Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face [Hardcover]

 

 

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"Given that the world has changed, sometimes drastically, in the geological past and is changing today, we must recognize that it may change drastically in the future. When I look at the available data, I see three factors suggesting that the changes happening now or the ones likely to happen in the future are somewhat special--which is science talk for 'alarming.'

First is the changes, climatic and otherwise, that are presently occurring are more rapid than any in the past, except for rare cases when events such as the arrival of a large meteorite caused changes very quickly.

Second is that some of the changes occurring now are different from any that have happened before, and many different kinds of change are occurring at once.

Third is that the more severe changes in past periods have led to mass extinctions, including the removal of the dominant organisms. We are the dominant organism's of today's world...

Putting it simply, I aim to convince you that we live in challenging times, and our challenge is not to manage the world so that it does not change, but to manage our impacts so that patterns of change do not become so severe that devastating tipping points are exceeded."

The above extract comes from the introduction of this powerful, well-written book by Peter F. Sale. Sale, an ecologist (specifically, an animal ecologist), is assistant director at the Institute for Water, Environment, and Health at the United Nations University. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Windsor (in Ontario, Canada).

Ecology is that branch of the science of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environment. Thus, Sale as an ecologist has to be an expert on the environment. His expertise shines through in this book.

The book itself is divided into three parts:

The first part (4 chapters) looks at four specific examples of how our activities impact the natural world.

The second part (2 chapters) can be summarized by asking the following question:

In view of all the human-caused devastation mentioned in the first part, why don't we humans get it? (That is, why don't we understand that we have a big and growing environmental problem?)

The third and my favourite part (4 chapters) looks into what we must do so as not to reach critical environmental tipping points. Then humanity's possible alternative futures are presented. But before all this can be discussed, it's important to know what a loss of ecological complexity means for the world and this is what the first chapter of this part does.

Throughout this book, there are illustrations especially in the first part. Each chapter begins with a black-and-white picture. I found all of these informative and interesting.

Finally, this book is not all about doom and gloom (as you might expect from a book like this). As Sale says:

"We have the opportunity to choose [a] future [for humanity] that will unfold and the capacity to make it happen; and we humans have a history of moving quickly once we make the collective decision to move at all."

In conclusion, the most important thing you should get from this book is that the environmental problems that we have created WILL NOT FIX THEMSELVES.

(first published 2011; preface; introduction; 3 parts or 10 chapters; main narrative 305 pages; bibliography; index)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

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Peter Sale's scholarly but readable overview of the varied and interconnected aspects of the whole problem of our environmental crisis and his positive outlook that we can change direction makes this book stand out from others. To glimpse the depth and breadth of his work, check out the bibliography; it's a great read on its own.
This is a compelling and passionate 'must read' for all who are concerned about human impact on the environment and the consequences. Sale clearly outlines his case that "We are responsible for most of the extinction occurring today, and the rate is somewhere around .1% of species per year". He demonstrates that we are causing extinctions in a myriad of ways, intentional and incidental, through overfishing, deforestation, use of fossil fuels, overpopulation and bumping into coral reefs while snorkeling. While acknowledging that, "The world has survived mass loss of species before...[and on] each occasion, diversity has recovered," he cautions that "during every previous extinction, the species that were most dominant before the collapse were among the species that were lost".
Throughout the book, Sale offers personal and colorful tales of coral reef life. He cites the work done to protect the Australian Great Barrier Reef and other world examples of mass environmentally responsible actions as reasons to hope that humans can collectively change their behaviours. He suggests that humans, if they have the will, can find "at least one possible future ahead of us that offers us high quality of life in a world of sustainable natural ecosystems".

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