Abundant Earth
Subtitle: toward an ecological civilization
By: Eileen Crist
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Chicago, IL; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780226596778; 9780226596808; 9780226596945
Copyright date: 2019
Subjects: SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Biology / General; Human-plant relationships; Biodiversity conservation; Human-animal relationships
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-300) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction -- -- Part One.; title: The destruction of life and the human supremacy complex.; title: Unraveling Earth's biodiversity --; title: Human supremacy and the roots of the ecological crisis --; title: The framework of resources and techno-managerialism -- -- Part Two.; title: Discursive knots.; title: Is the human impact natural? --; title: The trouble with debunking wilderness --; title: Freedom, entitlement, and the fate of the nonhuman world -- -- Part Three.; title: Scaling down and pulling back.; title: Dystopia at the doorstep --; title: Welcoming limitations --; title: Restoring abundant Earth --; title: Epilogue : toward an ecological civilization.