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Name: Earth
Detail: Planet
TIM FLANNERY, an Australian mammalogist and palaeontologist, is an environmental celebrity. His 2005 book, “The Weather Makers”, about climate science and global warming, was a bestseller. His latest is his most ambitious book so far. The publisher calls “Here on Earth” a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery's subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation.
He muses on whether humanity counts as a superorganism (a classification usually reserved for bees and ants), why we have yet to discover intelligent aliens, the poorly understood effects of dumping industrial chemicals into the environment, the power of planet-watching networks of satellites and the benefits of aboriginal scrub-burning. There is an effort to organise the chapters around two competing models of human behaviour, a co-operative, far-sighted wisdom that Mr Flannery dubs the “Gaian” approach and a reckless, ultimately destructive short-termism that he calls “Medean”, after the bloodthirsty enchantress of Greek myth.
In this section
Paradises on earth
Sacred mysteries
Outlook swampy
Getting inside the mind
The gospel according to Mark
Restoring Wright
The trouble is that the subject is far too big to fit comfortably into a book a little more than 300 pages long. Mr Flannery is a respected biologist with plenty of published papers to his name, but the book feels dilettantish, with a dizzying array of concepts introduced, briefly discussed, then dispensed with before the reader has had time to digest them. The question of whether modern democracies can successfully resist populist tyranny is raised and then abandoned within two paragraphs. A discussion of decarbonising the world's transport networks flashes by in a handful of pages. Fewer examples more deeply explored might have added up to a more convincing case, and an easier read.
That is a shame, because much of the material would repay a deeper look. The “Gaia” theory, which is the subject of the opening chapters, starts with the surprising observation that such things as the Earth's surface temperature and the salinity of its oceans have fluctuated remarkably little over billions of years despite, for instance, a significant increase in the power of the sun. James Lovelock, who first proposed the Gaia theory, used an analogy with living organisms, all of which can, to some degree, regulate conditions within their own bodies. The theory brings to mind New Age crankery, and some of the research Mr Flannery cites to underpin it is speculative at best. For example, he mentions a scientific paper that suggests that lichens, bacteria and the like may have been a driving force behind prehistoric geology and the formation of continents. Mr Flannery admits that the idea is “controversial”. But having shown the reader a glimpse of this fascinating byway, he speeds straight past, impatient to reach the next intellectual stop, while the tentative theory is simply accepted.
If the book is not all it could be, it is still worth reading, though less for answers than for its interesting hypotheses. It is healthy to be reminded of the various ways in which humans are influencing their environment—most of them malign—and to recognise that even in an age of high technology, our prosperity and well-being depend on our natural environment, which furnishes us with air, water, food and the natural resources on which industrial civilisation relies.
Free Wallpaper&Biography.
Name: Earth
Detail: Planet
TIM FLANNERY, an Australian mammalogist and palaeontologist, is an environmental celebrity. His 2005 book, “The Weather Makers”, about climate science and global warming, was a bestseller. His latest is his most ambitious book so far. The publisher calls “Here on Earth” a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery's subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation.
He muses on whether humanity counts as a superorganism (a classification usually reserved for bees and ants), why we have yet to discover intelligent aliens, the poorly understood effects of dumping industrial chemicals into the environment, the power of planet-watching networks of satellites and the benefits of aboriginal scrub-burning. There is an effort to organise the chapters around two competing models of human behaviour, a co-operative, far-sighted wisdom that Mr Flannery dubs the “Gaian” approach and a reckless, ultimately destructive short-termism that he calls “Medean”, after the bloodthirsty enchantress of Greek myth.
In this section
Paradises on earth
Sacred mysteries
Outlook swampy
Getting inside the mind
The gospel according to Mark
Restoring Wright
The trouble is that the subject is far too big to fit comfortably into a book a little more than 300 pages long. Mr Flannery is a respected biologist with plenty of published papers to his name, but the book feels dilettantish, with a dizzying array of concepts introduced, briefly discussed, then dispensed with before the reader has had time to digest them. The question of whether modern democracies can successfully resist populist tyranny is raised and then abandoned within two paragraphs. A discussion of decarbonising the world's transport networks flashes by in a handful of pages. Fewer examples more deeply explored might have added up to a more convincing case, and an easier read.
That is a shame, because much of the material would repay a deeper look. The “Gaia” theory, which is the subject of the opening chapters, starts with the surprising observation that such things as the Earth's surface temperature and the salinity of its oceans have fluctuated remarkably little over billions of years despite, for instance, a significant increase in the power of the sun. James Lovelock, who first proposed the Gaia theory, used an analogy with living organisms, all of which can, to some degree, regulate conditions within their own bodies. The theory brings to mind New Age crankery, and some of the research Mr Flannery cites to underpin it is speculative at best. For example, he mentions a scientific paper that suggests that lichens, bacteria and the like may have been a driving force behind prehistoric geology and the formation of continents. Mr Flannery admits that the idea is “controversial”. But having shown the reader a glimpse of this fascinating byway, he speeds straight past, impatient to reach the next intellectual stop, while the tentative theory is simply accepted.
If the book is not all it could be, it is still worth reading, though less for answers than for its interesting hypotheses. It is healthy to be reminded of the various ways in which humans are influencing their environment—most of them malign—and to recognise that even in an age of high technology, our prosperity and well-being depend on our natural environment, which furnishes us with air, water, food and the natural resources on which industrial civilisation relies.
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