"Through a globe-circling tour of the planet, a conservation
ecologist checks environmental statistics and reveals the
importance of understanding where these numbers come from in order
to evaluate current awareness of the planet's potential
environmental peril."-Forecast Praise for the hardcover edition
(published as The World According to Pimm) "Among ecologists who
can apply their understanding of basic science to the modern human
predicament, Stuart Pimm is one of the very best in the world
today. He writes clearly, interestingly, and understandably. This
book will interest literally everyone "-Jared Diamond, author of
Guns, Germs, and Steel "A dazzling tour d'horizon of the
twenty-first century environment. The author informs us of the
approaching fate of the natural world (including our own species)
with uncommon scientific authority, style, and wit."-Edward O.
Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, Harvard
University "A born storyteller, Pimm takes us on a world tour to
reveal how people are adversely affecting their environment-a tour
de force in more than one sense."-Thomas E. Lovejoy, chief
biodiversity advisor to the president of the World Bank Humans use
50 percent of the world's freshwater supply and consume 42 percent
of its plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants one
hundred times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such
numbers should make it clear that our impact on the planet has
been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after
decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains
passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they
should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that
the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact
of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted
them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass
we are hungrily consuming? In this book, Stuart Pimm appoints
himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts,"
checking the environmental statistics gathered by tireless
scientists in work that is always painstaking and often
heartbreaking. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the
importance of understanding where these numbers come from and what
they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour
of our beautiful, but weary, planet from the volcanic mountains and
rainforests of Hawai'i to the boreal forests of Siberia. Stuart L.
Pimm is Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas
School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. He
is the author of more than 150 scientific papers, as well as three
books, and numerous articles in publications such as New Scientist,
The Sciences, Nature, and Science.
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