The poverty of nations

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Ross Gelbspan

In The Heat Is On, Ross Gelbspan exposes the deliberate campaign by oil and coal interests, teamed with conservative politicians, to confuse the public about global warming and the disruptive weather patterns that mark its initial stages. He shows how these fossil fuel proponents have supported the efforts of a small but highly vocal group of "scientific skeptics" whose statements distort the nature of scientific debate, raising doubts in the public mind about this threat which is, in fact, a matter of solid scientific consensus. Gelbspan sets the record straight with contributions from four of the world's leading climate scientists. Ironically, The Heat Is On also shows that the news about climatic change is now so bad that it may well help to save us as it brings the worldwide insurance industry, saddled with billions in unprecedented claims from weather-related damage, into the battle against fossil fuels. The book explains what this emerging alliance among the insurance industry, environmentalists, and a number of the world's most vulnerable nations must do to save the planet. Capturing both the global scope and the historical uniqueness of our dilemma, it shows that the price of inaction may extend well beyond flood-prone lowlands and drought-prone agricultural lands. One casualty could be democracy itself as nations faced with weather-related destabilization resort to totalitarian measures to control their populations.

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Alberto Valdés and Barry Schaeffer

"Presents and discusses the methodology and results of calculating the Nominal Protection Rate (NPR), Effective Protection Rate (EPR), Effective Rate of Assistance (ERA), and Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE) for Chile on apples, grapes, beef, maize, milk, sugar beets, and wheat for 1984-93"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

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Eric Lohr

"In this study of the treatment of "enemy" minorities in the Russian Empire during the First World War, Eric Lohr uncovers a dramatic story of mass deportations, purges, expropriations, and popular violence. An imperial campaign initially aimed at restricting foreign citizens rapidly spun out of control. It swept up Russian subjects of German, Jewish, and Muslim backgrounds and drove roughly a million civilians from one part of the empire to another, becoming one of the largest cases of forced migration in history to that time. Because foreigners and diaspora minorities were prominent among entrepreneurial and landowning elites, the campaign against them also became an explosive element in class and national tensions on the eve of the 1917 revolutions." "During the war, the imperial regime dropped its ambivalence about Russian nationalism and embraced unprecedented and radical policies that "nationalized" the economy, the land, and even the population. The core idea of the campaign that the country needed to free itself from the domination of foreigners, internal enemies, and the exploitative world economic system - later became a central feature of the Soviet revolutionary model."--Jacket.

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Peter S. Li

"A succinct critical analysis of contemporary immigration issues, Destination Canada will be essential reading not only for students in courses addressing topics such as immigration, race and ethnic relations, transnationalism, and globalization, but also for anyone engaged in the public debates about immigration."--BOOK JACKET.