Sound Bite
Exploring the links between politics and economics, globalization, peak oil, global warming, and disastrous weather, the author shows how human values and human activity have set us on a course to calamity and calls for a profound change in how we exploit the earth's resources.
About the Author
Michael P. Byron holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine. He teaches all aspects of Political Science and Political Economy in colleges in the San Diego area. He has published a number of peer-reviewed professional papers, and numerous newspaper opinion pieces, and has presented many papers at international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Socio-cybernetics. Byron was the Democratic Party’s candidate for United States Congress in California’s 49th Congressional District in 2004.
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About the Book
Ready for a dramatic lifestyle change? If mankind continues to deplete Earth's bounteous resources at an accelerating pace, drastic changes are inevitable....
Ready for a dramatic lifestyle change? If mankind continues to deplete Earth's bounteous resources at an accelerating pace, drastic changes are inevitable. Infinite as Earth's resources have always seemed to be, the author presents evidence showing that mankind is rapidly using up many of the most necessary resources, and he draws a dire conclusion about the consequences for everything from our future food supply to global political stability. He argues that the failure of the US and other nations' political systems to deal with these issues has driven the planet's ecology to the brink of collapse. This book provides an integrated assessment of current problems involving climate, ecology, energy, politics and economics. Systems theory is used in a non-technical manner to explain these linkages and the causes and consequences of human actions upon them. In addition, the author gives a detailed, clear analysis of how humans process information in order to learn to deal with the world around them'and in particular how to deal with crisis situations. The book describes how and why these problems have arisen from mankind's values and actions, and serves as a call to action for radical change to set civilization on a more promising path to long-term survival. The book places particular emphasis upon the role of multinational corporations in contributing both to our ongoing political failure to respond effectively to these challenges and, also, to causing global warming and hydrocarbon resource depletion. The effects of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood upon the ability of these artificial 'persons' ability to capture control over human political systems are carefully analyzed. The consequences of the resultant failures of corporate-subordinated political systems are shown to be both inevitable and foreseeable so long as the doctrine of corporate personhood operates. He further observes that corporatism could not have gained so much political control without the support of the public, especially the religious right, and Dispensationalists in particular who believe that we have entered into the final period of history during which the Bible's prophecies will be carried out'literally. The sooner we see the destruction of our earthly paradise, the sooner they hope to get to heaven. Such beliefs are neatly exploited by those who have a more venal interest in promoting slash-and-burn technologies.
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Mike Byron has painted an extraordinary picture | More »
Mike Byron has painted an extraordinary picture
Mike Byron has painted an extraordinary picture of where the human race presently resides, a portrait that is both grim and optimistic. INFINITY'S RAINBOW reveals options for how we may be able not only to survive, but rebirth our civilization in the face of all the unprecedented and daunting challenges facing it." %u2014 Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., adjunct professor of history, and author of History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You. Byron (PhD, political science, U. of California at Irvine) applies systems theory to the environmental and resource crisis humankind is bringing upon itself. He traces these crises and the impediments to solutions to the sociopolitical institutions that have developed into today's world of global corporatism, an "unholy union" of church, corporation, and state.
February 2007 Reference & Research Book News
An insightful call to arms | More »
An insightful call to arms
An insightful call to arms about our precarious 21st century. That this is the crucial century few can now doubt, and Byron sees this well.
Gregory Benford, author of DEEP TIME.
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Pages 252
Year: 2006
LC Classification: JA75.8.B85
Dewey code: 333.790973--dc22
BISAC: BUS070040
BISAC: SCI024000
BISAC: POL033000
Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-509-6
Price: USD 23.95
Hard Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-510-2
Price: USD 29.95
eBook
ISBN: 978-0-87586-511-9
Price: USD 23.95
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