Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:49:00.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - The Realm of Consequence

from Part One - Cities of the Rivers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2022

Carl H. Nightingale
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
Get access

Summary

Chapter 6 of Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet discusses the “realm of consequence,” the oscillating space occupied by life-destroying impacts of our city-enabled actions and habitats. In addition to forms of destruction generated solely by “endogenous” forces of political violence and war and by “exogenous” natural forces emanating from the Sun and Earth, the chapter explores places where our own city-enabled actions and impacts caused natural destruction, partly accounting for moments when urban worlds and the human population retreated in size. Cities incubated disease more prolifically than villages, resulting in many city-destroying and multi-continental pandemics. Expansions of agriculture to feed cities, the wider use of wood as fuel, and the resulting deforestation also had often city-destroying consequences via soil degradation and rising levels of river-water and silt. Urban industry and food systems, especially rice production, expanded human emissions of smoke and greenhouse gasses to Earth’s atmosphere as a whole for the first time during pre-modern times.

Type
Chapter
Information
Earthopolis
A Biography of Our Urban Planet
, pp. 135 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×