Book contents
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- 17 Adapt and Prosper
- 18 The Surprising Sahel
- 19 Selected Policy Implications
- References
- Index
17 - Adapt and Prosper
The US Experience
from Part III - Toward Rational Climate Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2021
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- 17 Adapt and Prosper
- 18 The Surprising Sahel
- 19 Selected Policy Implications
- References
- Index
Summary
As long as our species has been on planet Earth, humans have had to adapt to their external physical environment. During the cold upper Paleolithic era – which runs from about 40,000–10,000 years ago – Neanderthals died out, and most remaining homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers. They lived in widely dispersed bands that followed herds of animals such as reindeer. Such hunter-gatherer Paleolithic life was precarious, subject to cycles in the population of prey animals. Still, even during these cold and grim Paleolithic times, recent research has found evidence that in favorable locations, some human groups adopted agriculture and expanded rapidly after the Last Glacial Maximum (about 25,000 years ago) or perhaps even earlier, 60,000–80,000 years ago. Moreover, even during this, the stone age, humans colonized new territories, such as Australia and the Americas, and by the end of the Paleolithic had domesticated dogs.
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- Climate RationalityFrom Bias to Balance, pp. 505 - 551Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021