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Title: The Future of Life by Edward Osborne Wilson ISBN: 0679450785 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.18
Rating: 4
Summary: How Much is the Biosphere Worth?
Comment: Edward O. Wilson is perhaps the most renound naturalist in the world. In this latest book, he details the mass habitat destruction and species extinction, as well as some of the broader environmental issues we face. The picture is rather grim, to be sure, but perhaps a bit optimistic in comparison with Lester Brown's THE ECO-ECONOMY (a book I highly recommend).
His position, that we are entering a "bottleneck" crunch between what the earth can provide and what humanity demands, is neither new nor controversial, but well argued here. Indeed, the Earth is a closed system, with a limited resource availability; and once those resources are overburdened or exhausted, people start dying. Already some 60,000 people die every day while members of the so-called "First World" glut this limited bounty. Without a doubt, it will only get worse as the population rises.
The first chapter was a bit of a bore to me. I found it a little academic and a bit overly-specialized for my tastes. That said, chapters two, three and four ("The Bottleneck," "Nature's Last Stand," and "The Planetary Killer" respectively) easily make the book worth purchasing. I also found chapter six, which dicusses the hypothesis of "biophilia," fascinating.
Biophilia - or what Wilson believes to be humanity's innate love and need for nature - is one of those hypotheses's we all suspected deep down but never had the scientific evidence to prove. However, after discussing the evolution of humanity and running through some interesting physchological cases, the theory seems rather plausible. While reading the chapter, I began to wonder if alternating feelings of anxiety and ennui were not related to some disconnection from nature. After all, I do feel best when hiking in the woods.
In the end, I decided to give this book four stars instead of five because of the last chapter. Although titled "The Solution," it really didn't leave me feeling jazzed our prospects, if only because the the entire discussion was limited to conservation initiatives as proposed by big organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund. Outside of this approche, Wilson seems to have no experience, although he does at least awknowledge the need for activism on the last page.
Upon finishing the book, I felt the extreme desire to do something, but was left feeling small and helpless. Perhaps if he had included contact information for one of those activist groups. Moreover, Wilson completely downplays the risks and over-exaggerates the gains of genetically engineered (GM) foods; one particular flaw I can't overlook in a book. He didn't even mention the Cautionary Principle (see Suzuki's FROM NAKED APE TO SUPERSPECIES), which is absolutely fundamental to this issue. For a more thorough and discussion of the GM issue, check out Moore's AGAINST THE GRAIN or John Robbins THE FOOD REVOLUTION.
The one thing that Wilson does do well: he highlights and juxtiposes the position of biological conservationists and economists with suberb clarity. Without a doubt, between these two persectives lies the only possible road to salvation for humanity. Will we dig, extract and burn up the rest of the planet, or learn to think and act in compliance the principle of cyclical perpetuity? For a more nuanced discussion of this, I would recommend NATURAL CAPITALISM. All in all, well worth the read.
Rating: 5
Summary: a prescription to get through the bottleneck
Comment: In this book, Harvard professor E.O. Wilson presents useful, practical suggestions that address the current global crisis involving overpopulation, wasteful consumption, and unprecedented loss of biodiversity.
For example, Wilson points out that roughly $30 billion (about 1/1000th of the annual combined GNP of the world as of 2000) can preserve for future generations critical habitats containing about 70% of the Earth's plant and animal species. Contrast this with about $110 billion spent annually by governments to subsidize fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Wilson is correct in pointing out that the question of the century is: How best can we shift to a culture of permanence, both for ourselves and for the biosphere that sustains us? This is something new in human history. He points out that for hundreds of millennia those humans who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring .... the long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal.
The book also contains a wealth of fascinating information about our world. E.g. Only three plant species stand between humanity and starvation: wheat, maize, and rice .... yet at least 10,000 plant species can be adapted as domestic crops. New World amaranths, arracacha of Andes, and winged bean of tropical Asia are immediately available for commercial development... e.g. If a small and otherwise unknown animal encountered in the wild is strikingly beautiful, it is probably poisonous; and if it is not only beautiful but also easy to catch, it is probably deadly.. e.g The vast majority of cells in your body are not your own: they belong to bacterial and other microorganismic species.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Future of Life
Comment: I bought this book for a couple who felt that they were among a tiny minority who loved the beauty of this earth and were enraged at the criminally exploitative treatment of it. When I read the first chapter I could not put it down. This book is a must read for every sane person on the planet, a spectacularly clear and careful study of how things great and small fit together, interdepend on eachother. To disregard any part of it or abuse that living heritage, poses a threat to our very existence on the one hand and on the other, points to our interdependence. I was stunned to learn that most of the species have yet to be identified and catalogued. Wilson knows all the arguments of both extremes on environmental issues, and while he articulately addresses these with balance, reason, and knowledge that only a scientist of his calibre could do, he never looses the sense of joy and wonder over what he has discovered in his journey, nor the urgency to preserve and protect it. In the final chapter he offers realistic and visionary options for insuring a better world. This book is a masterpiece, a Virgilian guide away from the hell we are creating, the limbo we are in, and a view of the paradise we have been wontonly destroying.
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Title: The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2001 by Edward O. Wilson, Edward O Wilson, Burkhard Bilger ISBN: 0618153594 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson ISBN: 067976867X Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: On Human Nature by Edward Osborne Wilson ISBN: 067463442X Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1988 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0674006135 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson ISBN: 0393319407 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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