Water : : Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity / / Jeremy J. Schmidt.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Schmidt, Jeremy J.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

An intellectual history of America's water management philosophyHumans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. This imbalance has created an era of intense water scarcity that affects the security of individuals, states, and the global economy. For many, this brazen water grab and the social inequalities it produces reflect the lack of a coherent philosophy connecting people to the planet. Challenging this view, Jeremy Schmidt shows how water was made a “resource” that linked geology, politics, and culture to American institutions. Understanding the global spread and evolution of this philosophy is now key to addressing inequalities that exist on a geological scale. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity details the remarkable intellectual history of America’s water management philosophy. It shows how this philosophy shaped early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, influenced American international development programs, and ultimately shaped programs of global governance that today connect water resources to the Earth system. Schmidt demonstrates how the ways we think about water reflect specific public and societal values, and illuminates the process by which the American approach to water management came to dominate the global conversation about water. Debates over how human impacts on the planet are connected to a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Entering a new era of water management -- Part I. Abundance -- 1. First water, then the world -- 2. Laissez- faire metaphysics -- 3. Managing water for “the people” -- Part II. Scarcity -- 4. America’s post- colonial model of development -- 5. The space of scarcity -- Part III. Security -- 6. The globalization of normal water -- 7. Securing the water- energy- food- climate nexus -- Part IV. Rethinking the anthropocene -- 8. The anthropocene and the naturalization of process -- 9. Thinking ecologically in an age of geology -- Conclusion. Water in the anthropocene -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author