A world to live in
Subtitle: an ecologist's vision for a plundered planet
By: George M. Woodwell
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9780262034074
Subjects: Environmental degradation; Global environmental change; Radioactive pollution of the atmosphere; Restoration ecology; Pollution; Global warming; Air
Description: A century of industrial development is the briefest of moments in the half billion years of the earth's evolution. And yet our current era has brought greater changes to the earth than any period in human history. The biosphere, the globe's life-giving envelope of air and climate, has been changed irreparably. In A World to Live In, the distinguished ecologist George Woodwell shows that the biosphere is now a global human protectorate and that its integrity of structure and function are tied closely to the human future. The earth is a living system, Woodwell explains, and its stability is threatened by human disruption. Industry dumps its waste globally and makes a profit from it, invading the global commons; corporate interests overpower weak or nonexistent governmental protection to plunder the planet. The fossil fuels industry offers the most dramatic example of environmental destruction, disseminating the heat-trapping gases that are now warming the earth and changing the climate forever. The assumption that we can continue to use fossil fuels and "adapt" to climate disruption, Woodwell argues, is a ticket to catastrophe. But Woodwell points the way toward a solution. We must respect the full range of life on earth -- not species alone, but their natural communities of plant and animal life that have built, and still maintain, the biosphere. We must recognize that the earth's living systems are our heritage and that the preservation of the integrity of a finite biosphere is a necessity and an inviolable human right. -- Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-217) and index.
Table of contents: title: Life on the skin of the earth. In the beginning ; Nuclear energy : the commons redefined ; DDT drives a geochemical tempest ; Carbon and the climatic disruption; title: Environment is political : climate heats up. The global commons : a corporate feedlot ; Climate in the tides of politics ; The adaptation myth : an attractive conceit threatens all ; The limits of biodiversity; title: Which world?. Governments : whither in the storm? ; A new departure ; Sic utere : a world to live in.