Global Issues: An Introduction

This work is an introduction to the nature and background of some of the central issues - economic, social, environmental - of modern times. It aims to provide the basis for a course for beginning students in departments of geography, politics, sociology and environmental science. The book opens with an introductory overview of the complex political, cultural and natural origins of world problems. The author then discusses in depth such issues as population growth, hunger, malnutrition, global warming and climatic change, ozone depletion, energy conservation, deforestation, literacy and poverty. In each case John Seitz shows what the issue is in both qualitative and quantitative terms. He stresses the way in which single problems never have single causes, and that attempts to solve one (unemployment, for example) may often give rise to another (such as air and water pollution). Indeed, he points out, it is distressingly the case that many of the world's problems arise from the economic progress and development it was hoped would put an end to them. The book employs a range of perspectives on a diversity of societies, developed and developing. It never simplifies, stressing the need, by argument and by exemplification, for informed, critical thinking. Students are shown both the decisions that have been made - and the resulting failures and successes - and the choices that must now be faced if crucial problems are to be solved. The book is illustrated with diagrams and photographs, contains guides to further reading and media resources, and includes suggestions for discussion and investigation.