The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire
Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
By the award-winning author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: a history of humanity on the brink of decline.
A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Selection
We are living through a period that is unique in human history. For the first time in more than ten thousand years, the rate of human population growth is slowing down. In the middle of this century population growth will stop, and the number of people on Earth will start to decline - fast.
In this provocative book, award-winning science writer Henry Gee offers a concise, brilliantly-told history of our species--and argues that we are on a rapid, one-way trip to extinction. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire narrates the dramatic rise of humanity. The human story is relatively brief—the oldest fossils of H. Sapiens date to approximately 300,000 years ago—yet the spread of our species has been unstoppable…until recently.
As Gee demonstrates, our environment is becoming inimical to human life in many locations; our core resources of water, arable land, and air are diminishing; and new diseases, simmering conflicts, and ambiguous technologies threaten our collective health. Can we still change our course? Or is our own extinction inevitable?
With assured narration, dramatic stories, and his signature sprightly humor, Henry Gee envisions new opportunities for the future of humanity—a future that will reward facing challenges with ingenuity, foresight, and cooperation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Without drastic action, "Homo sapiens will disappear from the Earth within the next 10,000 years," according to this unpersuasive warning. Nature editor Gee (A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth) argues that modern humans' relatively limited genetic diversity combined with predicted population declines in most countries risks setting humans on a path toward extinction. He points out how Neanderthals' even narrower genetic diversity put them at an evolutionary disadvantage when competing for resources with Homo sapiens, forcing them to either mate with sapiens or die out. Unfortunately, Gee's solution for humanity to avoid a similar fate by establishing space colonies defies logic. According to Gee, the isolation of space would aid humanity's survival by producing genetically distinct subpopulations that can interbreed with groups on Earth or elsewhere in space to create offspring with the best traits of both communities, in a similar fashion to what happened after Homo erectus diversified into Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, and other human species more than 315,000 years ago. However, this argument is severely undermined by Gee's discussion of how isolated breeding pools risk concentrating genetic deficiencies and vulnerability to disease, natural disasters, and other mass casualty events, as befell the Neanderthals. This strains credulity.
