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Author Pretty, Jules N., author

Title The edge of extinction : travels with enduring people in vanishing lands / Jules Pretty
Published Ithaca ; London : Comstock Publishing Associates, a division of Cornell University Press, 2014
©2014

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Sea-coast: Ngai Tahu, Aotearoa (New Zealand) -- Mountain: Huangshan, China -- Desert: Murujuga (Burrup), Australia -- Steppe: Tyva, Russia -- Snow: Karelia, Finland -- Swamp: Okavango, Botswana -- Marsh-farm: East Anglia, England -- Coast: Antrim Glens, Northern Ireland -- Snow: Nitassinan, Labrador, Canada -- Farm-city: Amish counry, Ohio, USA -- Swamp: Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana, USA -- Desert: Timbisha (Death Valley), California, USA -- Coda: dreaming of the day after
Summary Overview: In The Edge of Extinction, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world, taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the future of the planet. Pretty addresses not only current threats to natural and cultural diversity but also the unsustainability of modern lifestyles typical of industrialized countries. In a very real sense, Pretty discovers, what we manage to preserve now may well save us later. Jules Pretty's travels take him among the Maori people along the coasts of the Pacific, into the mountains of China, and across petroglyph-rich deserts of Australia. He treks with nomads over the continent-wide steppes of Tuva in southern Siberia, walks and boats in the wildlife-rich inland swamps of southern Africa, and experiences the Arctic with ice fishermen in Finland. He explores the coasts and inland marshes of eastern England and Northern Ireland and accompanies Innu people across the taiga's snowy forests and the lakes of the Labrador interior. Pretty concludes his global journey immersed in the discrete cultures and landscapes embedded within the American landscape: the small farms of the Amish, the swamps of the Cajuns in the deep South, and the deserts of California. The diverse people Pretty meets in The Edge of Extinction display deep pride in their relationships with the land and are only willing to join with the modern world on their own terms. By the examples they set, they offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to find harmony in a world cracking under the pressures of apparently insatiable consumption patterns of the affluent
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages207-218)
Notes Print version record
Subject Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- Moral and ethical aspects
Human beings -- Effect of environment on -- Moral and ethical aspects
SCIENCE -- Earth Sciences -- General.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Human Geography.
TRAVEL -- Essays & Travelogues.
Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- Moral and ethical aspects
Indigenes Volk
Naturlandschaft
Nachhaltigkeit
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2019721515
ISBN 9780801455032
0801455030
9780801455049
0801455049