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| Figures | |
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| Preface | |
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| Human Agency and the State of the Earth | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Can one conceive of ecosystems without human agents? | |
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| Human agency: individuals making a difference | |
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| Overwhelming evidence for concern with the condition of the Earth system | |
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| Looking back and looking forward | |
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| A Reminder: How Things Were... | |
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| The study of human ecological relations | |
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| The contemporary study of environmental issues | |
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| The evolution of human-environment interactions | |
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| Hunter-gatherers: Setting our preferences | |
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| How did we decide to become farmers? | |
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| Herding and farming: An uneasy relationship | |
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| More food for the masses | |
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| The Great Forgetting | |
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| Earth transformations in prehistory | |
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| The archaeology of environmental change | |
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| The urban-industrial revolution and the unleashing of Prometheus | |
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| The contemporary situation: Human-dominated ecosystems | |
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| The Web of Life: Are We In It? | |
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| The web of life and trophic relations: Thinking ecologically | |
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| Ecosystem productivity and net primary production | |
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| Land use and long term disturbance | |
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| What Makes People Do That? | |
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| Learning, adaptation, and information | |
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| Mitigation and the cautionary principle | |
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| Transforming the face of the Earth: Making better decisions | |
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| Population and the environment | |
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| Rebuilding Communities and Institutions | |
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| Community in human evolution | |
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| What is sacred in human evolution? | |
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| Tragedies of the commons | |
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| Institutions and self-organization | |
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| Bioregionalism, deep ecology, and embedding people in nature | |
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| Can We Learn When We Have Enough? | |
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| Material boys and material girls | |
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| Patterns of consumption in developed countries | |
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| Patterns of consumption in developing countries | |
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| A feeding frenzy and a crisis in public health | |
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| Burning fossil fuels instead of calories | |
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| Do we have enough material goods now? | |
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| Quality of Life: When Less Is More | |
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| Resource abundance versus resource scarcity | |
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| When less is more | |
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| The scale of the problem and the scale of the solution | |
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| Restoring our balance: Valuing community and trust, rather than more "stuff" | |
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| Are we happier when we have more? | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |