The Political Ecology of Global Environmental Change
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The conquest and colonization of other ecological zones allowed the European powers to exceed the carrying capacity of their local ecologies, as was shown in the trade in guano to replenish the European soils (Foster et al., 2010). The utilization of non-renewable hydrocarbon energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, through the access to the product of previous historical ecologies, was a discontinuity that allowed human society to fully escape previous limitations on its size, complexity, and growth rate. The resulting rapid growth dependent upon these factors has lead to both a set of dangerous hegemonic beliefs and a path dependent basis for unsustainable development. The history of the global agricultural industry from 1800 is utilized to analyze this fossil fuel dependent development, and the hegemonic discourses that were supported and developed by it. The example of the Cuban transition to more ecologically sound methods of agriculture, after its access to external hydrocarbon and food supplies was greatly reduced in the early 1990’s, is used to assess the complexity and difficulty of such a transition on a global scale.
The Political Ecology of Global Environmental Change
The Political Ecology of Global Environmental…
The Political Ecology of Global Environmental Change
The conquest and colonization of other ecological zones allowed the European powers to exceed the carrying capacity of their local ecologies, as was shown in the trade in guano to replenish the European soils (Foster et al., 2010). The utilization of non-renewable hydrocarbon energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, through the access to the product of previous historical ecologies, was a discontinuity that allowed human society to fully escape previous limitations on its size, complexity, and growth rate. The resulting rapid growth dependent upon these factors has lead to both a set of dangerous hegemonic beliefs and a path dependent basis for unsustainable development. The history of the global agricultural industry from 1800 is utilized to analyze this fossil fuel dependent development, and the hegemonic discourses that were supported and developed by it. The example of the Cuban transition to more ecologically sound methods of agriculture, after its access to external hydrocarbon and food supplies was greatly reduced in the early 1990’s, is used to assess the complexity and difficulty of such a transition on a global scale.