Download or read book The Control of Nature written by John McPhee and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

Download or read book Geological Survey Water supply Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 2132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Western Construction written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Water supply Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy written by Sarah S. Elkind and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics. Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Western Construction News written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 1060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Monitor written by and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. House and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 2812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Department of Agriculture Appropriation Bill for 1948 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 2758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Drainage Basin Committees Reports written by United States. National Resources Committee. Water Resources Committee and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Report of the New England Regional Planning Commission for the New England Basins written by New England Regional Planning Commission and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 1946 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 1300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book War Department Civil Functions Appropriation Bill for 1947 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bulletin Division of Water Resources written by California. Division of Water Resources and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1943 with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book First Deficiency Appropriation Bill for 1945 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 1584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book First Deficiency Appropriation Bill for 1946 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Deficiency Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 1572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: