But now I see you're way ahead of me. I'm completely with you that the carbon driven industry is undeniably the foundation for change in agriculture - also in Africa - and its inevitable repercussions on the climate. I've lamented also about the reducing role of the nomadic tribes and the governmental failure to integrate them within nature reserves - but governments get most of their revenue from agricultural founded trade, and so the circle continues. So it's not even "just" environmental - there is a big social imprint to it which is equally lamentable.
However. We're in agreement on the fundamental cause. But slicing up the problem in little boxes to better study direct and indirect causes and effects is part of my academic training, so I'll have to reiterate that I'd be interested to hear what the direct cause is of Kilimanjaro's receding glaciers. Because just pointing at carbon is a little too vague to get your articles published and quench my wriggling need to know brainlobe.
And I'll be on the lookout for Hornborg - will give a beep when I've got it. I just had my birthday, but Sinterklaas is coming into town soon.
reductionism as an intellectual strategy helps us to break down the world into bits small enough for our methodologies to address and our brains to digest... but it also feeds the increasingly dangerous illusion that the world is in fact small enough for our present methodologies to address and our brains to digest. in other words, as always, the model gets mistaken for the reality (much as the graven idol is mistaken for the divinity?). there's a fetishistic aspect to reductionism... well anyway Hornborg will address this at length when you get around to him :-)
one of the many painful (and potentially lethal) ironies of "carbon consciousness" is that the push for "bio fuels" is driving even more of the net-negative, carbon-dumping game of factory ag. cf clearing of rainforest for sugar plantations in S Am and oil palm plantations in Pacific Asia... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
