E.O. Wilson assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than eschewing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time. His vision is a hopeful one, as economically sound as it is environmentally necessary.
E.O. Wilson assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than eschewing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time. His vision is a hopeful one, as economically sound as it is environmentally necessary.
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Overview
E.O. Wilson assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than eschewing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time. His vision is a hopeful one, as economically sound as it is environmentally necessary.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780375414565 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/09/2002 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Letter to Thoreau
Excerpted from the Prologue
Henry!
I am at the site of your cabin on the edge of Walden Pond. I came because of your stature in literature and the conservation movement. I came because of all your contemporaries, you are the one I most need to
understand. As a biologist with a modern scientific library, I know more than Darwin knew. I can imagine the measured responses of that country gentleman to a voice a century and a half beyond his own. It is not a satisfying fantasy: the Victorians have for the most part settled into a comfortable corner of our remembrance. But I cannot imagine your responses, at least not all of them. You left too soon, and your restless spirit haunts us still.
I am here for a purpose: to become more Thoreauvian, and with that perspective better to explain to you, and in reality to others and not least to myself, what has happened to the world we both have loved. . .
The natural world in the year 2001 is everywhere disappearing before our eyes--cut to pieces, mowed down, plowed under, gobbled up, replaced by human artifacts.
No one in your time could imagine a disaster of this magnitude. Little more than a billion people were alive in the 1840s. They were overwhelmingly agricultural, and few families needed more than two or three acres to survive. The American frontier was still wide open. And far away on continents to the south, up great rivers, beyond unclimbed mountain ranges, stretched unspoiled equatorial forests brimming with the maximum diversity of life. These wildernesses seemed as unattainable and timeless as the planets and stars. That could not last, because the mood of Western civilization is Abrahamic. The explorers and colonists were guided by a biblical prayer: May we take possession of this land that God has provided and let it drip milk and honey into our mouths, forever.
Now, more than six billion people fill the world. The great majority are very poor; nearly one billion exist on the edge of starvation. All are struggling to raise the quality of their lives any way they can. That unfortunately includes the conversion of the surviving remnants of the natural environment. Half of the great tropical forests have been cleared. The last frontiers of the world are effectively gone. Species of plants and animals are disappearing a hundred or more times faster than before the coming of humanity, and as many as half may be gone by the end of this century. An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
The situation is desperate--but there are encouraging signs that the race can be won. Population growth has slowed, and if the present trajectory holds, it is likely to peak between eight and ten billion people by century's end. That many people, experts tell us, can be accommodated with a decent standard of living, but just barely: the amount of arable land and water available per person, globally, is already declining. In solving the problem, other experts tell us, it should also be possible to shelter most of the vulnerable plant and animal species.
In order to pass through the bottleneck, a global land ethic is urgently needed. Not just any global land ethic that might happen to enjoy agreeable sentiment, but one based on the best understanding of ourselves and the world around us that science and technology can provide. Surely the rest of life matters. Surely our stewardship is its only hope. We will be wise to listen carefully to the heart, then act with rational intention with all the tools we can gather and bring to bear.
Henry, my friend, thank you for putting the first element of that ethic in place. Now it is up to us to summon a more encompassing wisdom. The living world is dying; the natural economy is crumbling beneath our busy feet. We have been too self-absorbed to foresee the long-term consequences of our actions, and we will suffer a terrible loss unless we shake off our delusions and move quickly to a solution. Science and technology led us into this bottleneck. Now science and technology must help us find our way through and out.
Table of Contents
| List of Endangered and Extinct Species and Races | ix | |
| Prologue: A Letter to Thoreau | xi | |
| Chapter 1 | To the ends of Earth | 3 |
| Chapter 2 | The Bottleneck | 22 |
| Chapter 3 | Nature's Last Stand | 42 |
| Chapter 4 | The Planetary Killer | 79 |
| Chapter 5 | How Much Is the Biosphere Worth? | 103 |
| Chapter 6 | For the Love of Life | 129 |
| Chapter 7 | The Solution | 149 |
| Notes | 191 | |
| Glossary | 213 | |
| Acknowledgments | 219 | |
| Index | 221 |
What People are Saying About This
In The Future of Life, E.O. Wilson delivers an impassioned plea for a new human ethic based on a wiser, more careful stewardship of our vanishing natural world. Wilson invites us to share his optimism that we still have an opportunity to save the living things and wild places that sustain us and give us hope.--Kathryn S. Fuller, President, World Wildlife Fund
Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Edward O. Wilson’s The Future of Life, an impassioned call for the protection of the earth’s biodiversity by one of our greatest living scientists.
Interviews
An Exclusive Interview with Edward O. Wilson
Science & Nature Editor Laura Wood spoke with Edward O. Wilson on the telephone.
Barnes & Noble.com: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me.
Edward O. Wilson: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my book.
B&N.com: What is the concern about the future of life?
EOW: My concern, and that of all biologists working on biological diversity, is the accelerating loss of natural ecosystems and the species they contain. If environmental trends of the present continue unabated -- and we prayerfully hope that will not be the case -- then as many as half the species of plants and animals will be gone by the end of the century. So if I can add something more, "So what?"
B&N.com: You mean, why do we care?
EOW: Yes, why do we care?
B&N.com: Right, don't people say extinctions happen all the time?
EOW: They do. That's a very good question. Don't extinctions happen all the time? They do, but before the coming of humanity they were at the rate of very roughly one species dying out per million per year. Human activity -- mainly through destruction of habitat, pollution, introduction of alien species, and overharvesting -- have driven the extinction rate up to approximately one thousand per million at times. So like a spendthrift householder eating into the capital, the world's biosphere is headed for bankruptcy. If I might go back to the question Why should we care? I will get slightly more long-winded.
B&N.com: Why should we care? deserves a long-winded response.
EOW: My answer would be three compelling reasons. First, the opportunity costs -- to use an economist's term -- of losing species: Each species is a masterpiece of evolution and has unique genetic information that fits it to particular niches in the environment -- anatomy, physiology, behavior -- and that information is scientifically priceless. Furthermore, the actual products yet to be discovered, especially pharmaceuticals, new crops, is also without price. The second reason for caring is that diversity of living forms increases the stability of the environment. It has been shown recently that with the increase in the number of plants, for example, the ecosystems they contain recycle more energy, produce more, and are more resistant to environmental catastrophes, such as floods. The third reason that I spell out in the book is aesthetic and spiritual. Almost everyone in the world would agree that destroying a large part of the rest of life -- creation, as theologians would call it -- is not a good thing. So where do we go from here?
B&N.com: Your last statement leads into another issue that I've been thinking about and which you address in your book. Environmental issues are often couched in terms of a left-right political polarization, and you posit that we need to get away from that and also that the stereotype is not necessarily true. I'm from Oklahoma. Oklahoma is very Republican. My father is a Republican. We went to Colorado -- ever since I was tiny -- three or four times a year. My father loves nature and certainly shares the aesthetic experience you describe. I think that that's something we need to recognize more instead of devolving into an "us versus them" posture.
EOW: That's exactly right. I don't think there's any difference between Republicans and Democrats in the love of and need for nature. Recent research has even shown that our need is a deep psychological one, and hospitals are designing the postsurgical ward to allow patients to view natural and seminatural environments from their rooms. This has proved to increase the incidence and speed of recovery after surgery. There are a number of similar remarkable effects that have been discovered after exposure to nature and natural environments. But just to expand on the point you made, one of the purposes of writing this book was to try to help depoliticize environmental issues, especially in respect to conservation. It is a sad circumstance that somehow conservatives have come to be viewed -- and many of them view themselves -- as opposed to conservation action, while liberals are viewed as the champions of conservation action. This is a false dichotomy, because activists for the environment are just as prominent among conservatives, including many business leaders, for example, as among people who identify themselves as liberal. We have in common a desire and a need to preserve the natural environment in this country and the planet as a whole.
B&N.com: I couldn't agree with you more. What is important is getting people on board and accomplishing what we can right now. I wanted to highlight the points you made in the book about nongovernmental organizations, in particular the Nature Conservancy. In Oklahoma, the Nature Conservancy bought a cattle ranch and turned it into a tall-grass prairie reserve complete with buffalo. So this group uses capitalism and private property -- often bashed as institutions that are inherently antienvironmental -- in an environmentally constructive way. Since private property is private, there's no law to stop you from buying a ranch and putting buffalo on it and turning it into a nature preserve. And many of the other NGOs are working with world governments, and economic institutions are to be helpful to the environment.
EOW: The conservation scene, especially on a global basis, has changed completely in the last ten years. The reason that it's done so, as you've just indicated, is the advances made by some of the major conservation organizations. The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and the World Wildlife Fund are among the major institutions that are innovating in ways of measuring the problem worldwide and finding solutions on a large-scale basis to solve it. What I wanted to emphasize in the book is that though the picture is grim, it is now changed in terms of the number of environmental triumphs and new practices. One of the reasons it is changing is that now we have a grip on the problem. Ecologists and economists increasingly know where the worst damage is being done in the world, where the most species are being lost. They are finding ways to solve that problem. They are getting a price tag on it and a timeline. This changes the picture very substantially, because we have long since passed the time when doomsaying alone will accomplish very much. Now people in responsible positions understand there is a problem. They want to know: how big it is; where it is; what the consequences are; how it can be fixed; how much it is going to cost; how long it is going to take; and what are the consequences of not fixing it and what are the consequences of fixing it. In a nutshell that is what has begun. I think we're in the early stages of turning around the global conservation of biodiversity problem.
B&N.com: That's very important. It's easy to feel defeated and overwhelmed. It's true that people are well informed that there's a problem and then might start feeling overwhelmed because it seems so out of control. It's hopeful that there is already being developed a much more sophisticated, targeted, and doable effort.
EOW: Well, that's the American way -- not to be fatalistic and not to give in to a sense of hopelessness. America has led the world in part because it regards all problems as solvable. This is a solvable problem. The great challenge of the 21st century is getting the rest of the world up to a decent standard of living while carrying through as much of the rest of life on earth with us as possible. It's as simple as that. And we can do it. We know how to do it now. We have the first parts of the solution, anyway, and we should get on with it. It's not going to cost that much. In the book I show estimates in the range of $30 billion for the entire planet.
B&N.com: That's really not that much when you look at the scale of governmental budgets, and we are talking about the entire international community.
EOW: And we are talking about saving a large part of the diversity of life on earth. So it's doable -- that's the point. It can be done. I think we now should reconsider how we approach the whole issue of conservation, both in this country and abroad, and think of the practical and spiritual reasons we can all agree on. It then becomes a problem of how best to accomplish the goal. That we have not had before.
B&N.com: That gets us to the moral and spiritual issues. People can be motivated by practical issues, but I think that moral imperatives and spiritual feelings -- the aesthetic sense you mentioned before -- are incredibly powerful motivating forces. There is a plan that we can do and now we need the will to achieve it. So do you see an increase of this moral sense, spiritual sense related to the environment?
EOW: I do, and I'm encouraged. Religious leaders still have a long way to go, grappling with the problem themselves and formulating moral precepts about it, but the interest among religious thinkers and leaders in the last few years has grown rapidly enough to suggest that it is about to have a major effect. Evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish groups, among others, are beginning to pick up on conservation as a major ethical issue. Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church with some 250 million members, has declared the destruction of natural environments and extinction of species by human activity a sin. I rather like that.
B&N.com: So it seems to me that one of the main things you want to leave readers with is a sense of optimism and hope. Is that true?
EOW: That is true. It's a dire problem that needs to be more widely understood. There are serious consequences for the future in every realm of life and the natural environment. It is, on the other hand, a problem that scientists, economists, and others are getting a grip on, getting to understand, and taking the measure of.
B&N.com: Human beings do want to be inspired. People love doing the "right" thing. And you can see that happening with the environment, and that's where we need to get -- a broad-based general consensus.
EOW: It's exactly that quality I'd like to see enter the mainstream of American life. It comes down, too, to the need for people to understand that we have to have a long-term and global view. Global welfare and security in the 21st century is local security writ large. We no longer can be insular in anything, and so we cannot be insular in respect to the environment.