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Walter P. Kistler Book Award
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Laurence C. Smith, 2011 Winner of the Walter P. Kistler Book Award
 Foundation For the Future selected geoscientist Dr. Laurence C. Smith to receive the Walter P. Kistler Book Award for 2011. Dr. Smith's winning book is The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future, published by Dutton in 2010 (UK edition titled The New North: The World in 2050).
Smith is Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Geography and Professor in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences at UCLA. His research interests focus on the effects of climatic and environmental changes in northern environments.
In 2006, Smith launched, with the aid of a Guggenheim fellowship, a 15-month, firsthand look at the eight Arctic countries in order to start a book about the effects of global warming in the "New North," which he loosely defines as all land and oceans lying 45º N latitude or higher currently held by the USA, Canada, Iceland, Greenland (Denmark), Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The more he investigated, the more he realized that climate change is just one of four global forces that are rapidly changing the face and course of this northern world. The other three are changing demographics, increasing demand for natural resources, and globalization. The World in 2050 examines the complexities of the interplay of these four factors and comes to some surprising conclusions.
 Thanks to heavy media coverage, images of drowned polar bears, bewildered Inuit hunters, and satellite maps of shrinking sea ice are now commonplace in people's minds. In a remarkably short span of years, these phenomena have changed the world's perception of the Arctic from unconquerable ice fortress … to frail ecosystem on the verge of collapse….
The World in 2050 reveals, instead, a New North uniquely positioned to ask the question: What causes new civilizations to grow?
— Dr. Laurence C. Smith, The World in 2050
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