Dodging Extinction: Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth

In powerful and passionate prose, Barnosky, professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, outlines the environmental crisis humans have created and provides reasons to be optimistic that the world’s sixth mass extinction may not be inevitable. Barnosky focuses on the impacts posed by three major human endeavors: making money; creating energy; and feeding the world. In each case, he successfully integrates biology with public policy and economics, recognizing that solutions will have to come from an interdisciplinary approach. Barnosky’s plentiful evidence for his arguments includes many of his own research lab’s estimates of the rate of species extinction. Although“continuing the species-loss trajectory we are now on will all but assure that we bring on the Sixth Mass Extinction in as little as three centuries” and ecological change “now outpaces, and is observable within, a single human lifetime,” solutions are possible. Barnosky bolsters his argument that “there is no reason that carbon-neutral energy production cannot be scaled up dramatically and quickly,” with the specifics to make his claim believable. Time may be short, but this is a message of hope for readers looking for a better future. [em](Oct.) [/em]