I am grateful to the Canada Research Chair Program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding; to my graduate student Ashley Hamilton for tirelessly collecting research for this book; to my graduate students Colin Trehearne and Kate Neville for fact-checking and to Sharon Goad and Josh Gordon for research assistance; and to the staff and faculty in the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia—especially Della Krueger— for protecting my author self from my associate-dean self.
I benefited as well from hundreds of conversations with students, friends, and colleagues. My students at the University of British Columbia kept me grounded in the real world and showed a remarkable tolerance for my overenthusiastic approach to research. My special thanks to my graduate students Paula Barrios, Shane Barter, Kaija Belfry, François de Soete, Katherine Hall, Tracey Janes, Lindsay Johnson, Meidad Kissinger, Samantha Kohn, Talusier Arbour LaSalle, Jane Lister, David Seekings, Nicolas Sternsdorff, and Hamish van der Ven.
My thanks as well to the discussants and panelists at the International Studies Association conferences in Hawaii in 2005, San Diego in 2006, and Chicago in 2007 and at the Law and Society Conference in Berlin in 2007, where I presented portions of this book, not just for their helpful comments, but also for their encouragement when the project seemed beyond my reach. I am also grateful to Joe Bowersox for inviting me to Willamette University in November 2007 to present my arguments one last time (leaving me eagerly scrawling out “final” changes).
My years as editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics (2001-2008), where I had the privilege of working with the talented scholars Jennifer Clapp, Ken Conca, Beth DeSombre, Karen Litfin, Marian Miller, Mat Paterson, and Paul Wapner, kept me on a steep learning curve throughout. Many others influenced my thinking, too, although no one more than my father, John Dauvergne, who after many decades of conversations somehow continues to bring ever more balance to my understanding of global change. I am especially grateful to Clay Morgan at the MIT Press for his unwavering support and helpful advice throughout and to the anonymous reviewers for the press, whose constructive criticisms gave me the confidence to develop a more hard-hitting message.
By far my most profound thanks go to my partner and wife, Catherine, who had to rely on magic to write her own books in the fragments of time left over after supporting my daily wanderings.
Finally, I dedicate this book to my children, Duncan, Nina, and Hugh, who anchor me in joy in an unbalanced world.