It is now widely recognized that human activities are transforming the global environment. In the time it has taken for this book to come to fruition and be published, the evidence for climate change and its disruption of societal activi ties has become stronger. In the first 11 months of 1998, there were major floods in China, Peru, and California, enormous damage from Hurricane Mitch in Central America, record-breaking heat waves in Texas, and extensive drought and fires in Indonesia; weather-related property losses were estimated at over $89 billion, tens of thousands of lives were lost, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced