Dodging Extinction
Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today. He presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be the sixth great extinction on Earth, with dire consequences.
Optimistic that we can change this ominous forecast if we act now, Barnosky provides clear-cut strategies to guide the planet away from global catastrophe. In many instances the necessary technology and know-how already exist and are being applied to crucial issues around human-caused climate change, feeding the world’s growing population, and exploiting natural resources. Deeply informed yet accessibly written, Dodging Extinction is nothing short of a guidebook for saving the planet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In powerful and passionate prose, Barnosky, professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, outlines the environmental crisis humans have created and provides reasons to be optimistic that the world's sixth mass extinction may not be inevitable. Barnosky focuses on the impacts posed by three major human endeavors: making money; creating energy; and feeding the world. In each case, he successfully integrates biology with public policy and economics, recognizing that solutions will have to come from an interdisciplinary approach. Barnosky's plentiful evidence for his arguments includes many of his own research lab's estimates of the rate of species extinction. Although"continuing the species-loss trajectory we are now on will all but assure that we bring on the Sixth Mass Extinction in as little as three centuries" and ecological change "now outpaces, and is observable within, a single human lifetime," solutions are possible. Barnosky bolsters his argument that "there is no reason that carbon-neutral energy production cannot be scaled up dramatically and quickly," with the specifics to make his claim believable. Time may be short, but this is a message of hope for readers looking for a better future.
