David Pimentel’s research while affiliated with Cornell College and other places

This book takes you on a unique journey through American history, taking time to consider the forces that shaped the development of various cities and regions, and arrives at an unexpected conclusion regarding sustainability. From the American Dream to globalization to the digital and information revolutions, we assume that humans have taken control of our collective destinies in spite of potholes in the road such as the Great Recession of 2007-2009. However, these attitudes were formed during a unique 100-year period of human history in which a large but finite supply of fossil fuels was tapped to feed our economic and innovation engine. Today, at the peak of the Oil Age, the horizon looks different. Cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas are situated where water and other vital ecological services are scarce, and the enormous flows of resources and energy that were needed to create the megalopolises of the 20th century will prove unsustainable. Climate change is a reality, and regional impacts will become increasingly severe. Economies such as Las Vegas, which are dependent on discretionary income and buffeted by climate change, are already suffering the fate of the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Finite resources will mean profound changes for society in general and the energy-intensive lifestyles of the US and Canada in particular. But not all regions are equally vulnerable to these 21st-century megatrends. Are you ready to look beyond “America’s Most Livable Cities” to the critical factors that will determine the sustainability of your municipality and region? Find out where your city or region ranks according to the forces that will impact our lives in the next years and decades. Find out how: ·resource availability and ecological services shaped the modern landscape ·emerging megatrends will make cities and regions more or less livable in the new century ·your city or region ranks on a “sustainability” map of the United States ·urban metabolism puts large cities at particular risk ·sustainability factors will favor economic solutions at a local, rather than global, level ·these principles apply to industrial economies and countries globally.

This book explores the complex interrelationships between food and agriculture, politics, and society. More specifically, it considers the political aspects of three basic economic questions: what is to be produced? how is it to be produced? how it is to be distributed? It also outlines three unifying themes running through the politics of answering these societal questions with regard to food, namely: ecology, technology and property. Furthermore, the book examines the tendency to address the new organization of global civil society around food, its production, distribution, and consequences for the least powerful within the context of the North-South divide; the problems of malnutrition as opposed to poverty, food insecurity, and food shortages, as well as the widespread undernutrition in developing countries; and how biotechnology can be used to ensure a sustainable human future by addressing global problems such as human population growth, pollution, climate change, and limited access to clean water and other basic food production resources. The influence of science and politics on the framing of modern agricultural technologies is also discussed, along with the worsening food crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, food security and food safety, and the relationship between gender inequality and food security. Other chapters deal with the link between land and food and its implications for social justice; the "eco-shopping” perspective; the transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries; the role of wild foods in food security; agroecological intensification of smallholder production systems; and the ethics of food production and consumption.

During the coming decades, the world and the USA in particular will be facing serious energy-related problems associated with declines in conventional oil extraction and high prices as well as lower energy return on investment (EROI) for unconventional oil. Oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power provide more than 87% of world energy needs; the other 13% consisting of alternative energy sources, whereas, in the USA, fossil fuels and nuclear power provide more than 93% of our energy needs, with 7% coming from alternative sources. With 4.5% of the world's population, the USA consumes 20-25% of the world's energy. On average, each American uses nearly 8000 L of oil equivalents per year or 50.3 barrels for all purposes, including transportation, industry, heating, and cooling.

We discuss the sustainability of natural and human systems in the United States in relation to 21st century threats associated with energy scarcity, climate change, the loss of ecosystem services, the limitations of neoclassical economics, and human settlement patterns. Increasing scarcity and the decreasing return on investment for existing conventional energy reserves are expected to significantly reduce the amount of affordable energy for societal needs and demands. This will also make dealing with the predicted impacts of climate change more difficult and expensive. Climate change will threaten the present sustainability of natural environments, agriculture, and urban areas but these impacts will manifest themselves differentially across the landscape. The impacts of projected climate change will make living in arid regions of the southern Great Plains, the Southwest, and the southern half of California increasingly difficult. Accelerated sea-level rise and increased frequency of strong hurricanes will increase the vulnerability of natural and human systems along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts while making them less sustainable. Ecosystem services provided by natural environments form the basis for the human economy everywhere and are also at risk from climate change impacts and overuse. Decreasing energy availability, climate change, and continued degradation of ecosystem services are likely to make continued economic growth difficult if not impossible. The capacity of neoclassical economics to effectively deal with these growing threats is limited. The areas of the country most compromised by these 21st century trends are likely to be the southern Great Plains, Southwest, southern California, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and densely populated areas everywhere, but especially in the northeast, Midwest, and southern California.

Most of the transport systems of the developed world run on liquid fuels produced from petroleum. Global shortages of these liquid fuels, both current and anticipated, have led corporate and political leaders throughout the developed world to investigate and develop liquid fuels from food crops, mainly corn, palm oil, soybean, canola and sugarcane. Liquid fuels made from these foods, heavily subsidized by national governments, are being promoted to partially replace liquid fossil fuels. The United States has legislatively mandated (the Renewable Fuels Standards legislation enacted in 2007) that a certain portion of the overall corn and soybean crops annually be used to produce liquid biofuels. Emissions mandates and subsidies have been enacted by European countries as well to promote the production of liquid biofuels. These European emission standards and subsidies have in turn caused corporations involved in biodiesel production from palm oil to encourage the conversion of ‘‘unproductive forestlands’’ by governments of several tropical developing countries into plantations of oil palms to produce biodiesel stock for primarily European countries while reducing biodiversity, sustainable subsistence farming and increasing unemployment, and reducing the variety of foods available to most people in these regions. These governmental actions have raised commodity prices for all the food crops being used to make liquid biofuels as well as raising commodity prices of crops that can replace these biofuel stock commodities, which raises food prices for rich and poor alike. On top of which the energy inputs necessary to produce biodiesel from palm oil are 8 % more than the energy obtained from palm oil biodiesel, which means at present, biodiesel production from palm oil is simply unsustainable in the absence of fossil fuels. Rapeseed and canola are the other two cultivated sources of oil for biodiesel production in Europe but the energy yield of the biodiesel obtained from these two oil seeds is 58 % less than the energy, almost always from fossil fuels, needed to produce, transport, process these crops, and distribute the biodiesel. While rapeseed is not a food crop, growing rapeseed on land that could support crops makes its cultivation for biofuels a waste of good agricultural land while growing rapeseed on marginal land has been found by at least one

This book explores the complex interrelationships between food and agriculture, politics, and society. More specifically, it considers the political aspects of three basic economic questions: what is to be produced? how is it to be produced? how it is to be distributed? It also outlines three unifying themes running through the politics of answering these societal questions with regard to food, namely: ecology, technology and property. Furthermore, the book examines the tendency to address the new organization of global civil society around food, its production, distribution, and consequences for the least powerful within the context of the North-South divide; the problems of malnutrition as opposed to poverty, food insecurity, and food shortages, as well as the widespread undernutrition in developing countries; and how biotechnology can be used to ensure a sustainable human future by addressing global problems such as human population growth, pollution, climate change, and limited access to clean water and other basic food production resources. The influence of science and politics on the framing of modern agricultural technologies is also discussed, along with the worsening food crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, food security and food safety, and the relationship between gender inequality and food security. Other chapters deal with the link between land and food and its implications for social justice; the "eco-shopping” perspective; the transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries; the role of wild foods in food security; agroecological intensification of smallholder production systems; and the ethics of food production and consumption.

Since humans worldwide obtain more than 99.7% of their food (calories) from the land and less than 0.3% from the oceans and aquatic ecosystems, preserving cropland and maintaining soil fertility should be of the highest importance to human welfare. Soil erosion is one of the most serious threats facing world food production. Each year about 10 million ha of cropland are lost due to soil erosion, thus reducing the cropland available for world food production. The loss of cropland is a serious problem because the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization report that two-thirds of the world population is malnourished. Overall, soil is being lost from agricultural areas 10 to 40 times faster than the rate of soil formation imperiling humanity’s food security.

An obvious need for an updated and comprehensive study prompted this investigation of the complex of environmental and economic costs resulting from the nation’s dependence on pesticides. Included in this assessment of an estimated $9.6 billion in environmental and societal damages are analyses of: pesticide impacts on public health; livestock and livestock product losses; increased control expenses resulting from pesticide-related destruction of natural enemies and from the development of pesticide resistance in pests; crop pollination problems and honeybee losses; crop and crop product losses; bird, fish, and other wildlife losses; and governmental expenditures to reduce the environmental and social costs of the recommended application of pesticides. The major economic and environmental losses due to the application of pesticides in the USA were: public health,$1.1 billion year; pesticide resistance in pests, $1.5 billion; crop losses caused by pesticides,$1.4 billion; bird losses due to pesticides, $2.2 billion; and groundwater contamination,$2.0 billion.

Pesticides cause serious public health problems and considerable damage to agricultural and natural ecosystems. We confirm previous reports that it is feasible to reduce pesticide use by 50 % or more. The Swedish Government achieved a 61 % reduction in pesticide use and the Indonesian Government achieved a 65 % reduction in pesticide use without a reduction in crop yields. In fact in Indonesia the result of the reduction in pesticide use was a 12 % increase in rice yield. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014. All rights are reserved.