It's a book both timely and, for us at the Ecology Hall of Fame, particularly comforting. When we started the Ecology Hall of Fame, we put out the word on the internet, asking for nominations, suggestions and comments. Of the emails that came back to us, several argued that our basic concept was flawed. It was, they argued, a scientific term with no implications for social action, a non-philosophic concept. Ernest Callenbach's newest book, Ecology, A Pocket Guide , shows us how right we were.
Ecology is more than a scientific discipline.
It's a philosophic stance, a way of looking at the world that sees connections, connections between plants, animals, and processes. The book is organized as a glossary of the terms ecologists use to understand and explain the world. One of the sections I most appreciated was Urban Ecology. In it, he makes clear that an appreciation of and adherence to ecological thinking doesn't lead to the conclusion that we should all move back to the land and live as our ancestors did. In fact, cities are the single most productive invention of the human species.