Saleem H. Ali was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts but grew up in Lahore, Pakistan until his college years, receiving his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Tufts University, and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in environmental policy and planning at Yale and MIT, respectively. He currently holds the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professorship in Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware(USA) and is Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (Australia). Dr. Ali's laurels include being a National Geographic Explorer (having travelled for research to over 150 countries); being chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and serving on the seven-member science panel of the Global Environment Facility (the world's largest multilateral trust fund for the environment held in trusteeship by the World Bank). His earlier books include Treasures of the Earth: Need Greed and a Sustainable Future which was hailed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as providing

"welcome linkage between environmental behavior and poverty alleviation." Professor Ali was profiled in Forbes as "The Alchemist" and Bookseller called his earlier work "a pioneering exploration of human wants and needs and the natural resources we consume." He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art sand the Royal Geographical Society in the United Kingdom and also serves on the boards of Adventure Scientists and Mediators Beyond Borders International. Along with his wife Maria and sons Shahmir and Shahroze, the family are citizens of Australia, Pakistan and the United States.

• PREFACE


• Introduction: The Limited Logic of Order?


• Two's Company


• Chemical Chaos


• Functional Order


• Part I: NATURAL ORDER


• Chapter 1 - Seduction of Structure in Nature


• Molecular "Magic"


• Quantum Order


• Phases and Crystalline Order


• Constancy and Hybrid Natural Order


• Chapter 2 - The Elements of Earthly Order


• The New Carbonic Order?


• Nuclear Order


• Magnetic Order


• Chapter 3 - Circularity, Cyclicality and Sustainability


• Hydrological Order


• Orders of Gaia and Medea


• Organismic Order


• Bounded Natural Order


• PART 2: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ORDER


• Chapter 4 - The Orders of Economic Harmony


• Urbanism and Resilience in Socioeconomic Order


• Scales and Speeds of Economic Order


• Currencies of Sustainable Economic Order


• Chapter 5 - Elusive Orders of Economic Equilibrium


• Orders of Price and Quantity


• Consumer Ecology and Varieties of Equilibria


• Towards and Optimal Economic Order for the Planet


• Chapter 6 - Mindful Errors and Social Order


• Lonely Crowds and the Greening of the Shared Economy


• Environmental Risk, Uncertainty, and Precautionary Disorder


• Gaining from Disorder: Immunity, Intelligence and Religion


• The Conspiratorial Conundrum of Cause


• Chapter 7 - Sex, Population and Sustainability


• From Tragedy to Comedy of the Commons


• The Age Beyond Ageing


• Gender, Culture and Reconciling Anomalies


• PART 3: POLITICAL ORDER


• Chapter 8 - Empires and Edens


• The Dragon and the Wild Goose


• Resource Nationalism


• Great Powers Concerts and Radical Salvations


• Chapter 9 - Borders and Functional Political Order


• The Ambivalence of Ecological Borders


• The Order of Environmental Peacebuilding


• Identity, Borders and Order


• Chapter 10 - From International to Global Order in the "Anthropocene"


• Confederations of Peaceful Ecological Order


• Networks and the Realignment of Global Order in the Anthropocene


• Closing the Loop on Global Order


• CONCLUSION: Reconciling Orders


• Coda: Chromatic Order


• ENDNOTES