The Future of Life

Rating:
Summary: Your future, your life
Review: Edward Wilson is America's, if not the world's, leading naturalist. Years of field work are applied in The Future of Life in a global tour of the world's natural resources. How are they used? What has been lost? What remains and is it sustainable with present rates of use? With broad vision, Wilson stresses our need to understand fully the biodiversity of our planet. Most importantly, that knowledge must include a realistic view of human impact on those resources. While many works of this genre sound tocsins of despair with little to offer in countering the threat of the "outbreak" of humanity on our planet, Wilson proposes a variety of realistic scenarios that may save our world and our own species. Survival will be obtained from a sound knowledge base, and the foundation for that insight starts here.

Wilson begins with an open letter to the patron saint of environment defenders, Henry David Thoreau. He offers a comparative view of today's Walden Pond with that of Thoreau's day. Wilson will use such comparisons for the remainder of the book. The issue is clear: humanity has done grave damage to its home over the millennia. The growth of human population, but more importantly, the usurpation of the biosphere for limited human purposes, threatens a world losing its ability to cope with the intrusion. Can this planet, with human help, be restored to biodiversity levels that will ensure its ongoing capacity to provide for us?

Wilson's writing skills readily match his talents as a researcher. Presenting sweeping ideas with an economy of words, he avoids vague assertions or the need for the reader to fill in information. With each stop of our global voyage in his company, he provides detailed information describing examples of human "erasure of entire ecosystems." At this pace, he informs us, we will soon require four more planets of our resource levels to sustain humanity's intended growth. In the classic tradition, he introduces a protagonist for continued economic growth debating an environmental defender. Both views can be accommodated, he assures us, but only if a population limiting bottleneck is achieved. What level of humanity can the planet endure? The numbers frighten, but the resolution, Wilson stresses, isn't inevitable.

Diversity, he argues, is the key. Even our agricultural crops can benefit. A mere hundred species are the foundation of our food supply, of which but twenty carry the load. Wilson counters this precarious situation by urging investigation of ten thousand species that could be utilized. Further, and this point will give many readers qualms, Wilson urges genetic engineering to apply desired traits between crop species. He urges these strong measures as a means of reducing the clearing of habitats to enlarge farming acreage. In conclusion, he stresses the application of ethical values in considering the environment. Each of us must make ourselves aware of our impact on our nest. If you are to survive, it may well rely on whether you read and act on the ideas in this book. Although other works on this topic are available, Wilson's stands above the others for clarity, scope and suggestions for survival. Are you, he asks, willing to add one penny to the cost of a cup of coffee to retain the world's natural reserves? It's the question confronting us all.

Rating:
Summary: A prescription offering hope
Review: Famed biologist and godfather of sociobiology (and its current prodigy, evolutionary psychology), esteemed Harvard professor and one of the great scientists of our time, Edward O. Wilson outlines in this engaging but somewhat reserved book what is happening to the planet's biodiversity and what can be done about it.

The Prologue is a "letter" to Henry David Thoreau as Wilson seeks to establish a conservationist continuity between the author of Walden and ourselves. The open letter is somewhat self-conscious and artificial, but certainly appropriate for a work that celebrates nature and hopes to be a modest instrument in helping to preserve the natural world.

The first chapter is a survey of the life forms that live in "the biospheric membrane that covers Earth" (p. 21) with an emphasis on extreme climes including Antarctica's Lake Vostok (under two miles of ice) and the Mariana Trench (deepest part of the ocean at 35,750 feet below sea level). Chapter Two makes the assertion that the planet is currently going through a dangerous "bottleneck" characterized by disappearing habitats and extinction of species the likes of which have not been seen since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. The culprit is of course us, represented by our short-sighted exploitation of non-renewable resources. Here Wilson begins his theme, to find a "universal environmental ethic" that will lead us "through the bottleneck into which our species has foolishly blundered." (p. 41)

In the next chapter, "Nature's Last Stand," Wilson delineates just how bad things really are as he surveys the rampant deforestation and other ecological obscenities currently taking place in the world. (Incidentally, those of you interested in a readable and painstakingly detailed account of what we are doing to mother earth, full of facts and figures, see Stuart L. Pimm's The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth, 2001.) Wilson continues with an estimate of how much the biomass is worth in dollars and cents ($33-trillion per year, which I think is similar to Pimm's figure). He makes the important point (which cannot in my opinion be repeated often enough) that the "cost" of doing business ought to include the damage or loss of "the free services of the natural economy" currently not figured into bottom line accounting. Thus the cost of extracting coal from the ground ought to include the value of the land torn up; the cost of wood from a tree ought to include the cost of watershed lost, etc. If the real costs of using the land, the rivers and the oceans, and the air were factored in--which some day they will be, whether we like it or not--some commodities would be seen as too expensive to harvest willy-nilly, and we might very well choose more environmentally agreeable alternatives.

In the final chapter Wilson gives "The Solution" which relies heavily upon the work of non-governmental environmental organizations that are attempting to use economic power to save the rain forests and other endangered "hotspots" throughout the world. Their technique includes outbidding the loggers for the rights to the forests, raising the standard of living of those who live in these endangered areas, and getting governments to see the value of their unspoiled lands.

Obviously Wilson is preaching to the choir here since myself and most others who will read this book will already be true believers in saving biodiversity. Perhaps the value of the book is in further educating us in the ways this might be done. Wilson is hopeful that we will wake up before it is too late. Indeed every minute counts because once the environment is gone it is gone forever to be replaced by God knows what. Wilson emphasizes not only the unknown value of all the plants, animals and microbes that are going extinct but the moral correctness of saving them. It is here that one notices a change in tone from the Edward O. Wilson of years ago. He is now so intent on saving what biodiversity is left that he is seeking to engage religion in the task!

This is Wilson somewhat mellowed at age seventy, seeking conciliation with former disputants for the greater good of planetary life. This is the entomologist as statesman.

The reason Wilson surprisingly points to the morality of saving wildlife as the key inducement is that we are robbing the world of our children and our grandchildren for our leisure and luxury today. It is a significant moral issue because we are putting what will be a terrible cost onto them, and they haven't a say in it at all!

I want to add that the danger inherent in the rampant devastation of the biosphere, whether through the direct destruction of ecologies or through pollution, is beyond our ability to foresee. The spectre of a runaway greenhouse effect is just that, a phenomenon that may be upon us before we realize it, leaving us with no ability to stop it. Think of Venus and a surface temperature that melts lead. There is nothing in our present understanding of the biosphere that I know of that rules out that possibility. We are not only stupidly playing with fire, we are playing Russian roulette with ourselves and we are holding the gun to the head of our children. Wilson's book is an attempt to guide us away from such utter folly. I just hope that those people in the Bush administration and at the Wall Street Journal and the Economist and elsewhere who think that our resources will take care of themselves read this wise and penetrating critique and assume personal moral responsibility for their actions and utterances.

Rating:
Summary: All the talk about diversity; it's biodiversity that matters
Review: Forget the nattering about cultural and religious diversity. Edward O Wilson makes a strong and compelling argument that biodiversity should take pride-of-place as the pre-emininent subject of discussion. THE FUTURE OF LIFE should be the topic that the diversity industry concentrates on.

The substantive subject here however is not the scientific underpinnings of adaptation, evolutionary psychology and sociobiology in general, nor does this book go into the moral and political debates surrounding these topics. It's a refreshing break from the 'Science Wars' and the concomitantly fought, but larger, 'Culture Wars.' A refreshing break yes, but this book is by no means breezy or full of cheer. You may very well come away depressed - how else can it be when the subject is man - "the serial killer of the biosphere." In the end though there is some room for cautious optimism.

The litany of woes is well known - destruction of tropical rainforests, overpopulation, pollution, desertification, and massive loss of plant and animal species. Indeed science is generally in agreement on the fact that we are in the midst of a Great Extinction event. They've been others. This is THE SIXTH EXTINCTION (as Richard Leakey put it a few years ago), but it's the first since hominids arrived, and as Wilson says [we have] "accelerated the erasure of entire ecosystems and the extinction of thousands of million-year-old species." Wilson wrote about this previously in THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE but it seems to me, he is following on from CONSILIENCE (where he offered a sythesis of knowledge) by reaffirming that for mankind today, what we know (and equally as important, what we do not know) about the environment is the only knowledge that really matters. He says "perhaps the time has come to stop calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view."

Since we've not yet got that vision, the next best thing is to start using the sort of sythesis thinking that Wilson offers here. Economics is the science of rational man, so in appealing to reason, not emotion, Wilson blends biology with economics and shows the costs associated with a depleted environment. He mentions some "ecosystem services" such as pollination of crops, pollution control, climate control, and water purification, and mentions that a 1997 study by economists put the value of these services at $33 trillion per annum. A partial loss of even some of these naturally occurring, and therefore free facilities would severely disrupt our economic activity, and more importantly, we could never afford the replacement costs. He builds on this emphasis with examples of its practical applicability. "In 1992 a pair of economic botanists demonstrated that single harvests of wild grown medicinals from two tropical forest plots in Belize were worth $726 and $3,327 per hectare respectively, with labor costs thrown in. By comparison, other researchers estimated per hectare yield from tropical forest converted to farmland at $228 in nearby Guatemala and $339 in Brazil."

Although economics as practiced through industrialization and globalization is a large part of the problem, it must also be involved in the solution - "[making] conservation profitable." This book forces us to confront a dismal recent past and a less than rosy immediate future, but Wilson nevertheless ends on a guardedly optimistic note. He offers solutions such as immediate protection of the worlds most sensitive ecosystems or "hotspots", a ban on logging of old-growth forests and mapping of the worlds biodiversity resources.

Wilson does tangentially bring up his pet theory of sociobiology and briefly discusses our genetic wiring as a non-forest dweller as a partial cause for our antipathy towards wilderness. In the end though, the book is a direct appeal to our ability to change based on past environmental experiences, and Wilson demonstrates a philosophical belief in man's spiritual connectedness to nature. It's a sythesis of knowledge and life. It's actually the sort of view that his old scientific rivals - Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin - would probably offer a nod to. It will be interesting to see how they receive this book. Consensus possibly? Maybe biodiversity is indeed all that really matters.

"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment" (Gaylord Nelson)

Rating:
Summary: A whirlwind tour of biodiversity preservation
Review: Great work ! In this book, E.O.Wilson takes us through a whirlwind tour of what/why/how of biodiversity preservation -- "what is biodiversity and how we humans are contributing to it's loss" , "why we should preserve biodiversity" and "how we should do it". For the "why" aspect, the author discusses both the "utility" of biodiversity to humans (ecosystem services and bioprospecting etc) and also the ethical reasons. Finally some very practical solutions are presented and he goes on to describe how they are being implemented by NGO's etc. Iam not a trained biologist/ecologist but still i found the book easily readable. Highly recommended !

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy" -- John C. Sawhill

Rating:
Summary: The Future of Life
Review: I bought this book for a couple who felt that they were among a tiny minority who loved the beauty of this earth and were enraged at the criminally exploitative treatment of it. When I read the first chapter I could not put it down. This book is a must read for every sane person on the planet, a spectacularly clear and careful study of how things great and small fit together, interdepend on eachother. To disregard any part of it or abuse that living heritage, poses a threat to our very existence on the one hand and on the other, points to our interdependence. I was stunned to learn that most of the species have yet to be identified and catalogued. Wilson knows all the arguments of both extremes on environmental issues, and while he articulately addresses these with balance, reason, and knowledge that only a scientist of his calibre could do, he never looses the sense of joy and wonder over what he has discovered in his journey, nor the urgency to preserve and protect it. In the final chapter he offers realistic and visionary options for insuring a better world. This book is a masterpiece, a Virgilian guide away from the hell we are creating, the limbo we are in, and a view of the paradise we have been wontonly destroying.

Rating:
Summary: Real
Review: I enjoyed this as I am one who thinks similar, the facts of science and evidense. This is a book so many religious people put down and ignore the reality of it. The first and most obvious element of this write is that Edward performed a great deal of new and up to date research. Not that he wasn't qualified to write this years ago, but he keeps up to date. The hard science of nature is here, then combined with real human factors, contamination ect. but also world economics that are astoundingly accurate from a person who is more of a natural. I am pleased with this book and am planning to read it again, it does read easy and does not contain fill, or clutter, no repetitiuos or boring dead spots. Well designed for mainstream readers as there is imagination to entertain which fits well. If you support science and like to read, it will be worth it.
Another good book like this I recommend, which goes more into our destiny is SB 1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox.

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Summary: Very interesting even for a independent w/ Republican ideals
Review: I found this book fascinating and scary. I also got bogged down in some of the minutia(sp?) of the biology. I appreciated this book because Wilson sees both sides but then has the credibility and more importantly, knowledge to prove his critics wrong. Very good book to read no matter where you stand, but to be honest I had a hard time finishing it.

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Summary: A top biologist's prognosis of the future of humanity
Review: I have more often than not been disappointed by books which deal with the topic(s) of an economically, biologically, and socially sustainable future. Either I was left to wonder whether the scientific or economic evidence put forth was incomplete or suspect, thereby producing unsubstantiated optimism or pessimism, or I have found the policy prescriptions unclear. This eloquent paperback by one of the world's foremost biologists did not leave me disappointed.

On a purely personal note, I found this book to take off where several of my earlier academic and professional experiences had introduced questions. I encountered some of the scientific issues in Wilson's book in my freshman year in college in a course on evolution and, later, in a seminar on recombinant DNA, at the same time when Wilson's pioneering book on sociobiology was published. In my professional life, as a non-scientist, my travels to many of the countries Wilson refers to in this book opened my eyes to some troubling prospects. I have included in various travelogues to friends and family tales of the possibly shortest world record of discovery and extinction of species in the Indian Ocean island Madagascar, and of the probabability, within fifty years or less, of total submersion of island nations in the Pacific like the atolls of Kiribati.

Wilson brings to his analysis of these and other issues of species extinction, climate change, depletion of fresh water and arable land, a rare combination of eloquent, accessible, and level-headed statement of scientific evidence on one hand, and clarity of policy prescription on the other. Both as a non-scientist passionately favorable to a much higher level of scientific literacy among the general public and as a professional committed to international economic development, I was delighted at this exposition on the prospects of humanity.

Wilson is fundamentally optimistic about the options available to deal with pressing environmental challenges, even while he firmly asserts his belief in the clear and present danger of many past and present patterns of production and consumption. He uses an admittedly caricatured dialogue between an "economist" and an "environmentalist" to illustrate purported tensions between prevailing patterns of economic consumption and production and evidence of resource strains on the biosphere. But, unlike some other presentations on similar issues, Wilson does not cast his arguments in simplistic neo-Malthusian terms or in diatribes against globalization. Instead, he coolly appeals to what he considers as a growing consensus among many professionals, scientists, conservationists, economists, and others - with the exception of QUOTE the most politically conservative of their public interpreters UNQUOTE - that the essential facts point to some inevitable choices in how we continue to exploit resources of the biosphere.

While his 12-point policy prescriptions on pages 160-64 may seem broad, and even unsurprising, the strength of his book lies in the fact that he compactly marshals an array of complex scientific and economic evidence while avoiding pretensions of scientific certitude where evidence is lacking. He does not shy from admitting that certain of his positions - shared by many others - for example, on preserving species diversity, cannot be fully supported by scientific evidence or economic argumentation, but he does not shy away from making reasonable and transparent appeals to humanist values. QUOTE The case against humans for the extinction of the megfauna is built solely on circumstantial evidence, but the facts would win at least an indictment in any court of law UNQUOTE I confess I was left unsure how deeply to concerned at his report of the epitaph in a London zoo to the last member of a rare species of snails QUOTE 1.5 MILLION YEARS B.C. TO JANUARY 1996 UNQUOTE

I would not disagree that many of his policy prescriptions or analysis are hardly novel. I am nonetheless encouraged that they are articulated by one of the world's most renowned biologist. Outside of its policy prescriptions, many of the purely scientific speculations in this book are presented with great eloquence. While I clearly enjoyed the entire book, I especially found the first chapter on species diversity enlightening, with its exposition of why the emergence of numerous species in very extreme and isolated terrestrial conditions suggest the high probability of finding life elsewhere in similar conditions elsewhere in our galaxy.

If nothing else, I am sure many readers will enjoy the superb imagery in Wilson's imaginary letter to Henry Thoreau in the preface in which Wilson describes a gargantuan battle between an army of red and black ants so vividly that you can easily imagine the same graphic prose to describe the triumph of a superior army of human enslavers against their vanquished victims whose offspring submit into voluntary servitude at birth from some innate instinct.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant informative read.
Review: I read this book in one afternoon. It is enjoyable, quick, factual and gives you a real sense of being a part of life. Wilson is to be commended for not being too judgemental either against economists or conservationists, but gives their voices equal time in the issue of managing our planet's resources. He explains in wonderfully friendly writing about all the political groups and their roles in life on Earth, which is certainly no easy task. His solutions to the problems are informed, direct,and useful--not like the generalized, naive, and inappropriate ideas of tree-hugger extremists.
And, of course, his descriptions of life are beautiful and eloquent.

Rating:
Summary: The Future of Life
Review: I really enjoy reading the book ¡§The Future of Life¡¨ by the Biologist Edward O. Wilson. It is a rich and vivid book where the writer uses lots of brilliant and detailed description about the animals and other habitats. The sufficient amount information provides me a great and accurate picture of how the wild lives out there truly live.

This book depicts how Agriculture, one of the vital industries, endangers the remaining wild species and the nature environment. The world's food supply is hung by a slender thread of biodiversity. Ninety percent of the food supply is actually provided by slightly more than a hundred plant species out of a quarter-million known to exist. Of these hundred species, twenty species carry most of the load, of which only the main three--Wheat, maize, and rice---stand between humanity and starvation. Furthermore, most of the premier twenty are those that happened to be present in the agricultural region.

In a more general sense, these important species are the major potential donors of genes that genetic engineering utilize to improve the crop performance. With the insertion of the right snippets of DNA, new strains can be created that are variously cold-hardy, pest-proofed, perennial, fast growing, highly nutritious, multipurpose, water-conservative, and more easily sowed and harvested. And compared with traditional breeding techniques, genetic engineering is all but instantaneous.

In sum, Genetic Engineering have drastically changed our old ways of growing crops and thus, it threatens the future existence of the other species since it have significantly decreased the diversity of the nature wild lives.