One of the world’s most important scientists, Edward O. Wilson is also an abundantly talented writer who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize. In this, his most personal and timely book to date, he 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. Eloquent, practical and wise, this book should be read and studied by anyone concerned with the fate of the natural world.
[...]... stratospheric winds into the void, eventually to settle alive on Mars Conversely, indigenous microbes from Mars (or beyond) might have colonized Earth Such is the theory of the origin of life called panspermia, once ridiculed but now an undeniable possibility The superbugs have also given a new shot of hope to exobiologists, scientists who look for evidences of life on other worlds Another stimulus is the. .. to the full and exact mapping of all biological diversity One of the open frontiers in biodiversity exploration is the floor of the ocean, which from surf to abyss covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface All of the thirty-six known animal phyla, the highestranking and most inclusive groups in the taxonomic hierarchy, occur there, as opposed to only ten on the land Among the most familiar are the Arthropoda,... encouragement of population control by developing countries comes not a moment too soon The environmental fate of the world lies ultimately in their hands They now account for virtually all global population growth, and their drive toward higher per-capita consumption will be relentless The consequences of their reproductive prowess are multiple and deep The people of the developing countries are already far younger... higher categories of biodiversity by the same basic principles used to organize ground combat troops, proceeding from squads to platoons to companies to divisions to corps to armies Returning to the gray wolf, its genus Canis, the common dogs and wolves, are placed into the family Canidae with other genera that hold the species of coyotes and foxes Families are grouped into orders; the order Carnivora are... and the United States are the two leading grain producers of the world The two countries grow a disproportionate share of the food from which the world population derives most of its calories But China’s huge population is on the verge of consuming more than it can produce In 1997 a team of scientists, reporting to the U.S National Intelligence Council (NIC), predicted that China will need to import... accelerated the globalization of trade and the evolution of a more irenic international culture “For two centuries the specter of Malthus troubled the dreams of futurists By rising exponentially, the doomsayers claimed, population must outstrip the limited resources of the world and bring about famine, chaos, and war On occasion this scenario did unfold locally But that has been more the result of political... ethos All who care about both the economy and environment, and that includes the vast majority, are members of the same culture The gaze of our two debaters is fixed on different points in the space-time scale in which we all dwell They differ in the factors they take into account in forecasting the state of the world, how far they look into the future, and how much they care about nonhuman life Most... cloud formation The concept of the biosphere as Gaia has two versions: strong and weak The strong version holds that the biosphere is a true superorganism, with each of the species in it optimized to stabilize the environment and benefit from balance in the entire system, like cells of the body or workers of an ant colony This is a lovely metaphor, with a kernel of truth, providing the idea of superorganism... Europe Around the world, manufacture and the service economy are growing geometrically Since 1950 per-capita income and meat production have risen continuously Even though the world population has increased at an explosive 1.8 percent each year during the same period, cereal production, the source of more than half the food calories of the poorer nations and the traditional proxy of worldwide crop... resist The arch-destroyers of the Hawaiian biota among the nonhuman immigrants are the African big- headed ant (Pheidole megacephala) and feral strains of the common pig (Sus scrofera) The ant lives in borderless supercolonies of up to millions of workers and breeding queens Spreading out as a living sheet from the point of entry, the supercolonies eat or drive out a large part of the other insects in their . in mood and philosophy. Visitors to the Walden cabin were welcomed. Once a group of twenty-five or more crowded into the solitary room of the tiny house, shoulder to shoulder. You were not appalled. have given you comfort on cold, rainy days. Sometimes you went out looking for someone, anyone, in spite of your notorious shyness, just to have a conversation. You fastened on them, as you put it,. major player in the control of the world climate. Dimethylsulfide generated by the algae alone is believed to be an important factor in the regulation of cloud formation. The concept of the biosphere