarks that the portrait "would as well suit a Papuan of the south-east coast of New Guinea as any of those whom Mr. Wallace saw", noting however that the southern tribes are more varied in skin colour. The reviewer disagrees with Wallace about the extension of this "Papuan race" as far as Fiji, noting that there are or were people like that in Tasmania, but that their features and height varied widely, perhaps forming a series. The reviewer disagrees also that the Sandwich Islanders and "New Zealanders" (Maori) are related to the Papuans; and with Wallace's claim that the presence of Malay words in Polynesian languages is caused by the "roaming habits" – trade and navigation – of the Malays, arguing instead that the Polynesians long ago migrated from "some common seat in, or near, the Malay Archipelago". The review ends by stating that despite all these disagreements, it holds Wallace's ethnology in "high estimation". + +==== Royal Geographical Society ==== +Sir Roderick Murchison, giving a speech at the Royal Geographical Society, felt able to "feel a pride" in Wallace's success, and in the "striking contributions" made to science. He takes interest in "Wallace's line" which he calls "this ingenious speculation", with "the two faunas wonderfully contrasted" either side of the deep channel between Borneo and Celebes, or Bali and Lombok. He points out the same principle between the British Isles and continental Europe, though there the conclusion is rather that the same fauna and flora is found on both sides. However, Murchison states his disagreement with Wallace's support for James Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, that "all former changes of the outline of the earth were produced slowly", opining that the Bali–Lombok channel probably formed suddenly. He mentions in one sentence that the book contains "interesting and important facts" on physical geography, native inhabitants, climate and products of the archipelago, and describes Wallace as a great naturalist and a "most attractive writer". + +==== The Ladies' Repository ==== +One of the shortest reviews was in The Ladies' Repository, which found it \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-6.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-6.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..44ac82610 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-6.md @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 7/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +a highly valuable and intensely interesting contribution to our knowledge of a part of the world but little known in Europe or America. But few of our tourists ever visit it, and scarcely any have ever gone to explore it. Mr. Wallace is not an amateur traveler, making a hasty visit, to return and write a hasty and almost useless book. He is an enthusiastic naturalist, a geographer, and geologist, a student of man and nature. +The reviewer notes the region is "of terrific grandeur, parts of it being perpetually illuminated by discharging volcanoes, and all of it frequently shaken with earthquakes." The review summarises the book's geographical reach and style in a paragraph. + +==== The Popular Science Review ==== +The Popular Science Review began by writing that "We never remember to have taken up a book which gave us more pleasure". It was quite unlike the dull journey logs of most travel books; it was "a romance, which is, nevertheless, plain matter of fact". The review especially admires the way that Wallace "has generalised on the facts" rather than just shooting "a multitude of birds" and interminably describing them. The account notes that Wallace was the joint originator of the theory of natural selection, and summarises the discovery of the Wallace line in some detail. The review ends by placing the Malay Archipelago between Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and Darwin's Origin of Species. + +==== American Quarterly Church Review ==== + +The American Quarterly Church Review admires Wallace's bravery in going alone among the "barbarous races" in a "villainous climate" with all the hardships of travel, and his hard work in skinning, stuffing, drying and bottling so many specimens. Since "As a scientific man he follows Darwin" the review finds "his theories sometimes need as many grains of salt as his specimens." But the review then agrees that the book will "make the world wiser about its more solitary and singular children, hid away over the seas", and opines that no-one will mind paying the price of the book to read about the birds of paradise, "those bird-angels, with flaming wings of crimson and gold and scarlet, who twitter and gambol and make merry among the great island trees, while the Malay hunts for them with his blunt-headed arrows..." The review concludes that the book is a fresh and valuable record of "a remote and romantic land". + +==== Australian Town and Country Journal ==== +The Australian Town and Country Journal begins by stating that + +Mr. Wallace is generally understood to be the originator of the theory of "Natural Selection" as propounded by Mr. Darwin, and certainly .. he brings numerous phenomena which he regards as illustrative of that theory very vividly under the notice of his readers, and that, too, as if he were but a disciple of Mr. Darwin, and not an original discoverer. +and quickly makes clear that it objects to Wallace's doubts about "indications of design" in plants. Despite this "grave" fault, the reviewer considers the book to be of immense value, and that it would become a standard work on the region. The review quotes a paragraph that paints "a picture of country life in the Celebes", where Wallace describes his host, a Mr. M., who relied on his gun to supply his table with wild pigs, deer, and jungle fowl, while enjoying his own milk, butter, rice, coffee, ducks, palm wine and tobacco. However, the Australian reviewer doubted Wallace's judgement about flavours, given that he praised the Durian fruit, namely that it tastes of custard, cream cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry "and other incongruities", whereas "most Europeans" found it "an abomination". +Otherwise, the review notes that Wallace seemed to have enjoyed his time in the Celebes, with the hornbills flapping past, and the baboons staring down from their trees, and enjoys his enthusiasm for the birds of paradise. The review is respectful of his account of the Wallace line, having no difficulty agreeing that the Australian-type vegetation continues into the archipelago as far as Lombok and Celebes. It concludes that he covers almost every natural phenomenon he came across "with the accuracy and discriminating sagacity of an accomplished naturalist", and explains that the "great charm" of the book is "a truthful simplicity" which inspires confidence. + +==== Calcutta Review ==== + +The Calcutta Review starts by noting that this is a book that cannot be done justice in a brief notice, that Wallace is a most eminent naturalist, and chiefly known as a Darwinian; the book was the most interesting to cross the reviewer's desk since Palgrave's Arabia (1865) and Sir Samuel Baker's Explorations of the Nile (1866). By combining geography, geology and ethnology into one narrative, the reader is saved "the monotony of traversing the same regions several times". The review describes in detail Wallace's findings of different birds and mammals either side of the Wallace line. It notes Wallace's cheerfulness and good temper in the face of "the difficulties and inconveniences attendant upon foreign travel", such as having to cross "a hundred miles of open sea in a little boat of four tons burthen", which Wallace calmly describes as comparatively comfortable. The reviewer remarks that Wallace was "set down as a conjuror by these simple people" with unimaginable purposes from a faraway country, but is less admiring about Wallace's moralising tone, especially when he supposes that "wild communities" can be happier than "in a more highly civilised society". The review ends with some reflections of surprise on how little-known the Malay Archipelago is in India, given that they were closely connected with Hindu temples in Java and Bali, and hopes that soon there will be some "productions" of the archipelago in the Indian Museum of Calcutta. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-7.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-7.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..cb0c04a32 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-7.md @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 8/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Revue des Deux Mondes ==== +The book's fame spread beyond the English-speaking world. R. Radau wrote a lengthy review of Un naturaliste dans l'Archipel Malais in the French Revue des Deux Mondes. Radau notes the many deaths from volcanic eruptions in the archipelago, before explaining the similarity of the fauna of Java and Sumatra with that of central Asia, while that of the Celebes carries the mark of Australia, seeming to be the last representatives of another age. Radau describes Wallace's experiences in Singapore, where goods were far cheaper than in Europe – wire, knives, corkscrews, gunpowder, writing-paper, and he remarks on the spread of the Jesuits into the interior, though the missionaries had to live on just 750 francs a year. Singapore was covered in wooded hills, and the sawn wood and rotten trunks supported innumerable beetles for the naturalist to study. The only disagreeable element was that the tigers that roared in the forest devoured on average one Chinese per day, especially in the ginger plantations. +Radau summarises one passage from the book after another: the orang utans of Borneo wrestling open the jaws of a crocodile, or killing a python; the Timorese walking up tall trees, leaning back on ropes as they pull themselves upwards; the indescribable taste of a durian fruit, at once recalling custard, almond paste, roasted onions, sherry and a host of other things, that melts on the tongue, that one does not want to stop eating; more, the fruit has a repulsive odour, and the tree is dangerous, as the hard and heavy fruits can fall on your head. Radau follows Wallace up to the high plateaux of Java, where there are cypress forests covered in moss and lichen; finally at the summit the vegetation seems European, an island vegetation recalling the resemblance between the plants of the high Alps and of Lapland. And in Celebes, men run amok, generally killing a dozen people before meeting their own death. +Radau returns to food, describing sago and the breadfruit tree. The breadfruit tastes like Yorkshire pudding or mashed potato; with meat it is the best of vegetables; with sugar, milk, butter or molasses, it is a delicious pudding with a special flavour; Radau hopes that perhaps it will one day be found in European markets. As for the sago palm, one tree yields 1,800 cakes, enough to feed a man for a year. +There is torrential rain; there are savages; there are dangerous trips in small boats. Only in the final paragraph does Radau reflect on it all: "We have tried, in this study on Wallace's two volumes, to give an idea of what he saw in his eight-year stay in the Far East." He admits he has left out most of the natural history, and regrets not having space for more "charming pages" which would have taken him too far. He joins Wallace in reflecting on the relative state of "civilized" and "savage", wondering which is morally superior, and notes the "nostalgia for the primitive state", concluding that civilisation brings the benefit of reason to restrain hasty action. + +=== Modern === + +==== The Guardian ==== + +Tim Radford, writing in The Guardian, considers that The Malay Archipelago shows Wallace to be "an extraordinary figure", since he is + +an adventurer who does not present himself as adventurous; he is a Victorian Englishman abroad with all the self-assurance but without the lordly superiority of the coloniser; he is the chronicler of wonders who refuses to exaggerate, or to believe anybody else's improbable marvels: what he can see and examine (and, very often, shoot) is wonder enough for him. +Radford finds "delights on every page", such as the Wallace line between the islands of Bali and Lombok; the sparkling observations, like "the river bed 'a mass of pebbles, mostly pure white quartz, but with abundance of jasper and agate'"; the detailed but lively accounts of natural history and physical geography; the respectful and friendly attitude to the native peoples such as the hill Dyaks of Borneo; and his unclouded observations of human society, such as the way a Bugis man in Lombok runs amok, where Wallace + +begins to reflect on the possible satisfactions of mass murder as a form of honourable suicide for the brooding and resentful man who 'will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but will be revenged on mankind and die like a hero.' + +==== The Observer ==== + +Robin McKie, in The Observer, writes that the common view of Wallace "as a clever, decent cove who knew his place" as second fiddle to Charles Darwin is rather lopsided. Wallace, he writes, is "capable of great insights" in the Malay Archipelago. Travelling over 14,000 miles and collecting 125,000 specimens, he also made "scrupulous notes" for the book which + +subtly combines wildlife descriptions, geological musings and tales about the villagers, merchants and sultans he encountered on his travels through the East Indies. +In McKie's view, Wallace was a gifted writer with "an eye for catchy observation", and this is one of the finest of travel books. McKie liked the account of Wallace's night sleeping "'with half-a-dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head'". + +==== In research ==== +The researcher Charles Smith rates the Malay Archipelago as "Wallace's most successful work, literarily and commercially", placing it second only to his Darwinism (1889) among his books for academic citations. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-8.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-8.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2580df8c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago-8.md @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +--- +title: "The Malay Archipelago" +chunk: 9/9 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malay_Archipelago" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:13.787700+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Influence on other works == +The Malay Archipelago influenced many works starting with those of Wallace's contemporaries. The novelist Joseph Conrad used it as source material for some of his novels, including Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, and The Rescue. Commentators have suggested it had a particularly profound influence on Lord Jim, crediting it with among other things the inspiration for the character Stein the entomologist. Conrad's assistant Richard Curle wrote that The Malay Archipelago was Conrad's favourite bedside book; Conrad refers directly to what he calls Alfred Wallace's famous book on the Malay Archipelago in The Secret Agent. In his short story, Neil MacAdam, W. Somerset Maugham has the title character read The Malay Archipelago while travelling to Borneo, and its influence can be felt in the story's description of that island. +More recently, the book has influenced a number of non-fiction books including The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen (1997), which discussed Wallace's contributions to the field of island biogeography; The Spice Islands Voyage by Tim Severin (1997) that retraced Wallace's travels; and Archipelago: The Islands of Indonesia, by Gavan Daws (1999), which compared the environment described by Wallace with the modern state of the archipelago. The Malay Archipelago is considered to be one of the most influential books ever written about the Indonesian islands. It remains a resource for modern authors of works about the region such as the 2014 book Indonesia Etc, which contains multiple quotations from Wallace's book as well as recommending it as further reading on the geography of Indonesia. +The English comedian Bill Bailey travelled around Indonesia in the footsteps of Wallace for a two-part television programme on BBC Two, Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero, first broadcast in 2013, the centenary of Wallace's death. + +== Notes == + +== References == + +=== Primary === + +=== Secondary === + +== Bibliography == + +=== Wallace === +Each edition was reprinted in subsequent years, so for example the tenth edition appeared in 1890, 1893, 1894, 1898, 1902, 1906 and later reprints, so many different dates can be found in library catalogues. + +Wallace, Alfred Russel (1869). The Malay Archipelago: The land of the orang–utan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with sketches of man and nature (1 ed.). Macmillan. +1872, Macmillan. +1890, (10 ed.) Macmillan. +2014 The Annotated Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, edited by John van Wyhe, NUS Press; annotated edition (15 December 2014), trade paperback, 836 pages, ISBN 978-9971698201 +2017, deluxe two-volume edition in slipcase with 64 colour plates published by the Folio Society. + +==== Translations ==== +1869: Der Malayische Archipel: die Heimath des Orang-Utan und des Paradiesvogels; Reiseerlebnisse und Studien über Land und Leute, George Westermann, Braunschweig. (in German, translated by Adolf Bernhard Meyer) +1870–71: Insulinde: het land van den orang-oetan en den paradijsvogel, P.N. van Kampen, Amsterdam. (in Dutch) +1870?: L'archipel malaisien: patrie de l'orang-outang et de l'oiseau de paradis: récits de voyage et étude de l'homme et de la nature, Librairie Hachette, Paris. (in French) +1872: Malajskij archipelag, Sanktpeterburg Obščestvennaja Pol'za, St Petersburg. (in Russian) +1942: 馬来諸島 (Marai shotō), 南洋協會, Nan'yō Kyōkai, Tokyo. (in Japanese) +1942: Viaje al archipélago malayo, Espasa-Calpe, Buenos Aires. (in Spanish) +1966: 馬來群島科學考察記 (Ma lai qun dao ke xue kao cha ji), 臺灣商務, Tai wan shang wu, Taipei. (in Chinese) +2000: Menjelajah Nusantara: ekspedisi Alfred Russel Wallace abad ke-19, Remaja Rosdakarya, Bandung. (in Indonesian) +2017: 말레이 제도, 지오북. (한국어) + +=== Other authors === +Daws, Gavan (1999). Archipelago: The Islands of Indonesia – From the Nineteenth-century Discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace to the Fate of Forests and Reefs in the Twenty-first Century. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52021-576-4. +Severin, Tim (1997). The Spice Islands Voyage: The Quest for Alfred Wallace, the Man Who Shared Darwin's Discovery of Evolution. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-78670-721-8. +Quammen, David (1997). The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-68482-712-4. + +== External links == + +Papua WebProject: The Malay Archipelago – illustrated edition Archived 18 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine +Internet Archive: The Malay Archipelago +Wallace Online: The Malay Archipelago – text, images, PDF of 1869 and 1890 editions + The Malay Archipelago public domain audiobook at LibriVox +Writings on Wallace: secondary sources, modern and from his own time, with links \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0d37400ae --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 1/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Naturalist on the River Amazons, subtitled A Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel, is an 1863 book by the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates about his expedition to the Amazon basin. Bates and his friend Alfred Russel Wallace set out to obtain new species and new evidence for evolution by natural selection, as well as exotic specimens to sell. He explored thousands of miles of the Amazon and its tributaries, and collected over 14,000 species, of which 8,000 were new to science. His observations of the coloration of butterflies led him to discover Batesian mimicry. +The book contains an evenly distributed mixture of natural history, travel, and observation of human societies, including the towns with their Catholic processions. Only the most remarkable discoveries of animals and plants are described, and theories such as evolution and mimicry are barely mentioned. Bates remarks that finding a new species is only the start; he also describes animal behaviour, sometimes in detail, as for the army ants. He constantly relates the wildlife to the people, explaining how the people hunt, what they eat and what they use as medicines. The book is illustrated with drawings by leading artists including E. W. Robinson, Josiah Wood Whymper, Joseph Wolf and Johann Baptist Zwecker. +On Bates's return to England, he was encouraged by Charles Darwin to write up his eleven-year stay in the Amazon as a book. The result was widely admired, not least by Darwin: + +The best book of Natural History Travels ever published in England. +Other reviewers sometimes disagreed with the book's support for evolution, but generally enjoyed his account of the journey, scenery, people, and natural history. The book has been reprinted many times, mostly in Bates's own effective abridgement for the second edition, which omitted the more technical descriptions. + +== Publication history == +The first edition, in 1863, was long and full of technical description. The second edition, in 1864, was abridged, with most of the technical description removed, making for a shorter and more readable book which has been reprinted many times. Bates prefaced the 1864 edition by writing + +Having been urged to prepare a new edition of this work for a wider circle than that contemplated in the former one, I have thought it advisable to condense those portions which, treating of abstruse scientific questions, presuppose a larger amount of Natural History knowledge than an author has a right to expect of the general reader. +An unabridged edition was reissued only after 30 years, in 1892; it appeared together with a 'memoir' of Bates by Edward Clodd. + +=== Major versions === +Bates H.W. 1863. The naturalist on the river Amazons. 2 volumes, Murray, London. +Bates H.W. 1864. The naturalist on the river Amazons. 2nd edition as one volume, Murray, London. [abridged by removing natural history descriptions; much reprinted] +Bates H.W. 1892. The naturalist on the river Amazons, with a memoir of the author by Edward Clodd. [only full edition since 1863, with good short biography by Clodd] + +== Approach == +In 1847, Bates and his friend Alfred Russel Wallace, both in their early twenties, agreed that they would jointly make a collecting trip to the Amazon "towards solving the problem of origin of species". They had been inspired by reading the American entomologist William Henry Edwards's pioneering 1847 book A Voyage Up the River Amazon, with a residency at Pará. +Neither had much money, so they determined to fund themselves by collecting and selling fine specimens of birds and insects. Both made extensive travels—in different parts of the Amazon basin—creating large natural history collections, especially of insects. Wallace sailed back to England in 1852 after four years; on the voyage, his ship caught fire, and his collection was destroyed; undeterred, he set out again, leading eventually (1869) to a comparable book, The Malay Archipelago. By the time he came home in November 1859, Bates had collected over 14,000 species, of which 8,000 were new to science. His observations of the coloration of butterflies led him to describe what is now called Batesian mimicry, where an edible species protects itself from predators by appearing like a distasteful species. Bates's account of his stay, including observations of nature and the people around him, occupies his book. +In the abridged version, there is a balance between descriptions of places and adventures, and the wildlife seen there. The style is accurate, but vivid and direct: + +The house lizards belong to a peculiar family, the Geckos, and are found even in the best-kept chambers, most frequently on the walls and ceilings, to which they cling motionless by day, being active only at night. They are of speckled grey or ashy colours. The structure of their feet is beautifully adapted for clinging to and running over smooth surfaces; the underside of their toes being expanded into cushions, beneath which folds of skin form a series of flexible plates. By means of this apparatus they can walk or run across a smooth ceiling with their backs downwards; the plated soles, by quick muscular action, exhausting and admitting air alternately. The Geckos are very repulsive in appearance. +The book begins and ends suddenly. The journey out, as reviewer Joseph James observes, is dismissed in a few words. The last few lines of the book run: + +On the 6th of June, when in 7° 55' N. lat. and 52° 30' W. long., and therefore about 400 miles from the mouth of the main Amazons, we passed numerous patches of floating grass mingled with tree-trunks and withered foliage. Amongst these masses I espied many fruits of that peculiarly Amazonian tree the Ubussu palm; this was the last I saw of the Great River. + +== Illustrations == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0df3ccb4c --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 2/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +There are 39 illustrations, some of animals and plants, some of human topics such as the "Masked-dance and wedding-feast of Tucuna Indians", which is signed by Josiah Wood Whymper. Some illustrations including "Turtle Fishing and Adventure with Alligator" are by the German illustrator Johann Baptist Zwecker; some, such as "Bird-Killing Spider (Mygale Avicularia) Attacking Finches" are by E.W. Robinson; others by the zoological artist Joseph Wolf. + +== Chapters == + +The structure of the readable, cut-down second edition of 1864 is as follows: + +1 Pará — arrival, aspect of the country, etc. (now the city of Belém) + +Bates arrives, and at once starts learning about the country's peoples and natural history. +The impressions received during this first walk can never wholly fade from my mind... Amongst them were several handsome women, dressed in a slovenly manner, barefoot or shod in loose slippers; but wearing richly-decorated ear-rings, and around their necks strings of very large gold beads. They had dark expressive eyes, and remarkably rich heads of hair. It was a mere fancy, but I thought the mingled squalor, luxuriance and beauty of these women were pointedly in harmony with the rest of the scene; so striking, in the view, was the mixture of natural riches and human poverty. +He soon notices and describes the leafcutter ants. He stays in Pará for 18 months, making short trips into the interior; the city is clean and safe compared to others in Brazil. +2 Pará — the swampy forests, etc. + +Bates takes a house a few miles outside town on the edge of the forest, and soon starts to notice butterflies and climbing palms. He begins collecting during the day, and making notes and preparing specimens in the evening. At first he is disappointed by how few signs there are of larger animals such as monkeys, tapir or jaguar. Later he realizes these do exist, but are widely scattered and very shy. He meets a landowner who complains of the high price of slaves. There are colossal trees with buttressed trunks. +3 Pará — religious holidays, marmoset monkeys, serpents, insects + +He witnesses Catholic processions, notably the festival for Our Lady of Nazareth at Pará. He describes the few monkeys that can be seen in the area, and the strange Amphisbaena, a legless lizard. There are beautiful Morpho butterflies of different species, and assorted spiders, including "monstrous" hairy ones. +4 The Tocantins and Cametá + +Bates and Wallace travel up the Tocantins river, hiring a two-masted boat, a crew of three, and taking provisions for three months. At Baiao he is astonished to be shown a young man's books including Virgil, Terence, Cicero and Livy: "an unexpected sight, a classical library in a mud-plastered and palm-thatched hut on the banks of the Tocantins". Their host kills an ox in their honour, but Bates is kept awake by swarms of rats and cockroaches. They see the hyacinthine macaw which can crush hard palm nuts with its beak, and two species of freshwater dolphin, one new to science. Bates visits Cameta; Wallace goes to explore the Guama and Capim rivers. The large bird-eating spider (Mygalomorphae) has urticating hairs: Bates handles the first specimen "incautiously, and I suffered terribly for three days". He sees some children leading one with a cord around its waist like a dog. On the return journey, the boat with his baggage leaves before him; when he catches up with it, he finds it "leaking at all points". +5 Caripí and the Bay of Marajó + +Bates stays three months in an old mansion on the coast, going insect-hunting with a German who lives in the woods. His room is full of four species of bat: one leaf-nosed bat, Phyllostoma, bites him on the hip: "This was rather unpleasant". He finds stewed giant anteater delicious, like goose. Several times he shoots hummingbird hawkmoths, mistaking them for hummingbirds. He catches a pale brown tree snake 4 ft 8 in (142 cm) long, but only 1⁄4 in (6.4 mm) thick, and a pale green one 6 ft (180 cm) long "undistinguishable amidst the foliage". When he has shot all the game around his house, he goes hunting with a neighbour by canoe, getting some agouti and paca rodents. +6 The Lower Amazons — Pará to Obydos (now the city of Óbidos) + +He describes how travellers went upriver before the steamboats arrived, and gives a history of earlier explorations of the Amazons. His preparations for the voyage to Obydos include household goods, provisions, ammunition, boxes, books and "a hundredweight (50 kg) of copper money". There are many species of palms along a river channel. A rare species of alligator and the armoured Loricaria fish are caught. Obydos is a pleasant town of 1200 people, on cliffs of pink and yellow clays, surrounded by cocoa plantations with four kinds of monkey and the huge Morpho hecuba butterfly up to 8 in (20 cm) across, as well as slow-flying Heliconius butterflies in great numbers. He obtains a musical cricket, Chlorocoelus tanana. + +7 The Lower Amazons — Obydos to Manaos, or the Barra of the Rio Negro + +Bates leaves Obydos; he finds the people lazy, as otherwise they could easily become comfortable with mixed farming. They sail through a tremendous storm. He finds a Pterochroza grasshopper whose forewings perfectly resemble leaves, the Victoria waterlily, masses of ticks, the howler monkey and large Morpho butterflies. He meets Wallace again at Barra. Back in Para, he catches yellow fever. +8 Santarem \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b8b4e3d0a --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 3/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +He describes Santarem and the customs of its people. He goes on short "excursions" around the little town. The pure "Indians" choose to build light open shelters, resting inside in hammocks, whereas those of mixed or African origin build more substantial mud huts. He enjoys watching small pale green Bembex and other kinds of sand wasps. He regrets that the people cut down the Oenocarpus distichus palm to harvest its fruits, which yield a milky, nutty beverage. He describes some potter wasps and mason bees. He meets a "feiticeira" or witch who knows the uses of many plants, but remarks that "the Indian men all become sceptics after a little intercourse with the whites" and that her witchcraft "was of a very weak quality" though others have more dangerous tricks. +9 Voyage up the Tapajos + +Bates hires a boat made of stonewood for a three month trip up the Tapajos river. He prepares for the trip by salting meat, grinding coffee, and placing all the food in tin boxes to keep insects and damp out. He buys trade-goods such as fishhooks, axes, knives and beads. He witnesses poison-fishing using lianas of Paullinia pinnata. At Point Cajetuba he finds a line of dead fire-ants, "an inch or two in height and breadth", washed up on the shore "without interruption for miles". Terrible wounds are inflicted by the stingray and the piranha. His men make a canoe from a trunk of the stonewood tree, and an anaconda steals two chickens from a cage on his boat; the snake is "only 18 feet nine inches (6 metres) in length". Becoming weak from a diet of fish, he eats a spider monkey, finding it delicious. They notice the river is gently tidal, 530 miles (850 km) from its mouth, "a proof of the extreme flatness of the land". Bates is unimpressed by a homeopathy-crazed priest, especially when his pills prove useless against fever. +10 The Upper Amazons — Voyage to Ega (now the city of Tefé) + +He sails from Barra (continuing the story from Chapter 7) to Ega. In Solimões (the Upper Amazons) the soil is clay, alluvium or deep humus, with rich vegetation. They catch a manatee (sea cow) which tastes like coarse pork with greenish, fish-flavoured fat, and he is badly bitten by small "Pium" bloodsucking flies. Pieces of pumice have floated 1,200 miles (1,900 km) from the Andes volcanoes. Bates observes a large landslip on which masses of giant forest trees rock to and fro. He notes there are discomforts but "scarcely any danger from wild animals". He becomes desperate for intellectual society, running out of reading matter, even the advertisements in the Athenaeum journal. He describes the food and fruits at Ega, and the curious seasons, with two wet and two dry seasons each year, the river thus rising and falling twice. The people regularly eat turtles. + +11 Excursions in the Neighbourhood of Ega + +Bates goes hunting with a native, who brings down a crested oropendola with a blowpipe at a range of 30 yards (27 metres); he notes that the usefully silent weapon can kill at twice that range, but that he and Wallace "found it very difficult to hold steady the long tubes". Around a campfire, he listens to tales; the Bouto or river dolphin used to take "the shape of a beautiful woman, with hair hanging loose to her heels, and walking ashore at night in the streets of Ega, to entice the young men down to the water" where the Bouto would grab them and "plunge beneath the waves with a triumphant cry". They go turtle-hunting; and Bates kills an alligator with a heavy stick. He finds many footprints of the jaguar, and "the great pleasure" of seeing the "rare and curious umbrella bird". Arrived in Catua, he admires a woman of 17: "her figure was almost faultless", and her blue mouth "gave quite a captivating finish to her appearance", but she was "extremely bashful". He is amazed at how much alcohol the "shy Indian and Mameluco maidens" can drink, never giving way to their suitors without it. +12 Animals of the Neighbourhood of Ega + +Having discovered over 3000 new species at Ega, Bates agrees that discovery "forms but a small item in the interest belonging to the study of the living creation." He describes the scarlet-faced and other monkeys, "a curious animal", the kinkajou, bats, and toucans. He found 18 species "of true Papilio (swallowtail) butterflies" and about 550 butterfly species in all at Ega, among over 7000 species of insect. He describes some unusual insects and their behaviour, including a moth which suspends its cocoon on a long strong silk thread, which while conspicuous is hard for birds to attack. He describes at length various species of Eciton or army ants, noting that confused accounts of these have appeared in travel books, then copied into natural histories. +13 Excursions beyond Ega + +In November 1856 Bates travels on a steamboat from Ega upriver to Tunantins; it travels all night despite the thick darkness, and makes the 240 miles (390 km) in four days, with the captain at the wheel almost the whole time. He is delighted to discover a new butterfly, Catagramma excelsior, the largest of its genus. He finds the forest at St Paulo glorious, writing that five years would not be enough "to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and Botany": +At mid-day the vertical sun penetrates into the gloomy depths of this romantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green, and black tanagers and brightly-coloured butterflies sport about in the stray beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest... + +== Reception == + +=== Contemporary reviews === +Bates, I have read your book — I have seen the Amazons. — John Gould, painter and ornithologist +...the power of observation and felicity of style which characterizes The Naturalist on the Amazons — Alfred Russel Wallace \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..486b66f58 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 4/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Charles Darwin ==== +Charles Darwin, having encouraged Bates to publish an account of his travels, read The Naturalist on the River Amazons with great pleasure, writing to Bates on 18 April 1863 that + +My criticisms may be condensed into a single sentence, namely that it is the best book of Natural History Travels ever published in England. Your style seems to me admirable. Nothing can be better than the discussion on the struggle for existence & nothing better than the descriptions on the Forest scenery. It is a grand book, & whether or not it sells quickly it will last. You have spoken out boldly on Species; & boldness on this subject seems to get rarer & rarer.— How beautifully illustrated it is. The cut on the back is most tasteful. I heartily congratulate you on its publication. + +Darwin noted in his letter that Athenaeum magazine reviewed the book coldly and insolently, while the Reader received it warmly. Darwin published An Appreciation of the book in the Natural History Review in 1863, in which he notes that Bates sent back "a mass of specimens" of "no less than 14,712 species" (mostly of insects), of which 8000 were new to science. Darwin at once observes that although Bates is "no mean authority" on insects, the book is not limited to them, but ranges over natural history and more widely to describe his "adventures during his journeyings up and down the mighty river". Darwin clearly enjoyed Bates's account of the hyacinthine macaw, calling it a "splendid bird" with its "enormous beak" able to feed on mucuja palm nuts, and quoting Bates: "which are so hard as to be difficult to break with a heavy hammer, are crushed to a pulp by the powerful beak of this Macaw." Darwin took the opportunity to hit back at the Athenaeum magazine which had criticised Bates's book, at the same time painting a picture of Bates's lonely life in the rainforest: + +Mr. Bates must indeed have been driven to great straits as regards his mental food, when, as he tells us, he took to reading the Athenaeum three times over, "the first time devouring the more interesting articles—the second, the whole of the remainder—and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. +Darwin notes that "We need hardly say that Mr. Bates... is a zealous advocate of the hypothesis of the origin of species by derivation from a common stock", in other words that Bates was a staunch Darwinian. Darwin was happy to have the Naturalist on his side, and to use the book in the Origin of Species debate which was still heated in 1863. In particular, Darwin was struck by Bates's robust evidence of evolution in "the Butterflies of the genus Heliconius". Here Darwin quotes nearly a whole page from Bates's conclusions, including Bates's view of his own findings that hint at speciation actually in progress: + +The facts just given are therefore of some scientific importance, for they tend to show that a physiological species can be and is produced in nature out of the varieties of a pre-existing closely allied one. This is not an isolated case... But in very few has it happened that the species which clearly appears to be the parent, co-exists with one that has been evidently derived from it. + +==== London Quarterly Review ==== +The London Quarterly Review began with the observation that "When an intelligent man tells us that he has spent eleven of the best years of his life in any district, we may be pretty sure he has something to say about it which will interest even those who generally find travels dull reading". The reviewer finds Bates among the most readable, and free of the usual "personal twaddle" of travel and adventure books. The reviewer also remarks on Bates's subtitle "...of the origin of species", that Wallace had taken up that theme more fully. In the reviewer's opinion, Bates says little about "the Darwinian hypothesis", focusing instead steadily on natural history, while making "very shrewd remarks" about human society and giving "most glowing" descriptions of tropical scenery. The reviewer notes that most of the people Bates meets "had a tinge of colour" but made the "lonely Englishman" comfortable with their "winning cordiality", and is amused that in a feast in Ega an Indian dressed up as an entomologist, complete with insect-net, hunting-bag, pincushion, and an old pair of spectacles. As for nature, the reviewer considers that "in Brazil man is oppressed, crushed, by the immensity of nature". +Bates's occasional hints at Darwinian evolution are unwelcome or misunderstood by the reviewer, as when Bates writes that if a kind of seed is found in two places, we have to "come to the strange conclusion" it has been created twice unless we can show it can be carried that far; but the reviewer finds Bates in "too great a hurry to come to conclusions" (sic). The reviewer, too, objects to Bates's illustration of "transition forms between Heliconius Melpomene and H. Thelxiope", which he thinks are no more different than "a couple of Dorking hens". Bates's assumption that all forest animals are adapted to forest life is rejected by the reviewer, who sees the same features as signs of a beneficent Creator; while his mention of "slow adaptation of the fauna of a forest-clad country throughout an immense lapse of geological time" is criticised for being "haunted" by this "spectre of time". However the reviewer is fascinated by the variety of life described in the book, and by Bates's "rapturous manner" of speaking about how delicious monkey flesh is, which "almost puts a premium on cannibalism". The review concludes "not without regret" (at such an enjoyable book), and assures readers "that they will not find him heavy reading"; supposes that 11 years was "perhaps a little too much" of tropical life; and recommends intending museum curators to try it for "a year or two". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d1337f026 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 5/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Joseph F. James ==== +An unabridged edition was reviewed by botanist and geologist Joseph F. James (1857-1897) in Science in 1893. James was reviewing a book which was at that time already a 30-year-old classic that had been reprinted at least four times. He compared it to Gilbert White's 1789 The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and Alfred Russel Wallace's The Malay Archipelago, writing that + +No one can err, we believe, in placing Bates's "Naturalist on the River Amazons" among the foremost books of travel of this age; and no one who has read it, but recalls its graphic pages with delight. +James notes that "on the appearance of the book in 1868 it met with cordial praise from all quarters". Despite his professed liking for Bates's "direct and concise" style, he quotes at length Bates' description of the tropics, with the + +whirring of cicadas, the shrill stridulation of a vast number and variety of field-crickets and grasshoppers, each species sounding its peculiar note; the plaintive hootings of tree-frogs,- all blended together in one continuous ringing sound, - the audible expression of the teeming profusion of nature." +James spends much space in his review quoting Bates's account of the strangling fig, called the "Murderer Liana or Sipo", which he uses to emphasize the "struggle for existence" between plants, as much as for animals. Bates explains how the fig grows rings around the "victim" tree, which eventually dies, leaving the "selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim", so that the fig itself must quickly flower, fruit and die when its support fails. James observes that "It is as much in the reflections that the varied phenomena under observation give rise to as in the descriptive portions that the value and charm of the book lie." Unable to resist a final quotation, even after admitting he has "overstepped our space", he cites Bates's description of his last night in the "country of perpetual summer", regretting he will have to live again in England with its "gloomy winters" and "factory chimneys"; but after Bates has returned, he rediscovers "how incomparably superior is civilized life" which can nourish "feelings, tastes and intellect". + +=== Modern assessments === + +==== New Yorker ==== + +In 1988, Alex Shoumatoff, writing in The New Yorker, makes Bates's Naturalist his choice if he were allowed only one book for a tropical journey. In his view, it is "the basic text" and a monument of scientific travel writing. Shoumatoff had in fact spent eight months in Bates's "glorious forest" (he quotes) with a copy in his backpack; he thus admires Bates's acceptance of the inevitable discomfort and homesickness from personal knowledge, noting that Bates only complained when all the following had occurred together: he had been robbed, he had gone barefoot having worn out his shoes, he had received no parcels from England, and worst of all he had nothing left to read. But otherwise Bates was "lost in wonder" at the astonishing diversity of the natural history of the Amazons. He was, writes Shoumatoff, one of the four largely self-educated geniuses who pioneered tropical biology, and who all knew each other: Darwin, Wallace, Bates, and the botanist Richard Spruce. +Shoumatoff observes that "Reading Bates is an emotional experience for someone who has travelled in Amazonia, because much of what he describes so poignantly is no longer there"; that the "charm and the genius" of the book is that Bates covers both natural history and everything else that is going on—as the subtitle so accurately says, "A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature Under the Equator, During Eleven Years of Travel." +He feels a dreamy quality in the best of Bates's writing, as when he meets a boa constrictor: "On seeing me the reptile suddenly turned, and glided at an accelerated rate down the path. ...The rapidly moving and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the thick bed of fallen leaves." However he is less impressed with Bates's remarks about the "intellectual inferiority" of the natives, and observes that Bates was wrong about the fertility of tropical soils, which are often poor: the luxuriant growth results from rapid recycling of nutrients. He celebrates the "famous closing passage" of the book, where Bates expresses his "deep misgivings" about returning to England, and writes that recent "progress" in the Amazon is just as shocking. + +==== John G.T. Anderson ==== +In 2011 John G.T. Anderson chose to "recommend the reader's attention" to Bates' Naturalist in the Journal of Natural History Education and Experience, writing that + +As much as I love Wallace, I feel that Bates is far and away the better storyteller of the pair, with a keen eye for landscapes, species, and peoples. +Anderson writes that Bates threw himself eagerly into the local culture, writing warmly about the people as well as delighting in everything from the odd to the mundane "in a modest yet engaging style that leaves this reader itching to go and see for himself." Noting that Bates collected over 8,000 species on the trip, the book shows, writes Anderson, how this was achieved: + +the discomfort of narrow canoes, the encounters with alligators and giant spiders, drinking burning rum around a campfire while waiting for jaguars, and above all else the sheer fun and intense joy of seeing new things in new places through eyes of a keen observer and master storyteller.. + +==== Zoological Society of London ==== +The Zoological Society of London writes that "This fascinating, lucidly written book is widely regarded as one of the greatest reports of natural history travels." It describes the book as "an eloquently written compendium of curious natural facts and observations on Amazon life before the rubber boom, revealing the amazing zoological and botanical richness of the region" and calls his specimens "a hugely significant contribution to zoological discovery." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..cf90f3bf6 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +title: "The Naturalist on the River Amazons" +chunk: 6/6 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalist_on_the_River_Amazons" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:21.973331+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== In science, education, and literature ==== +Bates's book is cited in papers for its accurate early observations, such as of the urticating hairs of tarantulas, the puddle drinking habits of butterflies, or of the rich insect fauna in the tropics. The book and Bates' Amazon trip are covered in lecture courses on evolution by professors such as Anne E. Magurran and Maria Dornelas. The warm reception of Bates's Naturalist was not confined to scientists. The novelists D.H. Lawrence and George Orwell both wrote admiringly of the book. Lawrence wrote to his friend S. S. Koteliansky "I should like, from the Everyman Library Bates' – Naturalist on the Amazon... because I intend some day to go to South America – to Peru or Ecuador, not the Amazon. But I know Bates is good." + +== See also == +The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, 1869 + +== Notes == + +== References == + +=== Primary === + +=== Secondary === + +== Bibliography == +Bates, H. W. (1863). The naturalist on the River Amazons, a record of adventures, habits of animals, sketches of Brazilian and Indian life and aspects of nature under the Equator during eleven years of travel. London: J. Murray. (First edition.) +--- Second edition, 1864. (Reprinted in paperback facsimile, Elibron Classics, 2005.) +Edwards, William Henry (1861). A voyage up the River Amazon: including a residence at Pará. J. Murray. +Wallace, Alfred Russel (1869). The Malay Archipelago: The land of the orang-utan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with sketches of man and nature (1 ed.). Macmillan. + +== External links == + + The Naturalist on the River Amazons at Project Gutenberg +First edition (1863) in 2 volumes, Murray, London. Volume 1; Volume 2. +Reprint of 2nd (abridged, 1864) edition (Dent, London; Dutton, New York) (with 'Appreciation' by Charles Darwin) +1892 Edition, single volume, with a Memoir of the Author by Edward Clodd. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Green_Consumer_Guide-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Green_Consumer_Guide-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..30bcff7a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Green_Consumer_Guide-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "The New Green Consumer Guide" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Green_Consumer_Guide" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:24.275573+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The New Green Consumer Guide is a book written by Julia Hailes on green consumerism. The guide explores how one can consume goods and services in an environmentally friendly manner. Topics discussed include travel, transport, food and drink, home and garden, fashion and cosmetics. +The New Green Consumer Guide was published in 2007 as a successor to The Green Consumer Guide, which Hailes co-authored. First published in 1988, The Green Consumer Guide, in its various editions, has sold in excess of one million copies globally. In the first few weeks after it had been published, there were eleven print runs for The Green Consumer Guide. + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Can green consumers save the world? – debate with author at The Daily Telegraph \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutmeg's_Curse-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutmeg's_Curse-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..44c76ca3b --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutmeg's_Curse-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: "The Nutmeg's Curse" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutmeg's_Curse" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:28.936683+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis is a 2021 non-fiction book by Amitav Ghosh. It discusses colonialism and environmental issues with particular focus on the Banda Islands. European powers took control of land, people, and natural resources for profit. It uses the history of the nutmeg trade as the main example to learn how this has continued to shape the modern world. It is Ghosh's second non-fiction work to discuss climate change, after The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). + + +== Background == + +Ghosh had begun writing The Nutmeg's Curse in March 2020. At the time, Ghosh was staying in his Brooklyn home during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. This book builds on his earlier work on climate change, mainly The Great Derangement. +The Nutmeg's Curse was inspired by Ghosh's trip to the Banda Islands and his discovery of an online PDF copy of an obscure book that recounted the massacre of the Bandanese. The text was entitled De vestiging van het Nederlandsche gezag over de Banda-eilanden (1599-1621) (English: The Establishment of Dutch Rule Over the Banda Islands), and its author was J.A. van der Chijs. What particularly struck Ghosh was an aspect of the conquest of the Banda Islands, which had taken place in the village of Selamon on Banda Besar Island. On 21 April 1621, Maarten Sonck, a former tax official, was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to destroy the aforementioned village. When a lamp fell to the floor in the meeting room called "bale-bale", where the Dutch were staying, causing a fire, Sonck panicked, thinking that this was a signal of the local population's revolt against the colonisers. The reaction of the Dutch was terrible. They started shooting in the dark, massacring, dismembering and torturing the natives. + + +== Synopsis == +The Nutmeg's Curse focuses on the conquest of the Banda Islands, which in the 1600's was the only source of nutmeg. In the 1600's the Dutch East India Company imposed extreme violence on the islands with goal of control. This includes the massacre of the Bandanese people in 1621. Ghosh touches on how this was not just about money, it was a way of thinking that viewed humans and nature as objects that could be controlled and exploited. +He uses this as an analogy to discuss climate change and contemporary environmental issues.This book brings together the idea that this "spice war" about nutmeg is to our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal in modern times. Ghosh argues that we have a "curse" of resources referring to valuable resources like nutmeg in the book or oil in todays world. As it talks about in the article The Resource Curse, Colonialism, And The Hypocrisy Of Western "Climate Leadership" : "The resource curse, or the paradox of plenty, posits that resource-rich countries often do worse economically, have reduced human rights outcomes, and are more apt to authoritarianism and conflict". It can lead to violence, war, and environmental destruction for the humans who live near those resources. + + +== Reception == +Andrea Wulf described it as a "strange book, but not in a bad way" in a review for the Financial Times, saying it is "meandering and looping". Although Wulf said Ghosh's ideas were not new, she praised it, saying "the simplicity of his main argument and the power of his storytelling that makes the book work." + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Excerpt in Hindustan Times +Interview with Ghosh at New Statesman \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6632d4093 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +title: "The Omnivore's Dilemma" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:30.039379+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. As omnivores, humans have a variety of food choices. In the book, Pollan investigates the environmental and animal welfare effects of various food choices. He suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, the dilemmas caused by these options were resolved primarily by cultural influences. +Technology has made previously seasonal or regional foods available year-round and in all regions. Culture, which once moderated the relationship between food and society, has now created confusion. To teach more about those choices, Pollan describes various food chains that end in human food: industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves, from the source to a final meal, and in the process writes a critique of the American method of eating. + + +== Contents == +Michael Pollan informs us about how corn, the U.S.'s main food source, is "taking over the world" due to its pervasiveness in many of the foods we eat, including beverages made with cornstarch and meat and dairy products from animals fed with corn. Pollan hopes that his book will change the diets in the U.S. of both humans and animals. In the first section, he monitors the development of a calf from a pasture in South Dakota, through its stay on a Kansas feedlot, to its end. The author says that corn is the worst thing for feedlot cows to eat because it hurts their livers. The industry accepts the fact that corn-fed cows naturally become sick as a cost of doing business. +In the second section, Pollan describes the large-scale farms and food-processing facilities that largely satisfy surging demand for organic food, using Whole Foods as a proxy. The author intends to demonstrate that, despite the group's rhetoric, the virtues advertised are often questionable. For example, an operation raising "free-range" chicken has only a tiny yard available, largely unused by the short-lived birds. Pollan also accuses large-scale organic agriculture of "floating on a sinking sea of petroleum" by analyzing that a one-pound box of California-produced organic lettuce—that contains 80 food calories—requires 4,600 calories of fossil fuel to process and ship to the East Coast. He adds that the quantity would be only "about 4 percent higher if the salad were grown conventionally." +One of Pollan's main points about the organic farming industry is that it gives people the wrong idea that organic products must come from beautiful open fields. +In contrast to his discussion of the large-scale organic food industry, Pollan presents in the third section Joel Salatin, a farmer who manages a successful mid-sized, multi-species meat farm in Virginia and insists on selling his goods nearby and relies on his family and a few interns to supplement his labor. Pollan discusses how each part of the farm directly helps the others—the sun feeds the grass, the grass feeds the cows, the larvae in the cow manure feed the chickens, and the chickens feed the grass with nitrogen. Due to the various cyclical processes on the farm, it does not require fossil fuels. +The final section finds Pollan attempting to prepare a meal using only ingredients he has hunted, gathered, or grown himself. He recruits assistance from local foodies, who teach him to hunt feral pigs, gather wild mushrooms, and search for abalone. He also makes a salad of greens from his garden, bakes sourdough bread using wild yeast, and prepares a dessert from cherries picked in his neighborhood. +Pollan concludes that the fast food meal and the hunter-gatherer meal are "equally unreal and equally unsustainable." He believes that if we were once again aware of the source of our food – what it was, where it came from, how it traveled to reach us, and its true cost – we would see that we "eat by the grace of nature, not industry." + + +=== On veganism === +Pollan argues that to "give up" human consumption of animals would result in a "food chain ... even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility – in the form of manures – would be in short supply." This is because, according to Pollan, in some grassy areas, growing grains or other plant foods is not a viable alternative to raising ruminants for human consumption. + + +== Reception == +Economist Tyler Cowen argued, "The problems with Pollan's 'self-financed' meal reflect the major shortcoming of the book: He focuses on what is before his eyes but neglects the macro perspective of the economist. He wants to make the costs of various foods transparent, but this is an unattainable ideal, given the interconnectedness of markets." +Washington State University, situated in an agricultural area of Washington state, chose this book to be part of its freshman reading program in 2009 but soon canceled the program. Many in the university's community, including those who manage the kinds of industrial farms The Omnivore's Dilemma discusses, were unhappy with the selection, and there was speculation that the cancellation was a result of political influence. Elson Floyd, president of WSU, stated instead that it was a budgetary issue, and when food safety expert William Marler offered to pay the claimed shortfall, the program was reinstated, and Pollan was invited to speak on campus. + + +== Honors == +The New York Times named The Omnivore's Dilemma one of the ten best books of 2006, Additionally, Pollan received a James Beard Award for the work. +The book has also been published in a young reader's edition, and it is being used in cross-curricular lessons by teachers interested in promoting its message. + + +== See also == +Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007) +Environmental effects of meat production +Food, Inc. (2008) documentary film +Land Institute + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Official +The Omnivore's Dilemma, from Michael Pollan's website. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Ocean-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Ocean-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7c1c88b36 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Ocean-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: "The Outlaw Ocean" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Ocean" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:37.115586+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier (also published as The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier) is a 2019 book by Ian Urbina about crime and extralegal activity in international waters. The book was based on an investigate journalism series Urbina wrote for The New York Times. Topics covered include illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, modern slavery and violent crime committed at sea, as well of the work of organisations, governments and companies in international waters. The book was critically acclaimed. + + +== Synopsis == +The Outlaw Ocean is structured as a series of essays about lawlessness at sea with each chapter covering a different aspect and case studies. Urbina describes his experiences of their reporting. These include: + +The Thunder, an illegal fishing vessel that was part of the Bandit 6, and its pursuit by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society +Maritime law enforcement against illegal fishing in Palau and Indonesia +The Principality of Sealand, an unrecognised micronation and former pirate radio station off the coast of Suffolk +Women on Waves, an NGO that provides abortions in international waters for women in countries where they are illegal +Stowaways in international shipping +A Greenpeace and academic expedition by the MV Esperanza to survey the Amazon Reef in advance of plans to drill the region for oil. +Poor working conditions and modern slavery in the fishing industry, particularly in Thailand +Violent crime at sea, including an investigation of a clip showing a murder at sea committed by a longliner crew +Piracy off the coast of Somalia + + +== Reception == +It was reviewed positively in The Guardian, New Statesman, NPR and The New York Times. It also entered The New York Times Best Seller list in September 2019. +Urbina's reporting adapted for the book won numerous awards as a New York Times series. + + +== Adaptations == +The book is accompanied by a musical project, The Outlaw Ocean Music Project, which involved around 200 musicians sampling field recordings from the book's research trips and creating a soundtrack. +Urbina also established The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organisation to produce further stories about maritime crime. +A film adaptation of Urbina's reporting is in development by Netflix, set to be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. +In 2022 CBC Radio and the LA Times released a seven-part podcast called The Outlaw Ocean, featuring Urbina's reportage. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oyster_Question-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oyster_Question-0.md index b7d0172f2..e3f3ed851 100644 --- a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oyster_Question-0.md +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oyster_Question-0.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/1 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oyster_Question" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" -date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:10:43.371504+00:00" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:39.539569+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_to_Degrowth_in_Overdeveloped_Countries-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_to_Degrowth_in_Overdeveloped_Countries-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4c1acf74a --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_to_Degrowth_in_Overdeveloped_Countries-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_to_Degrowth_in_Overdeveloped_Countries" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:41.930710+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +"The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries", written by Erik Assadourian, is the second chapter of the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World (2012), available for free online. +In his chapter of the report, Assadourian defines degrowth as an "essential and urgent" economic strategy to pursue in countries entrenched in overdevelopment (such as the United States) in order for those countries to be truly sustainable and adapt to "The rapidly warming Earth and the collapse of ecosystem services." Furthermore, he hopes to dispel "the myth that perpetual pursuit of growth is good for economies or the societies of which they are a part" for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and of the sick, stressed, and overweight populations of overdeveloped countries. Assadourian argues via the principle of plenitude that degrowth will inevitably occur whether we want it to or not because—on a planet of finite resources—economies and populations cannot grow infinitely, and overdeveloped countries are still pursuing more economic growth and overconsuming resources. +Assadourian outlines four policies overdeveloped nations could employ to sufficiently facilitate a planned and controlled contraction of the economy so as to get back in line with planetary boundaries. Each of these, in unison, will eventually foster the creation of a steady-state economy that is in balance with Earth's limits: + +Reduce overall consumption by overconsumers +Distribute tax burdens more equitably +Share work hours better +Cultivate a plenitude economy: "informalize" certain sectors of the economy +Assadourian also wrote a two-page policy brief on the chapter highlighting the key messages of, the problem regarding, and points to keep in mind moving forward on our path to degrowth. + + +== See also == + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Full text of "The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries" \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pesticide_Question-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pesticide_Question-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..07b669896 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pesticide_Question-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: "The Pesticide Question" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pesticide_Question" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:43.062712+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Pesticide Question: Environment, Economics and Ethics is a 1993 book edited by David Pimentel and Hugh Lehman. Use of pesticides has improved agricultural productivity, but there are also concerns about safety, health and the environment. +This book is the result of research by leading scientists and policy experts into the non-technical and social issues of pesticides. In examining the social policies related to pesticides use, they consider the costs as well as the benefits. The book says that Intensive farming cannot completely do without synthetic chemicals, but that it is technologically possible to reduce the amount of pesticides used in the United States by 35-50 per cent without reducing crop yields. The researchers show that to regain public trust, those who regulate and use pesticides must examine fair ethical questions and take appropriate action to protect public welfare, health, and the environment. Anyone concerned with reducing our reliance on chemical pesticides and how human activities can remain both productive and environmentally sound will find this volume a stimulating contribution to a troubling debate. +The Pesticide Question builds on the 1962 best seller book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Carson did not reject the use of pesticides, but argued that their use was often indiscriminate and resulted in harm to people and the environment. She also highlighted the problem of pests becoming resistant to pesticides. +Carson's work is referred to many times in The Pesticide Question, which critically explores many non-technical issues associated with pesticide use, mainly in the United States. The book has 40 contributors, mainly academics from a wide range of disciplines. The Pesticide Question is divided into five main parts: + +social and environmental effects of pesticides; +methods and effects of reducing pesticide use; +government policy and pesticide use; +history, public attitudes, and ethics in regard to pesticide use; and +the benefits and risks of pesticides. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Petroleum_Papers-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Petroleum_Papers-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..dc6e68f1e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Petroleum_Papers-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: "The Petroleum Papers" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Petroleum_Papers" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:44.226707+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Petroleum Papers is a 2022 non-fiction book by journalist Geoff Dembicki on climate change and the fossil fuel industry. +The book documents that specific oil companies had an early awareness of the relationship between climate change and fossil fuels but then deliberately made efforts to discredit the climate science and prevent government regulation. +Heather Mallick described the book as "the biggest true crime story ever told." The book was one of The Washington Post's 10 best books of 2022 and was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction the same year. + + +== Publication == +The 256 page book was published in 2022 by Greystone Books. It was written by Canadian investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki. + + +== Synopsis == +The Petroleum Papers documents the history of the oil and gas industry in Canada. The books documents the warning given to political leaders and oil company executives in 1959 by Edward Teller. It reports on the climate science undertaken by Exxon in the 1970's, when the company measured ocean carbon dioxide levels. Dembicki states that Exxon's scientist James Black warned Exxon's leadership of the dangers to humans posed by fossil fuel and recommended quick action. The author also notes that both Shell and British Petroleum were aware, with the later producing documentaries that documented the "devastating consequences" of creating more carbon dioxide, including rising sea levels. In addition to studying the impact, oil companies also studied potential solutions, in 1991, Exxon subsidiary Imperial Oil concluded that starting an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax could help curb climate change. +Despite the awareness that climate change could be stopped, the book reports that the companies did everything that they could to ensure solutions were not implemented. The book states that funding of front organisations and think tanks by the Koch brothers and others, was done via intermediaries such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. Strategies to prevent solutions being implemented shifted from discrediting science to greenwashing and also included lobbying against government policy to limit emissions. +Dembicki writes about the 2008 joint television statement by Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi where they agree on the need to take action on climate change, before noting the bipartisan collaboration ending and US public skepticism of climate science. Dembicki attributes the public opinion shift to a well-funded disinformation campaign, and the increasing influence of The Tea Party and Donald Trump. + + +== Critical reception == +Richard Schiffman, writing in The Washington Post, described the book as an "essential read" for people interested in the history of climate change. Heather Mallick described Dembicki's storytelling as fascinating, brisk, and masterful and the book as "the biggest true crime story ever told."The book was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction in 2022, and is on The Washington Post's "10 best books of 2022. + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..57d581a58 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +title: "The Population Bomb" +chunk: 1/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:48.969534+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Population Bomb is a 1968 book co-authored by former Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich and former Stanford senior researcher in conservation biology Anne H. Ehrlich. From the opening page, it predicted worldwide famines due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" existed in the mid-20th century baby boom years, but the book and its authors brought the idea to an even wider audience. +The book has been criticized since its publication for an alarmist tone, and over the subsequent decades, for inaccurate assertions and failed predictions. For instance, regional famines have occurred since the publication of the book, but not world famines. The Ehrlichs themselves continued to stand by the book despite the flaws identified by its critics, with Paul stating in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future," despite having predicted catastrophic global famines that never came to pass. They believe that it achieved their goals because "it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future." Others have argued that the basic thesis of the book was "far more prescient than most in recognizing the diverse contemporary threats posed by the size and growth rate of the human population, not only to adequate food supply but also to Earth’s climate, air quality, fresh water, and biodiversity, as well as to the management capacity of governments." + +== General description of the book == + +The Population Bomb was written at the suggestion of David Brower, the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, and Ian Ballantine of Ballantine Books following various public appearances Ehrlich had made regarding population issues and their relation to the environment. Although the Ehrlichs collaborated on the book, the publisher insisted that a single author be credited, and also asked to change their preferred title: Population, Resources, and Environment. The title Population Bomb was taken (with permission) from General William H. Draper, founder of the Population Crisis Committee and a widely spread pamphlet The Population Bomb is Everyone's Baby issued in 1954 by the Hugh Moore Fund. The Ehrlichs regret the choice of title, which they admit was a perfect choice from a marketing perspective, but think that "it led Paul to be miscategorized as solely focused on human numbers, despite our interest in all the factors affecting the human trajectory." +Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement: + +The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate... +Much of the book is spent describing the state of the environment and the food security situation, which is described as increasingly dire. The Ehrlichs argue that as the existing population was not being fed adequately, and as it was growing rapidly, it was unreasonable to expect sufficient improvements in food production to feed everyone. They further argued that the growing population placed escalating strains on all aspects of the natural world. "What needs to be done?" they wrote, "We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it negative. Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved. Simultaneously we must, at least temporarily, greatly increase our food production." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b215f4ffd --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +title: "The Population Bomb" +chunk: 2/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:48.969534+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Possible solutions === +Paul and Anne Ehrlich described a number of "ideas on how these goals might be reached." They believed that the United States should take a leading role in population control, both because it was already consuming much more than the rest of the world, and therefore had a moral duty to reduce its impact, and because the US would have to lead international efforts due to its prominence in the world, in order to avoid charges of hypocrisy or racism it would have to take the lead in population reduction efforts. The Ehrlichs float the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods. However, they reject the idea as unpractical due to "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area." They suggest a tax scheme in which additional children would add to a family's tax burden at increasing rates for more children, as well as luxury taxes on childcare goods. They suggest incentives for men who agree to permanent sterilization before they have two children, as well as a variety of other monetary incentives. They propose a powerful Department of Population and Environment which "should be set up with the power to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a reasonable population size in the United States and to put an end to the steady deterioration of our environment." The department should support research into population control, such as better contraceptives, mass sterilizing agents, and prenatal sex discernment (because families often continue to have children until a male is born. The Ehrlichs suggested that if they could choose a male child this would reduce the birthrate). Legislation should be enacted guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and sex education should be expanded. +After explaining the domestic policies the US should pursue, they discuss foreign policy. They advocate a system of "triage," such as that suggested by William and Paul Paddock in Famine 1975!. Under this system countries would be divided into categories based on their abilities to feed themselves going forward. Countries with sufficient programmes in place to limit population growth, and the ability to become self-sufficient in the future would continue to receive food aid. Countries, for example India, which were "so far behind in the population-food game that there is no hope that our food aid will see them through to self-sufficiency" would have their food aid eliminated. The Ehrlichs argued that this was the only realistic strategy in the long-term. Ehrlich applauds the Paddocks' "courage and foresight" in proposing such a solution. The Ehrlichs further discusses the need to set up public education programs and agricultural development schemes in developing countries. They argue that the scheme would likely have to be implemented outside the framework of the United Nations due to the necessity selecting the targeted regions and countries, and suggests that within countries certain regions should be prioritized to the extent that cooperative separatist movements should be encouraged if they are an improvement over the existing authority. He mentions his support for government mandated sterilization of Indian males with three or more children. +In the rest of the book the Ehrlichs discuss things which readers can do to help. This is focused primarily on changing public opinion to create pressure on politicians to enact the policies they suggest, which they believed were not politically possible in 1968. At the end of the book they discuss the possibility that his forecasts may be wrong, which they felt they must acknowledge as scientists. However, they believe that regardless of coming catastrophes, his prescriptions would only benefit humanity, and would be the right course of action in any case. +The book sold over two million copies, raised the general awareness of population and environmental issues, and influenced 1960s and 1970s public policy. For the 14 years prior the book's appearance, the world population had been growing at accelerating rates, but immediately after the book's publication, the world population growth rate coincidentally began a continuing downward trend, from its 1968 peak of 2.09% to 1.09% in 2018. + +== Context == +In 1948, two widely read books were published that would inspire a "neo-Malthusian" debate on population and the environment: Fairfield Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt’s Road to Survival. These inspired works such as The Population Bomb is Everyone's Baby pamphlet by Hugh Everett Moore in 1954, as well as some of the original societies concerned with population and environmental matters. In 1961 Marriner Eccles, former chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve System, did describe the explosive rate of growth of the world's population as the "most vitally important problem facing the world today," which may well prove to be "more explosive than the atomic or hydrogen bomb." D.B. Luten has said that although the book is often seen as a seminal work in the field, The Population Bomb is actually best understood as "climaxing and in a sense terminating the debate of the 1950s and 1960s.” Ehrlich has said that he traced his own Malthusian beliefs to a lecture he heard Vogt give when he was attending university in the early 1950s. For Ehrlich, these writers provided “a global framework for things he had observed as a young naturalist." + +== Criticisms == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..097b44442 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "The Population Bomb" +chunk: 3/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:48.969534+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Restatement of Malthusian theory === +The Population Bomb has been characterized by critics as primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich observed that since about 1930 the population of the world had doubled within a single generation, from 2 billion to nearly 4 billion, and was on track to do so again. He assumed that available resources on the other hand, and in particular food, were nearly at their limits. Some critics compare Ehrlich unfavorably to Malthus, saying that although Thomas Malthus did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster within the next decade or two. In addition, critics state that unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely (although some mitigation was possible), and proposed solutions that were much more radical than those discussed by Malthus, such as starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures. +Ehrlich was certainly not unique in his neo-Malthusian predictions, and there was a widespread belief in the 1960s and 70s that increasingly catastrophic famines were on their way. + +=== Predictions === +The Ehrlichs made a number of specific predictions that did not come to pass, for which they have received criticism. They have acknowledged that some predictions were incorrect. However, they maintain that their general argument remains intact, that their predictions were merely illustrative, that their and others' warnings caused preventive action, or that many of their predictions may yet come true (see Ehrlich's response below). Still other commentators have criticized the Ehrlichs' perceived inability to acknowledge mistakes, evasiveness, and refusal to alter their arguments in the face of contrary evidence. In 2015 Ehrlich told Retro Report, "I do not think my language was too apocalyptic in The Population Bomb. My language would be even more apocalyptic today." +In The Population Bomb's opening lines the authors state that nothing can prevent famines in which hundreds of millions of people will die during the 1970s (amended to 1970s and 1980s in later editions), and that there would be "a substantial increase in the world death rate." Although many lives could be saved through dramatic action, it was already too late to prevent a substantial increase in the global death rate. However, in reality the global death rate has continued to decline substantially since then, from 13/1000 in 1965–74 to 10/1000 from 1985–1990. Meanwhile, the population of the world has more than doubled, while calories consumed/person have increased 24%. The UN does not keep official death-by-hunger statistics so it is hard to measure whether the "hundreds of millions of deaths" number is correct. Ehrlich himself suggested in 2009 that between 200-300 million had died of hunger since 1968. However, that is measured over 40 years rather than the ten to twenty foreseen in the book, so it can be seen as significantly fewer than predicted. +Famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause has been political instability, not global food shortage. The Indian economist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner, Amartya Sen, has argued that nations with democracy and a free press have virtually never suffered from extended famines. And while a 2010 UN report stated that 925 million of the world's population of nearly seven billion people were in a constant state of hunger, it also notes that the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since the Ehrlichs published The Population Bomb. +The Ehrlichs write: "I don't see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980." This view was widely held at the time, as another statement of his, later in the book: "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." In the book's 1971 edition, the latter prediction was removed, as the food situation in India suddenly improved (see Green Revolution in India). +As of 2010, India had almost 1.2 billion people, having nearly tripled its population from around 400 million in 1960, with a total fertility rate in 2008 of 2.6. While the absolute numbers of malnourished children in India is high, the rates of malnutrition and poverty in India have declined from approximately 90% at the time of India's formation (1947), to less than 40% in 2010 (see Malnutrition in India). Ehrlich's prediction about famines did not come to pass, although food security is still an issue in India. However, most epidemiologists, public health physicians and demographers identify corruption as the chief cause of malnutrition, not "overpopulation". As economist and philosopher Amartya Sen noted, the subcontinent frequently had famines during British colonial rule. However, since India became a democracy, there have been no recorded famines. +Journalist Dan Gardner has criticized Ehrlich both for his overconfident predictions and his refusal to acknowledge his errors. "In two lengthy interviews, Ehrlich admitted making not a single major error in the popular works he published in the late 1960s and early 1970s … the only flat-out mistake Ehrlich acknowledges is missing the destruction of the rain forests, which happens to be a point that supports and strengthens his world view—and is therefore, in cognitive dissonance terms, not a mistake at all. Beyond that, he was by his account, off a little here and there, but only because the information he got from others was wrong. Basically, he was right across the board." +Jonathan Last called it "one of the most spectacularly foolish books ever published". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2cb82d489 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "The Population Bomb" +chunk: 4/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:48.969534+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Persistence of trends === +Economist Julian Simon and medical statistician Hans Rosling pointed out that the failed prediction of 70s famines were based exclusively on the assumption that exponential population growth will continue indefinitely and no technological or social progress will be made. In The Ultimate Resource Simon argued that resources, such as metals, which Ehrlichs extensively discuss in their books as examples of non-sustainable resources, are valued exclusively for the function they provide, and technological progress frequently replaces these: for example, copper was largely replaced by fiber optic in communications, and carbon fiber replaced a wide range of alloys and steel in construction (see Simon-Ehrlich wager and The Ultimate Resource). Simon also argued that technological progress tends to happen in large steps rather than linear growth, as happened with the Green Revolution. +Hans Rosling in his book Factfulness demonstrated that fertility rate has significantly decreased worldwide and, more importantly, high fertility is a natural response to high mortality in low-income countries and once they enter higher income group, fertility drops quickly. According to environmentalist Stewart Brand, himself a student and friend of Ehrlich, the assumption made by the latter and by authors of The Limits to Growth has been "proven wrong since 1963" when the demographic trends worldwide have visibly changed. + +=== Showmanship === +One frequent criticism of The Population Bomb is that it focused on spectacle and exaggeration at the expense of accuracy. Pierre Desrochers and Christine Hoffbauer remark that "at the time of writing The Population Bomb, Paul and Anne Ehrlich should have been more cautious and revised their tone and rhetoric, in light of the undeniable and already apparent errors and shortcomings of Osborn and Vogt’s analyses." Charles Rubin has written that it was precisely because Ehrlich was largely unoriginal and wrote in a clear emotionally gripping style that it became so popular. He quotes a review from Natural History noting that Ehrlich does not try to "convince intellectually by mind dulling statistics," but rather roars "like an Old Testament Prophet." Gardner says, "as much as the events and culture of the era, Paul Ehrlich's style explain the enormous audience he attracted." Indeed, an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson helped to propel the success of the book, as well as Ehrlich's celebrity. Desrochers and Hoffbauer go on to conclude that it seems hard to deny that using an alarmist tone and emotional appeal were the main lessons that the present generation of environmentalists learned from Ehrlich's success. + +=== Social and political coercion === +On the political left the book received criticism that it was focusing on "the wrong problem", and that the real issue was one of distribution of resources rather than of overpopulation. Marxists worried that Paul and Anne Ehrlich's work could be used to justify genocide and imperial control, as well as oppression of minorities and disadvantaged groups or even a return to eugenics. +Eco-socialist Barry Commoner argued that the Ehrlichs were too focused on overpopulation as the source of environmental problems, and that their proposed solutions were politically unacceptable because of the coercion that they implied, and because the cost would fall disproportionately on the poor. He argued that technological, and above all social development would lead to a natural decrease in both population growth and environmental damage. Commoner engaged in a fierce debate with Ehrlich at an environmental United Nations convention in Stockholm: + +A feud about how to deal with overpopulation surfaced in Stockholm, between Ehrlich and his nemesis, Barry Commoner, whose popular book, The Closing Circle (1971), directly criticized Ehrlich’s population-bomb thesis. Both were on panels in Stockholm, with Commoner slyly planting invidious questions aimed at Ehrlich among various Third World participants in the conference, and Ehrlich yelling back. Commoner’s argument was that population policies weren’t needed, because what was called “the demographic transition” would take care of everything—all you had to do was help poor people get less poor, and they would have fewer children. Ehrlich insisted that the situation was way too serious for that approach, and it wouldn’t work anyway: You needed harsh government programs to drive down the birthrate. The alternative was overwhelming famines and massive damage to the environment. + +== Ehrlich's response == +In a 2004 Grist Magazine interview, Ehrlich acknowledged some specific predictions he had made, in the years around the time The Population Bomb was published, that had not come to pass. However, as to a number of his fundamental ideas and assertions, he maintained that facts and science proved them correct. +In answer to the question: "Were your predictions in The Population Bomb right?", Ehrlich responded: + +Anne and I have always followed UN population projections as modified by the Population Reference Bureau -- so we never made "predictions," even though idiots think we have. When I wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, there were 3.5 billion people. Since then we've added another 2.8 billion -- many more than the total population (2 billion) when I was born in 1932. If that's not a population explosion, what is? My basic claims (and those of the many scientific colleagues who reviewed my work) were that population growth was a major problem. Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year. My view has become depressingly mainline! +In another retrospective article published in 2009, Ehrlich said, in response to criticism that many of his predictions had not come to pass: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..5d712b71e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: "The Population Bomb" +chunk: 5/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:48.969534+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +the biggest tactical error in The Bomb was the use of scenarios, stories designed to help one think about the future. Although we clearly stated that they were not predictions and that “we can be sure that none of them will come true as stated,’ (p. 72)—their failure to occur is often cited as a failure of prediction. In honesty, the scenarios were way off, especially in their timing (we underestimated the resilience of the world system). But they did deal with future issues that people in 1968 should have been thinking about – famines, plagues, water shortages, armed international interventions by the United States, and nuclear winter (e.g., Ehrlich et al. 1983, Toon et al. 2007)—all events that have occurred or now still threatenIn a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Ehrlich, while still proud of The Population Bomb for starting a worldwide debate on the issues of population, acknowledged weaknesses of the book including not placing enough emphasis on climate change, overconsumption and inequality, and countering accusations of racism. He argues "too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources." He advocated for an "unprecedented redistribution of wealth" in order to mitigate the problem of overconsumption of resources by the world's wealthy, but said "the rich who now run the global system — that hold the annual 'world destroyer' meetings in Davos — are unlikely to let it happen." + +== See also == +Club of Rome +Simon–Ehrlich wager +Food race +Z.P.G. +Moral panic +Population decline +The Decline of the West + +== References == + +== Further reading == +Robertson, Thomas (2012). The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-5272-9 + +== External links == +Dr. Albert Bartlett, 2004 lecture, "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" +"The Global Food Crisis", June 2009 article, National Geographic Magazine +The Population Bomb (working title), Documentary Film \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Global_Warming_Disaster-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Global_Warming_Disaster-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e7b22724f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Global_Warming_Disaster-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +title: "The Real Global Warming Disaster" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Global_Warming_Disaster" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:57.142066+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Real Global Warming Disaster (Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?) is a 2009 book by English journalist and author Christopher Booker in which he asserts that global warming cannot be attributed to humans, and then alleges how the scientific opinion on climate change was formulated. +From a standpoint of environmental scepticism, Booker seeks to combine an analysis of the science of global warming with the consequences of political decisions to reduce CO2 emissions and claims that, as governments prepare to make radical changes in energy policies, the scientific evidence for global warming is becoming increasingly challenged. He asserts that global warming is not supported by a significant number of climate scientists, and criticises how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents evidence and data, in particular citing its reliance on potentially inaccurate global climate models to make temperature projections. Booker concludes, "it begins to look very possible that the nightmare vision of our planet being doomed" may be imaginary, and that, if so, "it will turn out to be one of the most expensive, destructive, and foolish mistakes the human race has ever made". +The book's claims were strongly criticised by science writer Philip Ball, but the book was praised by several columnists. The book opens with an erroneous quotation, which Booker subsequently acknowledged and promised to correct in future editions. +The book was Amazon UK's fourth bestselling environment book of the decade 2000–10. + + +== Synopsis == +The book consists of three parts and an epilogue. +Booker sums up the book's contents in a long epilogue, which quotes Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream: + +In the night, imagining some fear, +How easy is a bush supposed a bear +Booker contends that in this quote Shakespeare is identifying that "when we are not presented with enough information for our minds to resolve something into certainty, they may be teased into exaggerating it into something quite different from what it really is". The first chapter of the book is the introduction, where Booker warns us of the risk posed by 'those measures being proposed by the world's politicians in the hope that they can avert' climate change. It talks about the ineffectiveness of wind turbines, and how they produce the same amount of energy per year as one coal-fired power station (3.9 gigawatts). In the prologue, Booker claims that many people, including the former U.S President Barack Obama, were 'seriously misinformed' about the evidence surrounding Global Warming and the effects it might have on the world. Part I of the book tells how Climate Change has risen to 'the top of the World's political agenda' so quickly, and the methods he thinks the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change used to convince politicians that the issue was genuine, including James Hansen's famous hearing before the American Senate, where he allegedly turned the room temperature up in order the strengthen his point. Part II of the book is entitled 'Gore and the EU unite to Save the Planet'. It depicts how, panic-stricken, the world's politicians took action to encourage more renewable forms of energy, and the closure of the world's non-renewable power stations. Finally, Part III speaks of how the Global Warming 'consensus begins (began) to crumble.' It claims that the evidence behind Climate Change and its causes is coming under increased scrutiny, and that by no means is the science "settled". + + +== Reception == +The book received a positive reception from non-scientists in the media: In The Spectator, Rodney Leach said it was one of the best of its type, remarking that Booker "narrates this story with the journalist's pace and eye for telling detail and the historian's forensic thoroughness which have made him a formidable opponent of humbug". Columnist James Delingpole, himself the author of a denialist book, described the book as "another of those classics which any even vaguely intelligent person who wants to know what's really going on needs to read". Writing in The Herald, Brian Morton was largely sympathetic to the position taken by Booker in the book, attributing global warming to natural causes. A positive review by Henry Kelly in The Irish Times, referring to the book as "meticulously researched, provocative and challenging", was criticised by Irish environmental campaigner and climatechange.ie website founder John Gibbons, who said that the decision by The Irish Times to allow Kelly to review The Real Global Warming Disaster was part of a recent trend of "the media giving too much coverage to 'anti-science' climate change deniers and failing to convey the gravity of the threat, making readers and viewers apathetic". In The Scotsman, writer and environmentalist Sir John Lister-Kaye chose The Real Global Warming Disaster as one of his books of the year, writing that "though barely credible in places" this was an "important, brave book making and explaining many valid points". +Scientist Philip Ball, on the other hand, wrote in his review in The Observer that the book was "the definitive climate sceptics’ manual" in that it makes an uncritical presentation of "just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view" on global warming. Though expressing "a queer kind of admiration for the skill and energy with which Booker has assembled his polemic", Ball called the claims made by the author "bunk". Ball also criticised Booker's tactic of introducing global warming deniers "with a little eulogy to their credentials, while their opponents receive only a perfunctory, if not disparaging, preamble". + + +== Houghton misquotation == +The book opens with an incorrect quotation which wrongly attributes to John T. Houghton the words "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen". The publishers apologised for this misquotation, confirmed that it would not be repeated, and agreed to place a corrigendum in any further copies of the book. In an article which appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on 20 February 2010, Booker wrote "we shall all in due course take steps to correct the record, as I shall do in the next edition of my book". +Houghton felt that Booker continued to misstate his position regarding the role of disasters in policy making, and he referred the matter to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC Reference 101959), following whose involvement The Sunday Telegraph published on 15 August a letter of correction by Houghton stating his actual position, that adverse events shock people and thereby bring about change. +An article supportive of Houghton appeared in the New Scientist magazine. + + +== See also == + + +== Bibliography == +Booker, Christopher (2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4411-1052-7. + + +== Notes == + + +== Further reading == +Booker, Christopher; North, Richard (2007). Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 978-0-8264-8614-1. +Carter, Robert; Spooner, John (2013). Taxing air: Facts and fallacies of climate change. Kelpie Press. ISBN 9781742983189. +Montford, Andrew (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion; Climategate and the Corruption of Science. Stacey International. p. 482. ISBN 978-1-906768-35-5. \ No newline at end of file