Books on the topic 'Natural growth rate'

Soon after the discovery that bacteria are abundant in natural environments, the question arose as to whether or not they were active. Although the plate count method suggested that they were dormant if not dead, other methods indicated that a large fraction of bacteria and fungi are active, as discussed in this chapter. It goes on to discuss fundamental equations for exponential growth and logistic growth, and it describes phases of growth in batch cultures, continuous cultures, and chemostats. In contrast with measuring growth in laboratory cultures, it is difficult to measure in natural environments for complex communities with co-occurring mortality. Among many methods that have been suggested over the years, the most common one for bacteria is the leucine approach, while for fungi it is the acetate-in ergosterol method. These methods indicate that the growth rate of the bulk community is on the order of days for bacteria in their natural environment. It is faster in aquatic habitats than in soils, and bacteria grow faster than fungi in soils. But bulk rates for bacteria appear to be slower than those for phytoplankton. All of these rates for natural communities are much slower than rates measured for most microbes in the laboratory. Rates in subsurface environments hundreds of meters from light-driven primary production and high organic carbon conditions are even lower. Rates vary greatly among microbial taxa, according to data on 16S rRNA. Copiotrophic bacteria grow much faster than oligotrophic bacteria, but may have low growth rates when conditions turn unfavorable. Some of the factors limiting heterotrophic bacteria and fungi include temperature and inorganic nutrients, but the supply of organic compounds is perhaps most important in most environments.

The twenty-first century is being touted as the Asian century. With its stable economy, good governance, education system, and above all the abundant natural resources, will Australia to take its place in the global economy by becoming more entrepreneurial and accelerating its rate of growth, or will it get infected with the so-called Dutch disease? It has been successful in managing trade ties with fast-developing economies like China and India as well as developed countries like the United States. It has participated in the growth of China by providing iron ore and coal. Because it is a low-risk country, it has enabled inflow of large foreign capital investments. A lot will depend on its capability and willingness to invest the capital available in entrepreneurial ventures, its ability to capture the full value chain of natural resources, and to export the finished products instead of raw materials, while building a robust manufacturing sector.

This chapter considers the period from the onset of major Muslim military advance to Aurangzeb’s death. In general, the population continued to grow slowly and fitfully. We can only speculate about variation in the rate of population growth. The fourteenth-century Black Death perhaps touched parts of the north-west. But there is no evidence of a major demographic collapse. The seventeenth century, the peak period of Mughal rule, was very challenging—for example, in terms of famines and plague. Nevertheless, the population seems to have grown. Analysts have used deficient data, for example on the cultivated land area, to try to estimate the size of India’s population c.1595. Considering previous work, a figure of 125 million seems a reasonable compromise. However, given the inadequate nature of the data, this number is very far from firm. Previous research appears to have overstated the size of Mughal cities and the accompanying level of urbanization.

Building the Population Bomb examines how human population came to be understood as a problem in the twentieth century, how it became an object of intervention for governments, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations, and how some forms of intervention got coded as legitimate while others were recognized as coercive. It traces the emergence and growth of two scientific perspectives on population from the 1920s to the present. The first, rooted in the natural sciences, considered the world’s population as a whole in relation to natural resources. The second, rooted in the social sciences, considered national population growth rates in relation to economic growth. These two perspectives converged briefly after World War II, convincing world leaders that population growth posed a barrier to economic development and a threat to worldwide peace and environmental integrity. The book documents how this overpopulation consensus attracted vast sums of money to demography and population control, and teases out the differences between population control, birth control, and family planning. It concludes with the fracturing of this consensus at the end of the 1960s, constituting the factions that structure today’s debates over whether the world’s population is growing too quickly or not quickly enough, and over what should be done about it. The book documents how population growth came to take the blame for the world’s most complex and pressing problems, and how efforts to solve “the population problem” have diverted attention and resources from the pursuit of economic, environmental, and reproductive justice.

The sequencing of entire genomes of microbes grown in pure cultures is now routine. The sequence data from cultivated microbes have provided insights into these microbes and their uncultivated relatives. Sequencing studies have found that bacterial genomes range from 0.18 Mb (intracellular symbiont) to 13 Mb (a soil bacterium), whereas genomes of eukaryotes are much bigger. Genomes from eukaryotes and prokaryotes are organized quite differently. While bacteria and their small genomes often grow faster than eukaryotes, there is no correlation between genome size and growth rates among the bacteria examined so far. Genomic studies have also highlighted the importance of genes exchanged (“horizontal gene transfer”) between organisms, seemingly unrelated, as defined by rRNA gene sequences. Microbial ecologists use metagenomics to sequence all microbes in a community. This approach has revealed unsuspected physiological processes in microbes, such as the occurrence of a light-driven proton pump, rhodopsin, in bacteria (dubbed proteorhodopsin). Genomes from single cells isolated by flow cytometry have also provided insights about the ecophysiology of both bacteria and protists. Oligotrophic bacteria have streamlined genomes, which are usually small but with a high fraction of genomic material devoted to protein-encoding genes, and few transcriptional control mechanisms. The study of all transcripts from a natural community, metatranscriptomics, has been informative about the response of eukaryotes as well as bacteria to changing environmental conditions.

In 1980–1, anti-police collective violence spread across England. This was the earliest confrontation between the state and members of the British public during Thatcher’s divisive government. This powerful and original book locates these disturbances within a longer struggle against racism and disadvantage faced by black Britons, which had seen a growth in more militant forms of resistance since World War II. In this first full-length historical study of 1980–1, three case studies – of Bristol, Brixton, and Manchester – emphasise the importance of local factors and the wider situation, concluding that these events should be viewed as ‘collective bargaining by riot’ – as a tool attempting increased political inclusion for marginalised black Britons. Focussing on the political activities of black Britons themselves, it explores the actions of community organisations in the aftermath of disorders to highlight dichotomous valuations of state mechanisms. A key focus is public inquiries, which were contrastingly viewed by black Britons as either a governmental diversionary tactic, or a method of legitimising their inclusion with the British constitutional system. Through study of a wide range of newly-available archives, interviews, understudied local sources, and records of grassroots black political organisations, this work expands understandings of protest movements and community activism in modern democracies while highlighting the often-problematic reliance upon ‘official’ sources when forming historical narratives. Of interest to researchers of race, ethnicity, and migration history, as well as modern British political and social history more generally, its interdisciplinary nature will also appeal to wider fields, including sociology, political sciences, and criminology.

China’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF), the China Investment Corporation (CIC), was established in 2007 and has grown to become the fourth largest SWF in the world with assets and offices spanning the globe. This chapter looks at the range of unique factors that need to be understood in order to place the CIC in context. When China decided to form its own SWF, it decided to do so by borrowing from the central bank in a complicated swap transaction in order to highlight the CIC’s independence from existing entities like the People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. While most SWFs grow from an excess of natural resource wealth, the Chinese SWF is unique in that it grew out of years of current account surpluses accumulated from ensuring a fixed exchange rate. The chapter discusses the macroeconomic interplay between China and the CIC.

Framboids may be the most astonishing and abundant natural features you have never heard of. These microscopic spherules of golden pyrite consist of thousands of even smaller microcrystals, often arranged in stunning geometric arrays. There are probably 10³⁰ on Earth, and they are forming at a rate of 10²⁰ every second. This means that there are a billion times more framboids than sand grains on Earth, and a million times more framboids than stars in the observable universe. They are all around us: they can be found in rocks of all ages and in present-day sediments, soils, and natural waters. The sulfur in the pyrite is mainly produced by bacteria, and many framboids contain organic matter. They are formed through burst nucleation of supersaturated solutions of iron and sulfide, followed by limited crystal growth in diffusion-dominated stagnant sediments. The framboids self-assemble as surface free energy is minimized and the microcrystals are attracted to each other by surface forces. Self-organization occurs through entropy maximization, and the microcrystals rotate into their final positions through Brownian motion. The final shape of the framboids is often actually polygonal or partially facetted rather than spherical, as icosahedral microcrystal packing develops. Their average diameter is around 6 microns and the average microcrystal size is about 0.1 microns. There is no significant change in these dimensions with time: the framboid is an exceptionally stable structure, and the oldest may be 2.9 billion years old. This means that they provide samples of the chemistry of ancient environments.

Community structure refers to the taxonomic types of microbes and their relative abundance in an environment. This chapter focuses on bacteria with a few words about fungi; protists and viruses are discussed in Chapters 9 and 10. Traditional methods for identifying microbes rely on biochemical testing of phenotype observable in the laboratory. Even for cultivated microbes and larger organisms, the traditional, phenotype approach has been replaced by comparing sequences of specific genes, those for 16S rRNA (archaea and bacteria) or 18S rRNA (microbial eukaryotes). Cultivation-independent approaches based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing have revealed that natural microbial communities have a few abundant types and many rare ones. These organisms differ substantially from those that can be grown in the laboratory using cultivation-dependent approaches. The abundant types of microbes found in soils, freshwater lakes, and oceans all differ. Once thought to be confined to extreme habitats, Archaea are now known to occur everywhere, but are particularly abundant in the deep ocean, where they make up as much as 50% of the total microbial abundance. Dispersal of bacteria and other small microbes is thought to be easy, leading to the Bass Becking hypothesis that “everything is everywhere, but the environment selects.” Among several factors known to affect community structure, salinity and temperature are very important, as is pH especially in soils. In addition to bottom-up factors, both top-down factors, grazing and viral lysis, also shape community structure. According to the Kill the Winner hypothesis, viruses select for fast-growing types, allowing slower growing defensive specialists to survive. Cultivation-independent approaches indicate that fungi are more diverse than previously appreciated, but they are less diverse than bacteria, especially in aquatic habitats. The community structure of fungi is affected by many of the same factors shaping bacterial community structure, but the dispersal of fungi is more limited than that of bacteria. The chapter ends with a discussion about the relationship between community structure and biogeochemical processes. The value of community structure information varies with the process and the degree of metabolic redundancy among the community members for the process.

For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. In Africa, countries dependent on oil, gas, and mining have tended to have weaker long-run growth, higher rates of poverty, and greater income inequality than less resource-abundant economies. In resource-producing economies, relative prices make it more difficult to diversify into activities outside of the resource sector, limiting structural change. Economic structure matters for at least two reasons. First, countries whose exports are highly concentrated are vulnerable to declining prices and volatility. Second, economic diversification matters for long-term growth. This book presents research undertaken to understand how better management of the revenues and opportunities associated with natural resources can accelerate diversification and structural change in Africa. It begins with chapters on managing the boom, the construction sector, and linking industry to the resource—three major issues that frame the question of how to use natural resources for structural change. It then reports the main research results for five countries—Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Each country study covers the same three themes—managing the boom, the construction sector, and linking industry to the resource. One message that clearly emerges is that good policy can make a difference. A concluding chapter sets out some ideas for policy change in each of the areas that guided the research, and then goes on to propose some ideas for widening the options for structural change.

A pocket reference that allows the non-specialist to identify major insect and arachnid pests found in stored cereal grains, grain products and grain legumes. It describes most storage pests found worldwide and provides concise information on the biology, distribution, damage and economic importance of each species. Each entry contains at least one colour photograph. The notes for each species tell the nature of the pest or beneficial and the commodity affected; temperature and humidity conditions at which the species can survive; optimum conditions at which eggs take the shortest time to develop into adults; and maximum population growth rate per month. This new edition has twice as many species in it and more detail on distribution, host range and pest status than the previous edition. Short introductory sections on insect biology, principles of control and concepts of pest status evaluation have also been added.

Nearly every form of life has the capacity to multiply and increase at a really astonishing rate. Think of plagues of locusts or mice. Clearly, for the vast majority of animals this does not happen, otherwise they would swamp the world and destroy all the plants. So why doesn’t it happen, and why does the world stay green? The concept explored in this book contends that animals are not controlled through predation but because plants have outwitted them, they cannot obtain enough of the food they must have to reproduce and grow. Why Does the World Stay Green? explains, in simple terms, how this comes about in nature and describes some of the many fascinating ways in which animals have evolved to cope with this usually chronic shortage of an essential resource. It is fascinating and easy-reading for anyone interested in natural history. The author, TCR White, has acted as a strong influence for the last 40 years on the ecological community, presenting confronting and at times controversial theories on the limiting role that nitrogen plays in the evolution of life. Why Does the World Stay Green? reveals this fascinating and important ecological theory.

This chapter explores the social and economic conditions that earned the South its label, “the problem South.” By 1938, the administration of Franklin Roosevelt had identified the “colonial economy” of the South as the nation's number one economic problem. In The Report on Economic Conditions of the South, key southern liberals, under the auspices of the administration's National Emergency Council, identified the paradox of the South—a region “blessed by Nature with immense wealth” whose “people as a whole are the poorest in the country.” The report described the poverty of the region and highlighted the need to embark on a program of economic development to bring the South's economy into convergence with the nation's, but changes were already in the works. Between the issuing of the report and the end of World War II, the South made great strides forward, positioning the region for economic growth at a rate that would surpass that of the nation.

Most of the research on the prehistoric archaeology of the Northeast shows that many such research attempts are confined mainly to surface sites, and that excavated sites from the Neolithic and even the historical period are comparatively rare. It is now time to scrutinize the nature of the studies done so far on Northeast Indian archaeology and assess the historiography, together with the recent theoretical developments in the discipline. The area is a contact zone between the East and the West and will only be fully known when a complete picture emerges of its prehistoric cultural growth through sustained archaeological and interdisciplinary palaeoecological research. This chapter spells out the rationale behind the research, the problem, the working hypotheses, aim, objectives, and methodologies followed in the book.

The Global Knowledge Society is a broad interdisciplinary effort that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century to probe the socioeconomic, technological, and geopolitical dimensions of knowledge production, growth, diffusion, and exploitation, in terms of impact on the development of societies worldwide. As a field of inquiry, the Global Knowledge Society encompasses all areas of social science including international relations, international communication, information technology, international development, and economics, as well as across the physical sciences and humanities. It also aims to fill a historical void in traditional social science—from economics and political science to international affairs and development studies—for explaining structural and environmental differences in societal rates of knowledge generation, application and adoption. A number of models on knowledge development have been explored in the literature, including the “Distributed Information Networks” approach, the “Technological Diffusion” approach, the “Genius Theory of Invention” approach, the “Creative and Proprietary Incentives” approach, and the “Cultural Legacy” approach. Models outside the social sciences and humanities also offer some rich possibilities, such as those under the label of “Idea Evolution.” Several of the models suggest the need for rethinking the mystery of persistent societal differences in knowledge growth within and between countries. Future research on knowledge society should consider bringing together researchers and policymakers from many disciplines across the natural and social sciences to review the substance of the field’s comparative methods and findings using interdisciplinary frameworks and complex factors.

Economists have long been preoccupied with trying to understand the nature and causes of poverty. From Adam Smith to David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill, a common belief among economists is that the benefits of economic growth are rarely experienced by the poorer sections of society. An important issue is how to measure global poverty accurately. International organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank have endeavored to measure global poverty since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), stated in the UN’s Millennium Declaration which was adopted in 2000 by 189 nations. However, measuring global poverty is far from simple. Estimates of poverty and particularly of global poverty are very sensitive to the underlying assumptions, such as the notion of poverty itself, the choice of welfare indicator, the unit of measurement used, and purchasing power parity rates. One of the significant advances in global poverty studies was the World Bank’s introduction of a poverty line in the 1990 World Development Report (WDR). Despite these efforts, the precise number of poor in the world remains ambiguous. Nevertheless, emerging frontiers in poverty analysis indicate new interest in measuring poverty more broadly. Some ideas that may dominate the future of poverty research include multidimensional poverty, vulnerability to poverty, and chronic poverty.

Brazil is one of the most important but puzzling countries in the world. A nation of 200 million people, it has vast natural resource reserves, rich cultural traditions, a middle class undergoing explosive growth, and social welfare policies that are models for much of the world (‘la bolsa familia,’ which provides a guaranteed income to poor families). And, after decades of authoritarian rule, it is a stable democracy. Yet it is beset by problems that no other advanced economy suffers from: staggeringly high crime rates, sky-high inequality levels, and endemic political corruption. Emblematic of these two sides of Brazil is the selection of Rio as site of both the next Summer Olympics and the next World Cup. While the choice of Rio for these events points to Brazil’s expanding presence on the world stage, so far the construction and planning for the events have been disastrous, threatening to deeply embarrass the nation. In Brazil: What Everyone Needs to Know, Riordan Roett, an eminent scholar of Brazil and Latin America, will provide a rich overview of Brazil, covering Brazilian society, politics, culture, and the economy. The book begins with a series of chapters on Brazilian history, beginning with the pre-colonial period and moving on, in succession, to the long era of Portuguese rule, the birth of independent Brazil, the emergence of modern Brazil in the 1930s, the era of the dictators, and - finally - to the democratic regime that came into being in the 1980s. Throughout the book, Roett will focus sharply on the fault lines -- racial, economic, political, and cultural - that have plagued Brazil from its beginnings to this day. As the 2016 World Cup and Summer Olympics approach, interest in Brazil is sure to rise. Roett’s synthesis will provide interested readers with an accessible, authoritative overview of this troubled yet fascinating giant.

Any public debate about air pollution starts with the premise that air pollution cannot be good for you, so we should have less of it. However, it is much more difficult to determine how much is dangerous, and even more difficult to decide how much we are willing to pay for improvements in measured air pollution. Recent UK estimates suggest that fine particulate pollution causes about 6500 deaths per year, although it is not clear how many years of life are lost as a result. Some deaths may just be brought forward by a few days or weeks, while others may be truly premature. Globally, household pollution from cooking fuels may cause up to two million premature deaths per year in the developing world. The hazards of black smoke air pollution have been known since antiquity. The first descriptions of deaths caused by air pollution are those recorded after the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79. In modern times, the infamous smogs of the early twentieth century in Belgium and London were clearly shown to trigger deaths in people with chronic bronchitis and heart disease. In mechanistic terms, black smoke and sulphur dioxide generated from industrial processes and domestic coal burning cause airway inflammation, exacerbation of chronic bronchitis, and consequent heart failure. Epidemiological analysis has confirmed that the deaths included both those who were likely to have died soon anyway and those who might well have survived for months or years if the pollution event had not occurred. Clean air legislation has dramatically reduced the levels of these traditional pollutants in the West, although these pollutants are still important in China, and smoke from solid cooking fuel continues to take a heavy toll amongst women in less developed parts of the world. New forms of air pollution have emerged, principally due to the increase in motor vehicle traffic since the 1950s. The combination of fine particulates and ground-level ozone causes ‘summer smogs’ which intensify over cities during summer periods of high barometric pressure. In Los Angeles and Mexico City, ozone concentrations commonly reach levels which are associated with adverse respiratory effects in normal and asthmatic subjects. Ozone directly affects the airways, causing reduced inspiratory capacity. This effect is more marked in patients with asthma and is clinically important, since epidemiological studies have found linear associations between ozone concentrations and admission rates for asthma and related respiratory diseases. Ozone induces an acute neutrophilic inflammatory response in both human and animal airways, together with release of chemokines (e.g. interleukin 8 and growth-related oncogene-alpha). Nitrogen oxides have less direct effect on human airways, but they increase the response to allergen challenge in patients with atopic asthma. Nitrogen oxide exposure also increases the risk of becoming ill after exposure to influenza. Alveolar macrophages are less able to inactivate influenza viruses and this leads to an increased probability of infection after experimental exposure to influenza. In the last two decades, major concerns have been raised about the effects of fine particulates. An association between fine particulate levels and cardiovascular and respiratory mortality and morbidity was first reported in 1993 and has since been confirmed in several other countries. Globally, about 90% of airborne particles are formed naturally, from sea spray, dust storms, volcanoes, and burning grass and forests. Human activity accounts for about 10% of aerosols (in terms of mass). This comes from transport, power stations, and various industrial processes. Diesel exhaust is the principal source of fine particulate pollution in Europe, while sea spray is the principal source in California, and agricultural activity is a major contributor in inland areas of the US. Dust storms are important sources in the Sahara, the Middle East, and parts of China. The mechanism of adverse health effects remains unclear but, unlike the case for ozone and nitrogen oxides, there is no safe threshold for the health effects of particulates. Since the 1990s, tax measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have led to a rapid rise in the proportion of new cars with diesel engines. In the UK, this rose from 4% in 1990 to one-third of new cars in 2004 while, in France, over half of new vehicles have diesel engines. Diesel exhaust particles may increase the risk of sensitization to airborne allergens and cause airways inflammation both in vitro and in vivo. Extensive epidemiological work has confirmed that there is an association between increased exposure to environmental fine particulates and death from cardiovascular causes. Various mechanisms have been proposed: cardiac rhythm disturbance seems the most likely at present. It has also been proposed that high numbers of ultrafine particles may cause alveolar inflammation which then exacerbates preexisting cardiac and pulmonary disease. In support of this hypothesis, the metal content of ultrafine particles induces oxidative stress when alveolar macrophages are exposed to particles in vitro. While this is a plausible mechanism, in epidemiological studies it is difficult to separate the effects of ultrafine particles from those of other traffic-related pollutants.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.