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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 | |