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US Environmental History : Inviting Doomsday / John Wills.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2022]Copyright date: ©2012Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) : 14 B/W illustrationsContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780748622634
  • 9780748629794
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 333.70973 23
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Introduction -- Prologue: The Invitation -- 1 Killing in the Wilderness -- 2 The End of the (old) World -- 3 The Armageddon Experiment: Doom Town USA -- 4 Chemical Dystopia and Silent Spring -- 5 Black Days: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Deepwater Horizon -- 6 The Disaster City and Hurricane Katrina -- 7 Disney/Disnature and the End of the Organic -- Conclusion: The Doomsday Machine -- Epilogue: The Doomsday Seed -- Index
Summary: Environmental issues in the USA are more important now than ever before. The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, growing evidence of global warming, and a struggling national energy supply highlight the unfolding crisis. Environmental fears translate into US automobile giants plying consumers with 'fuel efficient' cars in the 'MPG Lounge' of sales. Politicians talk of energy independence and getting tough on polluters. Fears gravitate around a fast-approaching doomsday scenario, an environmental endgame, of wholesale collapse, unless something is done.Yet fears of doomsday are nothing new. John Wills shows how the current environmental crisis is firmly rooted in the past. As well as explaining how today's problems are manifestations of older systems of economics, culture and politics, he also argues that America has already witnessed a range of 'doomsday scenarios,' both real and imagined. He identifies and explores a cast of 'doomsday landscapes' that includes the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, the 'Fable for Tomorrow' town featured in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Nevada's Doom Towns 1 and 2 blown apart by atomic testing in the 1950s. He reflects on contemporary ruminations over whether nature as a category endures given both the rising contamination of the US landscape and consumer proclivity for celebrating fake mementos of the outdoors (such as plastic lawn flamingos and artificial plants). And most significantly, he poses the question of whether Americans have been inviting doomsday through their long-term environmental actions.
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Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780748629794
Browsing Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino shelves, Shelving location: Nuvola online Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)
online - DeGruyter A Glossary of US Politics and Government / online - DeGruyter American Culture in the 1930s / online - DeGruyter A Glossary of Political Theory / online - DeGruyter US Environmental History : Inviting Doomsday / online - DeGruyter Contemporary American Fiction / online - DeGruyter Asian American Literature / online - DeGruyter A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics /

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Introduction -- Prologue: The Invitation -- 1 Killing in the Wilderness -- 2 The End of the (old) World -- 3 The Armageddon Experiment: Doom Town USA -- 4 Chemical Dystopia and Silent Spring -- 5 Black Days: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Deepwater Horizon -- 6 The Disaster City and Hurricane Katrina -- 7 Disney/Disnature and the End of the Organic -- Conclusion: The Doomsday Machine -- Epilogue: The Doomsday Seed -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Environmental issues in the USA are more important now than ever before. The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, growing evidence of global warming, and a struggling national energy supply highlight the unfolding crisis. Environmental fears translate into US automobile giants plying consumers with 'fuel efficient' cars in the 'MPG Lounge' of sales. Politicians talk of energy independence and getting tough on polluters. Fears gravitate around a fast-approaching doomsday scenario, an environmental endgame, of wholesale collapse, unless something is done.Yet fears of doomsday are nothing new. John Wills shows how the current environmental crisis is firmly rooted in the past. As well as explaining how today's problems are manifestations of older systems of economics, culture and politics, he also argues that America has already witnessed a range of 'doomsday scenarios,' both real and imagined. He identifies and explores a cast of 'doomsday landscapes' that includes the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, the 'Fable for Tomorrow' town featured in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Nevada's Doom Towns 1 and 2 blown apart by atomic testing in the 1950s. He reflects on contemporary ruminations over whether nature as a category endures given both the rising contamination of the US landscape and consumer proclivity for celebrating fake mementos of the outdoors (such as plastic lawn flamingos and artificial plants). And most significantly, he poses the question of whether Americans have been inviting doomsday through their long-term environmental actions.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jun 2022)