Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "eowilson"

Half Earth---Our Planet’s Fight For Life by Edward O. Wilson, W.W. Norton and Co., N.Y., 2016/

The problem is described in Part I. The Earth and its ocean is the focus of Part II, and the solution is made clear in Part III. E.O. Wilson’s message is summarized in his Prologue. Human beings are talented, awesome in some ways, yet “yearning to be more master than steward of a declining planet.”

He suggests we could “…survive and evolve forever if we didn’t favor a short-term future and be “contemptuous toward lower forms of life.” The problems are global: a human population too large, a shortage of free water is coming, the air and seas are polluted, and climate change will do in all but “microbes, jellyfish, and fungi.”

The answer is also clear. We must learn to get along with half the Earth, not use it all up. We must commit “…half of the planet’s surface to nature as quickly as possible. EO Wilson’s argument appeared first in 2002 in the book The Future of Life, then expanded in the book “A Window of Eternity…” in 2014. Preserving half is a real goal. We could save a vast majority of Earth’s species by doing so.