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The construction of Three Gorges Dan on
China's Yangtze River. The transformation of the Amazon
River basin into a site for huge cattle ranches and aluminum
smelters. Conversion of Nevada's Yucca Mountain into a repository
for nuclear waste, and development of the extensive irrigation
networks of the Grand Coulee and Kuibyshev Dams. On the
face of it, massive projects such as these are wonders of
engineering, financial prowess, and our seldom-questioned
ability to modify nature to suit our immediate needs. For
more than a century we have relied increasingly on science
and technology to harness natural forces, but at what environmental
and social cost?
In Industrialized Nature, the accomplished
historian Paul R. Josephson shows us how science, engineering,
policy, finance, and hubris have come together, often with
unforeseen consequences, to perpetuate what he calls "brute
force technologies" -- large-scale systems created
to exploit water, forest, and fish resources. Nations with
quite different political systems and economic orientations
(such as the former Soviet Union, Norway, Brazil, and the
United States) have pursued a remarkably similar strategy
of using such large-scale technology to turn nature into
a smoothly running machine. Josephson vividly demonstrates
how irresponsible -- or well-intentioned but misguided --
large-scale manipulation of nature has resulted, time after
time, in resource loss, social disruption, more brute force
politics, and severe environmental degradation.
Both a cautionary tale and a call to action,
Industrialized Nature urges us to consider how to
avoid the pitfalls of brute force technologies and begin
to develop a better future for ourselves and our children.
Paul R. Josephson is associate professor
of history at Colby College. He is the author of Red
Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today
(1999), Totalitarian Science and Technology (1996),
and the award-winning New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok,
the Siberian City of Science (1997). He has published
articles in Physics Today, the Christian Science
Monitor, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times,
the Boston Globe, and the New York Times.
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