The Future of Life
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- ISBN13: 9780679768111
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
One of the world’s most vital 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 in the works in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than eschewing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a point plot 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.Amazon.com Review
The eminent Harvard naturalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Wilson marshals all the prodigious powers of his intellect and imagination in this impassioned call to ensure the future of life. Opening with an imagined conversation with Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, he writes that he has come “to clarify to you, and in reality to others and not least to myself, what has happened to the world we both have loved.” Based on a like affair with the natural world that spans 70 years, Wilson combines lyrical descriptions with dire warnings and remarkable tales of flora and fauna on the edge of extinction with hard economics. How many species are we really losing? Is environmentalism truly contrary to economic development? And how can we save the planet? Wilson has penned an eloquent plea for the need for a global land ethic and offers the strategies necessary to ensure life on planet based on foresight, moral courage, and the best tools that science and equipment can provide. – Lesley Reed
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This book is as completely valueless as all additional environmentalist “science.”
The sole value of this book would be in a histiographic sense, as in say “oh, an example of a really valueless ‘environmentalist’ book would be that one by Edward Wilson.”
Hundrds of pages of utterly factually incorrect emoting.
Any “environmentalist” with guts, would sit down and read _IT’S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME_ by Simon, also happily available from Amazon.
But of course, environmentalists have no mental guts, it’s all about…emoting.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I wouldn’t say Wilson’s book is exactly dribble. It’s more of the same harped on speechifying which spews seemingly continuously from the professional environmentalist cave. There is nothing in this book that could be considered useful information for anyone not really immersed in the politics of it all. It’s the environmentalists against the corporations over and over again. More than anything this book is a plea for not millions but billions and trillions of dollars from public and private sources to cordon off scenery so the professionals can keep their jobs studying it, and admonishing the rest of us for having abused it. As if they hadn’t played a significant part in its present condition.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
The title of this book “The Future of Life” is very misleading and flawed. The book does not, as one would naturally reflect by the title, look forwards to the new life forms that will be possible with genetic engineering and computer equipment. Rather, it is very backward looking. For example, Wilson describes in fantastic detail some species that are long since extinct.
As a replacement for of focusing on the amazement of life and its natural evolution, Wilson prefers to focus on the mundane details of environmental policy. There is so much hand-wringing, whining,a and repetition in this book, that it was a chore to get through.
Seemingly, if it were up to Wilson, there would be no future of life. Rather, the current status quo of species would be jealously protected and frozen forever in time. How unimaginative and uninspired, especially in light of the remarkable breakthroughs that are on the horizon, which will challenge our very understanding of what it means to be alive.
For persons who really are interested in the future of life, I would suggest the book “The Shattered Self” by Baldi.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Dr Wilson makes an brilliant point about the future of life: namely that non-governmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund are outbidding loggers and developers for the rights to biodiversity hot spots. For instance, Dr Wilson reports that the WWF bought the rights to 100 million acres in Brazil. It’s only estimated to cost $270 million to protect this amount of land into perpetuity. Who knew it was going to be this simple?
Dr. Wilson makes a corollary brilliant point: that conservation should be made “profitable.” How? By means of eco-tourism and plant prospecting. The few pages he devotes to plant prospecting for medicinal derivatives-which can be subsequently synthesized and mass-produced-are very optimistic. Dr Wilson stops fleeting of advocating that WWF and additional NGOs go public, but what a fantastic thought that would be, too. Today’s and tomorrow’s eco-minded investors would probably like to have some truly long-term assets that earn dividends from the discovery of medicinal plants.
But that’s further than Dr. Wilson would rather go. It’s enough that he wants to make conservation profitable. Having been condemned over the years as being a right-wing racist by Stephen Jay Gould and additional socialist flameouts, Dr. Wilson spends most of this book trying to make himself look politically right.
Take genetic engineering. On page 114, after praising the genetic engineering of corn, potatoes, and rice, he makes a U-turn onto page 116, adage that there are “several sound reasons for anxiety over genetic engineering.” (First of all, how can anxiety be the product of sound reasoning?) Anyway, Dr. Wilson presents five reasons for such anxiety, but his heart’s not in it. He knows the dangers of genetic engineering are pretty tiny. Look at the concluding statements for each reason why genetic engineering might be treacherous:
1. “…How far the process should be allowed to continue is an open ethical question.”
2. “…Destructive secondary effects . . . are also at least a remote possibility.”
3. “…It is simply too early to tell.”
4. “…How severe [the effects] will become . . . remains to be seen.”
So far, it doesn’t sound overly treacherous, does it? Then we get to reason 5, public opinion:
“In the realm of public opinion, genetic engineering is to agriculture as nuclear engineering is to energy.” Is one of the fantastic scientists of our day going to stand by while anxiety produces the opinion?
Rumor has it that so. Why, when it would be so simple for him to dispel fears about nuclear power right here? In the interview with Dr. Wilson in the Guardian in 1998, we see why he holds back: Literary intimidation. The man has been traumatized by attacks on him from left-wing faculty and undergrads alike. How else can one clarify his praise, at the end of this book, of eco-protesters. That’s sad, isn’t it?
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
…This book was off the shizzel my nizzel. It was a excellent read… it was a excellent tale book for night time reading, because it made me zzzz zzzzz zzzzz mucho well. If you like saving the environment, taking long strolls in the park, and protecting rhinos, then this book is for you. It addresses problems with biodiversity and extinction. The Future of Life is an eye opener to many problems that need addressing. I highly recommend this dead tree… with ink… and stuff. (the book)
Peace out,
A town, Johnny, and Heffer
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5