A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest [Hardcover]

William deBuys (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 12, 2011

With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.

In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years.

Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.

Praise for River of Traps:

"Brims with gifts of language and vision."
--Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review

"An irresistibly engaging story...deBuys is a storyteller of poetic breadth with a discerning eye for subtle, sensitive associations."
--The Nation

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is on the short list of key books for anyone who lives in or loves the American southwest--with scientific precision and understated emotional power, it explains what your future holds. If you live elsewhere: it's a deep glimpse into one place on our fast-changing planet, and you'll be able to do many extrapolations. Remarkable work!" - Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

"DeBuys delivers thoughtful portraits of efforts to ameliorate conditions . . . readers will appreciate this intelligent account of water politics, forest ecology and urban planning in a region seriously stressed even before global warming arrived to make matters worse."
--Kirkus Reviews

"With wide-eyed wonder and the clearest of prose, deBuys explains why we should care about these places, the people he portrays, and the conundrums over land and water he illuminates. No longer are aridity and climate change in the Southwest only of regional interest; deBuys is writing for America and we should all listen to what he has to say." --Booklist (starred review)

"Drawing on the work of climatologists and other scientists, deBuys's analysis of the eco-crisis - rising temperatures, wildfires, water shortages, disappearing wildlife - is a reasoned warning to heavily populated arid regions round the world." - Nature

"A Great Aridness is his most disturbing book, a jeremiad that ought to be required reading for politicians, economists, real-estate developers and anyone thinking about migrating to the Sunbelt." --American Scientist

"Non-experts who want a concrete sense of climate change's impact - and a lyrical reading experience - should turn to A Great Aridness." - Washington Post

About the Author

William deBuys is the author of six books, including River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction in 1991; Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range; The Walk (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize in 2008), and Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California. An active conservationist, deBuys has helped protect more than 150,000 acres in New Mexico, Arizona, and North Carolina. He lives and writes on a small farm in northern New Mexico.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199778922
• ISBN-13: 978-0199778928
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #112,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Climatology

More About the Author

William deBuys's books include River of Traps (reissued in 2008), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. An excerpt from The Walk, which is set in the same mountain valley as River of Traps, won a 2008 Pushcart Prize. He was a 2008-2009 Guggenheim Fellow and spent his fellowship year working on "A Great Aridness: Climate Change in the North American Southwest." Long active in environmental matters in the Southwest, deBuys was the founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust (2001-2004), which manages the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico. Recent writing projects have taken him as far afield as Borneo and Lao PDR. He lives on a small farm in El Valle, New Mexico.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Story of the West is Essentially A Story About Water, And It's Lack" February 7, 2012

By Greg Polansky

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

William deBuys has written an environmental history of the American Southwest. He explores the history and present of the region so that he can offer a prognosis on what a warmer, drier world will mean for this region in the future. And that prognosis does not look good based on demographic and environmental trends.

In the history section, using archaeological records and other sources, deBuys explores the failed civilizations of the American southwest. He shows how they succumbed to the mega droughts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The drier world of the time led to the civilization of the time facing economic and demographic collapse. Some turned to violence. Others gave up on their homes and moved. When writing about these failed civilizations, there is a certain sadness to the author's voice that is quite touching. These were technologically advanced civilizations for the time period. And yet they could not do anything in the face of a warming world.

In the sections on the present, the author is at his best. The author systematically constructs the modern world that we live in, showing how policy, demographics, agriculture, immigration, and economics all interact to create a society that is using more water than is sustainable. And what an eye opener it is. No society can survive for long when it uses more water than is replaced. And yet according to the author, the American Southwest continues to add new people. But no new water is being added. Just the opposite. And that is just a demographic timebomb waiting to happen.

The author shows how present society's 'hydraulic cornucopia' is just a mirage in the desert. Eventually reality will set in. And then how will the society of the American Southwest deal with it? The author offers no solutions. He just describes the issues at hand. Though his book is one solution - education is a way forward. And the book does an excellent job of educating its readers to the problems at hand. There are no easy solutions, but the idea of balance between humanity and the environment is something that policy makers will need to look at - how to reach an equilibrium in a warming area where both humans and the environment can coexist and thrive.

38 of 50 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Read, but beware the booby traps. February 27, 2012

By Richard Carlson

Format:Hardcover

This is a fascinating, well written, technically flawed and schizoid document. I can't recall so loving and hating the same book. The author wants less growth, less construction, more construction, more growth, more science and less science in roughly that order. My linear mind just can't handle this degree of internal contradiction. I'm a policy wonk; I've been working on western water, energy, growth and environmental issues for over 35 years. I live in Tucson and California. DeBuys repeatedly reeled me in with some good writing and then he'd either hit a wall or a booby trap, you need to be an expert BEFORE you read it. Knee jerks will love this book, but those that retain an unfashionable degree of independent thought will want to read it with great care.

The best parts of the book are where he intertwines archaeology and policy with a travelogue. He takes the reader to some interesting spots and describes the many I know well . The book begins with a visit to the Colorado Plateau and the collapse of the Anasazi civilization. The theme of the book is that modern Arizona is headed for the same level of collapse. That's a wonderfully romantic notion that will appeal to fashionable gloomsters, but it requires decades of total policy idiocy. (Even Congress and the Arizona legislature won't be that stupid for that long.)

The first chapters are a good exposition of the extreme version of climate change. The book chugs along until we hit the first wall: climate change in the Southwest probably means less winter snow but more summer rain. He spends many pages on the less snow problem, but then stops with a few paragraphs on the likely growth of more summer rain. There is a huge difference between less total precipitation and a change in the pattern, that's an unromantic conclusion so he just stops. He sort of restarts concentrating on current water problems and Arizona's low priority if there is a drought. This section is really great until he hits another wall: irrigation policy. Every serious analyst knows that agriculture uses the great majority of western water and the only serious solution to the region's water problem is using saleable water rights to move water from agriculture to urban uses. California's subsidized cows someday will be much happier in Oregon or Wisconsin. DeBuys reaches the edge of this solution but stops once again. This well known policy solution means no romantic visions of collapse, so the chapter ends in mid-thought.

In chapter 8 DeBuys reaches the book's schizoid pinnacle: a beautifully written, lyrical paen to why we shouldn't limit immigration. He's spent 7 chapters explaining why growth is bad, and then he tells us why stopping immigration, the source of 80 to 90 % of that growth, is bad, too! GAAACK! Either growth is bad or it's good. DeBuys is so desperate to be politically correct that he wants both unlimited immigration and no-growth. The difference between the US Census Bureau's 2009 projections of high and zero immigration is another 135 million people! There is no conceivable set of environmental policies that can withstand that many more people. The pain of immigration can be eased with guest workers etc. , but that border still has to be sealed, illegal immigrants still will need to be deported, and some will still die trying to cross the border, or you can kiss the environment good-bye.

Having destroyed most of his credibility in chapter 8, he completely shreds the remaining vestiges of his analytic believability in Chapter 10: Mt. Graham. The case of the Mt. Graham Red Squirrel was a disastrous misuse of the Endangered Species Act and a frightening exposition of the anti-scientific underbelly of too much of the modern environmental movement. The Mt. Graham Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is one of humankind's great scientific achievements. The Mt. Graham Red Squirrel is an obscure subspecies of a population of millions of North American Red Squirrels. Against all forecasts, the squirrel has survived the LBT just fine; it's population fluctuates with fire and rainfall, just as it always has, telescope or no telescope. The Endangered Species Act was sold as the way to protect true species, like the Bald Eagle, not obscure, nearly impossible to differentiate subspecies, like the Mt. Graham Red Squirrel. The really ugly truth is that the Red Squirrel mostly was just an excuse to stop Big Science. I will respect those who oppose science and want to return to a "natural" world only if they actually live without electricity, cars and computers. I've yet to meet one.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Moving Study of the Southwest February 9, 2012

By JoMarshall

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

William DeBuys offers an unsettling description of the developing climate crisis in the Southwest. It's especially disturbing as those events are indicators of future crises in other regions. His book is a heartfelt study of a distressing man-made and climate-made downward spiral of this beautiful and fragile land and its inhabitants. It's a poignant plea to take adaptive conservation action in the Southwest now. A must read for those who love the Southwest, and a should read for all others.