Half-Earth : our planet's fight for life /
Edward O. Wilson.
- New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016
- 259 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Edward O. Wilson - Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Part 1. The Problem -- Part 2. The Real Living World -- 3. The Solution -- Sources and Further Reading -- Glossary -- Appendix -- Acknowledgements -- Index
In order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, says Edward O. Wilson in his most impassioned book to date. Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface if the Earth to nature.
Half-Earth provides an enormously moving and naturalistic portrait of just what is being lost when we clip "twigs and eventually whole branches of life's family tree." Wilson describes how our species, in a mere blink of geological time, became the architects and rulers of this epoch and outlines the far-reaching consequences. In elegiac prose, he documents the many ongoing extinctions that are imminent, paying tribute to creatures great and small, not the least of them the tivity. Uniquely, Half-Earth considers not only the large animals and star species of plants but also the millions of invertebrae animals and micro-organisms that, despite being overlooked, form the foundations of Earth's ecosystems.
In stinging language, Wilson avers that the biosphere does not belong to us, and he addresses many fallacious notions such as the idea that extinct species might be brought back through cloning. This includes a critique of the "anthropocentists," a fashionable collection of revisionist environmentalists who believe that the human species alone can be saved through engineering and technology.
Despite the Earth's parlous condition, Wilson is no doomsayer, resigned to fatalism. Defying prevailing conventional wisdom, he suggests that we still have time to put aside half the Earth and identifies actual spots where Earth's biodiversity can be reclaimed. Suffused with a profound Darwinian understanding of our planet's fragility, Half-Earth reverberates with an urgency like few other books.
9781631490828 : (hbk.)
Environmentalism. Biodiversity conservation Biosphere reserves Human ecology. Nature--Effect of human beings on.