How Latin American countries became leading voices and innovators on addressing climate change—and what threatens their leadership. Latin American countries have increased their influence at the United Nations climate change negotiations and offered potential solutions on coping with global warming. But in the face of competing priorities, sometimes these climate policies are jettisoned, undermined, or simply ignored. A Fragmented Continent focuses on Latin America's three major blocs at the U.N. climate negotiations and how they attempt to balance climate action with building prosperity. Brazil has reduced its deforestation but continues its drive for economic growth and global recognition. A leftist group led by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador decries the injustice of climate change but is highly dependent on the export of fossil fuels. A new group, including Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru and supported by Mexico, offers sharp reductions in their carbon emissions in return for greater action by others; these countries now have to deliver on their promises. Weaving together issues of politics and economy, trade, foreign policy, civil society, and environmental protection, A Fragmented Continent offers a long-missing perspective on one of this century's greatest challenges and neglected regions.

How Latin American countries became leading voices and innovators on addressing climate change—and what threatens their leadership. Latin American countries have increased their influence at the United Nations climate change negotiations and offered potential solutions on coping with global warming. But in the face of competing priorities, sometimes these climate policies are jettisoned, undermined, or simply ignored. A Fragmented Continent focuses on Latin America's three major blocs at the U.N. climate negotiations and how they attempt to balance climate action with building prosperity. Brazil has reduced its deforestation but continues its drive for economic growth and global recognition. A leftist group led by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador decries the injustice of climate change but is highly dependent on the export of fossil fuels. A new group, including Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru and supported by Mexico, offers sharp reductions in their carbon emissions in return for greater action by others; these countries now have to deliver on their promises. Weaving together issues of politics and economy, trade, foreign policy, civil society, and environmental protection, A Fragmented Continent offers a long-missing perspective on one of this century's greatest challenges and neglected regions.

The global debate over who should take action to address climate change is extremely precarious, as diametrically opposed perceptions of climate justice threaten the prospects for any long-term agreement. Poor nations fear limits on their efforts to grow economically and meet the needs of their own people, while powerful industrial nations, including the United States, refuse to curtail their own excesses unless developing countries make similar sacrifices. Meanwhile, although industrialized countries are responsible for 60 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, developing countries suffer the "worst and first" effects of climate-related disasters, including droughts, floods, and storms, because of their geographical locations. In A Climate of Injustice, J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley Parks analyze the role that inequality between rich and poor nations plays in the negotiation of global climate agreements. Roberts and Parks argue that global inequality dampens cooperative efforts by reinforcing the "structuralist" worldviews and causal beliefs of many poor nations, eroding conditions of generalized trust, and promoting particularistic notions of "fair" solutions. They develop new measures of climate-related inequality, analyzing fatality and homelessness rates from hydrometeorological disasters, patterns of "emissions inequality," and participation in international environmental regimes. Until we recognize that reaching a North-South global climate pact requires addressing larger issues of inequality and striking a global bargain on environment and development, Roberts and Parks argue, the current policy gridlock will remain unresolved.

[In this book, the author's] analysis of the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America present [an] account of ... Latin American history. [The author] shows how foreign companies reaped huge profits through their operations in Latin America. He explains the politics of the Latin American bourgeoisies and their subservience to foreign powers, and how they interacted to create increasingly unequal capitalist societies in Latin America.-Back cover.

The Decent Of Alette is a rich odyssey of transformation in the tradition of The Inferno. Alice Notley presents a feminist epic: a bold journey into the deeper realms. Alette, the narrator, finds herself underground, deep beneath the city, where spirits and people ride endlessly on subways, not allowed to live in the world above. Traveling deeper and deeper, she is on a journey of continual transformation, encountering a series of figures and undergoing fragmentations and metamorphoses as she seeks to confront the Tyrant and heal the world. Using a new measure, with rhythmic units indicated by quotations marks, Notley has created a "spoken" text, a rich and mesmerizing work of imagination, mystery, and power.