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| List of Maps | |
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| Prologue: A Tale of Two Farms | |
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| Two farms | |
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| Collapses, past and present | |
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| Vanished Edens? | |
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| A five-point framework | |
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| Businesses and the environment | |
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| The comparative method | |
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| Plan of the book | |
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| Modern Montana | |
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| Under Montana's Big Sky | |
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| Stan Falkow's story | |
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| Montana and me | |
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| Why begin with Montana? | |
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| Montana's economic history | |
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| Mining | |
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| Forests | |
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| Soil | |
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| Water | |
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| Native and non-native species | |
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| Differing visions | |
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| Attitudes towards regulation | |
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| Rick Laible's story | |
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| Chip Pigman's story | |
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| Tim Huls's story | |
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| John Cooks story | |
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| Montana, model of the world | |
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| Past Societies | |
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| Twilight at Easter | |
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| The quarry's mysteries | |
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| Easter's geography and history | |
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| People and food | |
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| Chiefs, clans, and commoners | |
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| Platforms and statues | |
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| Carving, transporting, erecting | |
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| The vanished forest | |
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| Consequences for society | |
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| Europeans and explanations | |
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| Why was Easter fragile? | |
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| Easter as metaphor | |
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| The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands | |
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| Pitcairn before the Bounty | |
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| Three dissimilar islands | |
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| Trade | |
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| The movie's ending | |
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| The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and Their Neighbors | |
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| Desert farmers | |
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| Tree rings | |
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| Agricultural strategies | |
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| Chaco's problems and packrats | |
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| Regional integration | |
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| Chaco's decline and end | |
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| Chaco's message | |
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| The Maya Collapses | |
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| Mysteries of lost cities | |
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| The Maya environment | |
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| Maya agriculture | |
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| Maya history | |
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| Cop�n | |
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| Complexities of collapses | |
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| Wars and droughts | |
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| Collapse in the southern lowlands | |
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| The Maya message | |
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| The Viking Prelude and Fugues | |
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| Experiments in the Atlantic | |
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| The Viking explosion | |
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| Autocatalysis | |
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| Viking agriculture | |
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| Iron | |
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| Viking chiefs | |
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| Viking religion | |
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| Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes | |
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| Iceland's environment | |
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| Iceland's history | |
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| Iceland in context | |
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| Vinland | |
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| Norse Greenland's Flowering | |
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| Europe's outpost | |
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| Greenland's climate today | |
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| Climate in the past | |
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| Native plants and animals | |
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| Norse settlement | |
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| Farming | |
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| Hunting and fishing | |
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| An integrated economy | |
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| Society | |
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| Trade with Europe | |
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| Self-image | |
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| Norse Greenland's End | |
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| Introduction to the end | |
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| Deforestation | |
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| Soil and turf damage | |
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| The Inuit's predecessors | |
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| Inuit subsistence | |
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| Inuit/Norse relations | |
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| The end | |
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| Ultimate causes of the end | |
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| Opposite Paths to Success | |
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| Bottom up, top down | |
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| New Guinea highlands | |
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| Tikopia | |
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| Tokugawa problems | |
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| Tokugawa solutions | |
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| Why Japan succeeded | |
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| Other successes | |
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| Modern Societies | |
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| Malthus in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide | |
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| A dilemma | |
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| Events in Rwanda | |
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| More than ethnic hatred | |
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| Buildup in Kanama | |
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| Explosion in Kanama | |
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| Why it happened | |
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| One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti | |
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| Differences | |
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| Histories | |
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| Causes of divergence | |
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| Dominican environmental impacts | |
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| Balaguer | |
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| The Dominican environment today | |
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| The future | |
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| China, Lurching Giant | |
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| China's significance | |
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| Background | |
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| Air, water, soil | |
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| Habitat, species, megaprojects | |
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| Consequences | |
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| Connections | |
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| The future | |
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| �Mining� Australia | |
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| Australia's significance | |
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| Soils | |
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| Water | |
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| Distance | |
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| Early history | |
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| Imported values | |
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| Trade and immigration | |
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| Land degradation | |
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| Other environmental problems | |
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| Signs of hope and change | |
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| Practical Lessons | |
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| Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions? | |
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| Road map for success | |
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| Failure to anticipate | |
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| Failure to perceive | |
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| Rational bad behavior | |
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| Disastrous values | |
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| Other irrational failures | |
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| Unsuccessful solutions | |
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| Signs of hope | |
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| Big Businesses and the Environment: Different Conditions, Different Outcomes | |
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| Resource extraction | |
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| Two oil fields | |
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| Oil company motives | |
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| Hardrock mining operations | |
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| Mining company motives | |
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| Differences among mining companies | |
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| The logging industry | |
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| Forest Stewardship Council | |
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| The seafood industry | |
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| Businesses and the public | |
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| The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean to Us Today? | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The most serious problems | |
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| If we don't solve them... | |
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| Life in Los Angeles | |
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| One-liner objections | |
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| The past and the present | |
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| Reasons for hope | |
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| Afterword: Angkor's Rise and Fall | |
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| Questions about Angkor | |
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| Angkor's environment | |
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| Angkor's rise | |
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| The great city | |
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| Magnificent engineering | |
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| Angkor's decline | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Further Readings | |
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| Index | |
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| Illustration Credits | |