The Genesis Strategy

I Climate, Technology, and Human Survival: An Overview.- 1. The Weather: No Longer a Subject for Small Talk.- The Next Five Years: The Weather Reigns.- Nature Is Getting Competition: Inadvertent Climate Modification.- Ban the Can?: Should We Let the Atmosphere “Perform the Experiment”?.- Chlorine Water Purification and Nitrogen Fertilizer: Mixed Blessings?.- Heat Pollution: Big Is Bad.- The Population Factor.- Climate Control: A Cure Worse Than the Disease?.- 2. The Great Debate over the World Predicament.- The Technological Fix: Panacea for the Future?.- Exponential Growth: The Pessimists’ Fear.- More Technology: The Optimists’ Hope.- Each Side Blames the Other.- To Feed the World: More Technology or Fewer People? 30.- Energy for Survival: More or Less of It?.- The Genesis Strategy—An Approach to Action.- Decision-Making with Uncertain Inputs.- Two-, Four-, and Six-Year Cycles.- Lifeboat Ethics and Triage: The Science of Inhuman Ecology.- The Global Survival Compromise.- II Climate-Related Crises.- 3. Climate History—What if It Repeats?.- Ice Ages and In-Between.- Unlocking Climatic Secrets.- Climatic Connections.- Lessons from Climatic History.- The Recent “Cooling Trend”: Does It Mean More Climatic Variability?.- Sahelian Drought: The Desert Advances.- Unusual Weather May Be Increasing.- 1972 and 1974: Food Production Drops, Food Prices Soar.- What Does It All Mean?.- The Actuarial Approach to Climate Prediction.- Actions Before Certainty.- 4. The North American Grain Drain.- North America: The Food Giant.- World Food Security.- What Makes High Yields.- Canadian Grain Production.- USDA’s Long-Term Outlook: Extrapolation from Good Years.- Weather Variability Belongs in Long-Range Planning.- 5. Everything Is Connected to Everything Else: A Review of the Theory of Climate.- “The Message Is the Medium”.- Climate and Weather Are Different Things.- The Sun: The Prime Mover.- The Radiation Balance, the Albedo, and the Greenhouse Effect.- The Weather Machine.- Earth Is the Water Planet.- No Polar Bears in England, Thanks to the Gulf Stream.- The Ice-Feedback Mechanism.- Causes of Climatic Change.- Natural Factors.- Human Impact on Climate.- Some Theories on the Sahelian Drought Disaster.- Mathematical Models of the Climate.- 6. Weather and Climate Modification.- Climatic Limits to Growth.- The Energy-Growth Dilemma—Economic Development Versus Climatological Disruption.- Climatic Barriers to Energy Growth.- Climatic Sensitivity to Energy Production.- Climatic Feedback Mechanisms.- Climatic Effects of Widespread Harvesting of Natural Energy Flows.- Water Power: Too Little for Exponential Growth.- Solar Power: Not a Panacea, but a Promising Alternative.- Wind Power: Another Useful Energy Supplement.- Carbon Dioxide and Dust: Indicators of “Gross National Pollution”.- The Ozone Layer: It Protects Life on Earth.- The Case of the Supersonic Transports (SSTs).- When “Inert” Isn’t Always Inert: The Case of the Aerosol Spray Cans.- “What the Hell Else Slipped By?”.- Deliberate Climatic Modification Schemes.- Why Tamper with the Climate?.- Melting the Arctic Sea Ice.- Science Fiction Indeed!.- Make Rain, Not War.- To Learn or Not to Learn?.- 7. The Politics of Climate.- Environment Versus Economics: A Public Policy Value Judgment.- What Have They Done to the Rain Lately?.- The Case of the Colorado River.- To Fix a Fix with a Fix: Cloud-Seeding in the Colorado Basin.- Climate Control: The Ultimate Technological Fix.- Operational Weather Modifiers: Military and Civilian.- The Weather Fix: “When in Doubt, Try It Out!”.- Oil in the Arctic: “Exxon-eration” Versus Caution.- An Age-Old Plan for Survival: The Genesis Strategy.- “No-Fault Climate Disaster Insurance”.- Control the Climate Controllers, Not the Climate.- III Climate Change and the World Predicament.- 8. The Politics of Food.- The Hungry Look to the United States.- The World Food Conference: Long on Blame, Short on Negotiation.- Earl Butz Versus the “Fuzzy-Thinking Do-Gooders”.- The “Pits Would Go Crazy”: The Debate over Food Reserves, Free Markets, and the Chicago “Grain Trust”.- Meeting World Food Needs: Can It Be Done in Time?.- Indiana to India Shift.- The Green Revolution in Tropical Agriculture: Panacea or Disaster?.- Diversity in Tropical Agriculture.- The Demographic Transition and the Transfer of Technology.- Developing Agriculture in the Less Developed Countries.- Development Leads to Social Change.- Thailand Proves That Agriculture Can Pay.- The People’s Republic of China: Is This the Only Way for Asia?.- Latin America: Still Well Below Its Potential.- Prospects for Increasing Food Production: Technologically Optimistic but Politically Bleak.- 9. The Genesis Strategy: Suggestions for a Way Out of the World Predicament.- Energy-Climate-Development Dilemmas.- Nuclear Blackmail.- The Genesis Strategy: A Hedge Against Catastrophe.- Some New Institutions.- World Security Institutes.- A New American Institution: The Fourth Branch of Government.- Some New and Better Agreements.- Global Survival Compromise.- Terrorist Abatement Treaty.- Nuclear Materials Inventory and Control Commission.- Geophysical-Environment Modification Treaty.- Some Revised Attitudes and Procedures.- Limits to Incumbency.- Science Advice to Government.- Interdisciplinary Integration.- Attitudes for the Future.- IV Appendices, Illustrations, Bibliography, Notes, and Index.- A. Climatic Effects of Deforestation of the Amazon.- B. Natural Power Densities in the Earth-Atmosphere System.- C. Illustrations.- D. Suggested Readings.- E. Notes and References.- F. Index.