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"Life on the Brink" aspires to reignite a robust discussion of
population issues among environmentalists, environmental studies
scholars, policymakers, and the general public. Some of the leading
voices in the American environmental movement restate the case that
population growth is a major force behind many of our most serious
ecological problems, including global climate change, habitat loss
and species extinctions, air and water pollution, and food and
water scarcity. As we surpass seven billion world inhabitants,
contributors argue that ending population growth worldwide and in
the United States is a moral imperative that deserves renewed
commitment.
Hailing from a range of disciplines and offering varied
perspectives, these essays hold in common a commitment to sharing
resources with other species and a willingness to consider what
will be necessary to do so. In defense of nature and of a vibrant
human future, contributors confront hard issues regarding
contraception, abortion, immigration, and limits to growth that
many environmentalists have become too timid or politically correct
to address in recent years.
Ending population growth will not happen easily. Creating genuinely
sustainable societies requires major change to economic systems and
ethical values coupled with clear thinking and hard work. "Life on
the Brink" is an invitation to join the discussion about the great
work of building a better future.
Contributors: Albert Bartlett, Joseph Bish, Lester Brown, Tom
Butler, Philip Cafaro, Martha Campbell, William R. Catton Jr.,
Eileen Crist, Anne Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich, Robert Engelman, Dave
Foreman, Amy Gulick, Ronnie Hawkins, Leon Kolankiewicz, Richard
Lamm, Jeffrey McKee, Stephanie Mills, Roderick Nash, Tim Palmer,
Charmayne Palomba, William Ryerson, Winthrop Staples III, Captain
Paul Watson, Don Weeden, George Wuerthner.
In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide
of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this
wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond
the familiar litany of causes--a large and growing human
population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and
international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions
upon wildlands--she asks the key question: if we know human
expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not
taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that
to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls
upon us to lower the global human population while working within a
human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to
localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls
upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial
and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human
supremacy--the conviction that humans are superior to all other
life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their
habitats--normalizes and promotes humanity's ongoing expansion,
undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and
preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and
nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that
humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the
biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of
nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural
resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live
in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic
cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse
of a biodiverse, living planet.
Is it time to embrace the so-called "Anthropocene"--the age of
human dominion--and to abandon tried-and-true conservation tools
such as parks and wilderness areas? Is the future of Earth to be
fully domesticated, an engineered global garden managed by
technocrats to serve humanity? The schism between advocates of
rewilding and those who accept and even celebrate a "post-wild"
world is arguably the hottest intellectual battle in contemporary
conservation.In Keeping the Wild, a group of prominent scientists,
writers, and conservation activists responds to the
Anthropocene-boosters who claim that wild nature is no more (or in
any case not much worth caring about), that human-caused extinction
is acceptable, and that "novel ecosystems" are an adequate
replacement for natural landscapes. With rhetorical fists swinging,
the book's contributors argue that these "new environmentalists"
embody the hubris of the managerial mindset and offer a
conservation strategy that will fail to protect life in all its
buzzing, blossoming diversity. With essays from Eileen Crist, David
Ehrenfeld, Dave Foreman, Lisi Krall, Harvey Locke, Curt Meine,
Kathleen Dean Moore, Michael Soule, Terry Tempest Williams and
other leading thinkers, Keeping the Wild provides an introduction
to this important debate, a critique of the Anthropocene boosters'
attack on traditional conservation, and unapologetic advocacy for
wild nature.
Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries
as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing
perspectives from science, philosophy, politics, and technology.
Gaian theory, which holds that Earth's physical and biological
processes are inextricably bound to form a self-regulating system,
is more relevant than ever in light of increasing concerns about
global climate change. The Gaian paradigm of Earth as a living
system, first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in
the 1970s, has inspired a burgeoning body of researchers working
across disciplines that range from physics and biology to
philosophy and politics. Gaia in Turmoil reflects this disciplinary
richness and intellectual diversity, with contributions (including
essays by both Lovelock and Margulis) that approach the topic from
a wide variety of perspectives, discussing not only Gaian science
but also global environmental problems and Gaian ethics and
education. Contributors focus first on the science of Gaia,
considering such topics as the workings of the biosphere, the
planet's water supply, and evolution; then discuss Gaian
perspectives on global environmental change, including biodiversity
destruction and global warming; and finally explore the influence
of Gaia on environmental policy, ethics, politics, technology,
economics, and education. Gaia in Turmoil breaks new ground by
focusing on global ecological problems from the perspectives of
Gaian science and knowledge, focusing especially on the challenges
of climate change and biodiversity destruction. Contributors David
Abram, Donald Aitken, Connie Barlow, J. Baird Callicott, Bruce
Clarke, Eileen Crist, Tim Foresman, Stephan Harding, Barbara
Harwood, Tim Lenton, Eugene Linden, Karen Litfin, James Lovelock,
Lynn Margulis, Bill McKibben, Martin Ogle, H. Bruce Rinker,
Mitchell Thomashow, Tyler Volk, Hywel Williams
Protected natural areas have historically been the primary tool of
conservationists to conserve land and wildlife. These parks and
reserves are set apart to forever remain in contrast to those
places where human activities, technologies, and developments
prevail. But even as the biodiversity crisis accelerates, a growing
number of voices are suggesting that protected areas are passe.
Conservation, they argue, should instead focus on lands managed for
human use--working landscapes--and abandon the goal of preventing
human-caused extinctions in favor of maintaining ecosystem services
to support people. If such arguments take hold, we risk losing
support for the unique qualities and values of wild, undeveloped
nature.
"Protecting the Wild" offers a spirited argument for the robust
protection of the natural world. In it, experts from five
continents reaffirm that parks, wilderness areas, and other
reserves are an indispensable--albeit insufficient--means to
sustain species, subspecies, key habitats, ecological processes,
and evolutionary potential. Using case studies from around the
globe, they present evidence that terrestrial and marine protected
areas are crucial for biodiversity and human well-being alike,
vital to countering anthropogenic extinctions and climate
change.
A companion volume to "Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication
of Earth," "Protecting the Wild" provides a necessary addition to
the conversation about the future of conservation in the so-called
Anthropocene, one that will be useful for academics, policymakers,
and conservation practitioners at all levels, from local land
trusts to international NGOs.
Seeing a cat rubbing against a person, Charles Darwin described her
as \u0022in an affectionate frame of mind\u0022; for Samuel
Barnett, a behavioralist, the mental realm is beyond the grasp of
scientists andbehavior must be described technically, as a physical
action only. What difference does this difference make? In Eileen
Crist's analysis of the language used to portray animal behavior,
the difference \u0022is that in the reader's mind the very image of
the cat's 'body' is transfigured...from an experiencing
subject...into a vacant object.\u0022 Images of Animals examines
the literature of behavioral science, revealing how works with the
common aim of documenting animal lives, habits, and instincts
describe \u0022realities that are worlds apart.\u0022 Whether the
writer affirms the Cartesian verdict of an unbridgeable chasm
between animals and humans or the Darwinian panorama of
evolutionary continuity, the question of animal mind is ever
present and problematic in behavioral thought. Comparing the
naturalist writings of Charles Darwin, Jean Henri Fabre, and George
and Elizabeth Peckham to works of classical ethology by Konrad
Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen and of contemporary sociobiology,
Crist demonstrates how words matter. She does not attempt to defend
any of these constructions as a faithful representation of animal
existence, but to show how each internally coherent view molds the
reader's understanding of animals. Rejecting the notion that
\u0022a neutral language exists, or can be constructed, which
yields incontestably objective accounts of animal behavior,\u0022
Crist argues that \u0022language is not instrumental in the
depiction of animals and, in particular, it is never impartial with
respect to the question of animal mind.\u0022
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