The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans
Mark Lynas
The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans
Building on recent scientific discoveries, Mark Lynas explains that there are nine ‘planetary boundaries’ that humanity must not cross if the Earth is to continue to support life and our civilisation. Climate change is one, but others - like ocean acidification, nitrogen use and biodiversity loss - are less well-known, though equally crucial. These boundaries all interact, and we can only hope to manage the planet successfully if we understand how they affect one another. But this is no depressing lamentation of eco-doom. Instead, Lynas presents a radical manifesto that calls for the increased use of controversial but environmentally-friendly technologies, such as genetic engineering and nuclear power, as part of a global effort to protect and nurture the biosphere.
3.7 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Science & Nature |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
288 |
| RRP |
£14.99 |
| Date of Publication |
July 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0007313426 |
| Publisher |
Fourth Estate |
| |
Building on recent scientific discoveries, Mark Lynas explains that there are nine ‘planetary boundaries’ that humanity must not cross if the Earth is to continue to support life and our civilisation. Climate change is one, but others - like ocean acidification, nitrogen use and biodiversity loss - are less well-known, though equally crucial. These boundaries all interact, and we can only hope to manage the planet successfully if we understand how they affect one another. But this is no depressing lamentation of eco-doom. Instead, Lynas presents a radical manifesto that calls for the increased use of controversial but environmentally-friendly technologies, such as genetic engineering and nuclear power, as part of a global effort to protect and nurture the biosphere.
Reviews
The Evening Standard
Andrew Neather
"… for all the angst this book may cause his Green allies, there can be no doubting his seriousness about climate change … This is a clear-eyed, hard-headed assessment of the ecological challenges facing us — and all the more bracing for it."
07/07/2011
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The Sunday Times
Richard Girling
"[A] vigorously provocative book … Lynas is not the first to identify what he calls “planetary boundaries” — limits to pressures on the earth’s health and resources beyond which meltdown lies. Neither is he the first to identify the standard-bearers of the green movement — Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the rest — as intellectual bankrupts whose scientifically illiterate gloom-mongering has put environmental politics beyond the electoral pale. But nobody before has argued it with such force."
03/07/2011
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The Guardian
Peter Forbes
"He has written the clearest exposition so far of the choices facing us. We may wince at the book's title (it derives from Stewart Brand's remark: "We are as gods and have to get good at it"), but Lynas is not playing God, simply making a passionate pitch for good global resource management."
20/07/2011
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The Financial Times
Marek Kohn
"Planetary boundaries richly merit a popular treatment, and The God Species taps their potential to offer a sharply focused vision of planetary dynamics that goes beyond warming and extinctions. Lynas sees climate change as “more than anything else, a financing issue”. But the financing is an issue because climate change action is enmeshed in a global network of conflicting interests and claims over the fair allocation of costs. "
15/07/2011
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The Independent
Diane Coyle
"The case for nuclear as the only plausible low-carbon energy-generating technology that can satisfy enough of our demand for electricity to bring emissions targets within reach seems compelling to me ... But it seems unlikely that the arguments set out here will convince many of those who instinctively oppose technologies that they have for so long demonised."
15/07/2011
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The Observer
Robin McKie
"The God Species offers up an intriguing thesis and Lynas outlines it with clarity and panache — though his basic argument is disfigured not just by vagueness about policy measures and specific goals but by a depressing number of silly errors."
24/07/2011
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