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Toward Human Extinction
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Book Synopsis Toward Human Extinction by : Frederick Douglas Harper
Download or read book Toward Human Extinction written by Frederick Douglas Harper and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward Human Extinction: A Warning is a book of poetry and creative prose. Its themes focus primarily on climate change, a warning about global threats to human survival, and the need for the human race to make every effort to prevent its premature extinction as a species. Featured poem titles include Toward Human Extinction? Peace with Earth, A Prayer for the Human Species, Biology 101, Section Homo Sapiens, My Message to the Human Race, and Global Warming: Global Warning. A minority of poems and poetic prose on other themes include A Tribute to Muhammad Ali, A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, and A Letter to Sandy Hook Heaven.
Book Synopsis The Sixth Extinction by : Elizabeth Kolbert
Download or read book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Book Synopsis Human Extinction by : Émile P. Torres
Download or read book Human Extinction written by Émile P. Torres and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume traces the origins and evolution of the idea of human extinction, from the ancient Presocratics through contemporary work on "existential risks." Many leading intellectuals agree that the risk of human extinction this century may be higher than at any point in our 300,000-year history as a species. This book provides insight on the key questions that inform this discussion, including when humans began to worry about their own extinction and how the debate has changed over time. It establishes a new theoretical foundation for thinking about the ethics of our extinction, arguing that extinction would be very bad under most circumstances, although the outcome might be, on balance, good. Throughout the book, graphs, tables, and images further illustrate how human choices and attitudes about extinction have evolved in Western history. In its thorough examination of humanity’s past, this book also provides a starting point for understanding our future. Although accessible enough to be read by undergraduates, Human Extinction contains new and thought-provoking research that will benefit even established academic philosophers and historians.
Book Synopsis Eclipse of Man by : Charles T. Rubin
Download or read book Eclipse of Man written by Charles T. Rubin and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tomorrow has never looked better. Breakthroughs in fields like genetic engineering and nanotechnology promise to give us unprecedented power to redesign our bodies and our world. Futurists and activists tell us that we are drawing ever closer to a day when we will be as smart as computers, will be able to link our minds telepathically, and will live for centuries—or maybe forever. The perfection of a “post-human” future awaits us. Or so the story goes. In reality, the rush toward a post-human destiny amounts to an ideology of human extinction, an ideology that sees little of value in humanity except the raw material for producing whatever might come next. In Eclipse of Man, Charles T. Rubin traces the intellectual origins of the movement to perfect and replace the human race. He shows how today’s advocates of radical enhancement are—like their forebears—deeply dissatisfied with given human nature and fixated on grand visions of a future shaped by technological progress. Moreover, Rubin argues that this myopic vision of the future is not confined to charlatans and cheerleaders promoting this or that technology: it also runs through much of modern science and contemporary progressivism. By exploring and criticizing the dreams of post humanity, Rubin defends a more modest vision of the future, one that takes seriously both the limitations and the inherent dignity of our given nature.
Book Synopsis Eating to Extinction by : Dan Saladino
Download or read book Eating to Extinction written by Dan Saladino and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice What Saladino finds in his adventures are people with soul-deep relationships to their food. This is not the decadence or the preciousness we might associate with a word like “foodie,” but a form of reverence . . . Enchanting." —Molly Young, The New York Times Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster’s pathbreaking tour of the world’s vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these—rice, wheat, and corn—now provide fifty percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still: The source of much of the world’s food—seeds—is mostly in the control of just four corporations. Ninety-five percent of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow. Half of all the world’s cheese is made with bacteria or enzymes made by one company. And one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer. If it strikes you that everything is starting to taste the same wherever you are in the world, you’re by no means alone. This matters: when we lose diversity and foods become endangered, we not only risk the loss of traditional foodways, but also of flavors, smells, and textures that may never be experienced again. And the consolidation of our food has other steep costs, including a lack of resilience in the face of climate change, pests, and parasites. Our food monoculture is a threat to our health—and to the planet. In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it’s too late. He tells the fascinating stories of the people who continue to cultivate, forage, hunt, cook, and consume what the rest of us have forgotten or didn’t even know existed. Take honey—not the familiar product sold in plastic bottles, but the wild honey gathered by the Hadza people of East Africa, whose diet consists of eight hundred different plants and animals and who communicate with birds in order to locate bees’ nests. Or consider murnong—once the staple food of Aboriginal Australians, this small root vegetable with the sweet taste of coconut is undergoing a revival after nearly being driven to extinction. And in Sierra Leone, there are just a few surviving stenophylla trees, a plant species now considered crucial to the future of coffee. From an Indigenous American chef refining precolonial recipes to farmers tending Geechee red peas on the Sea Islands of Georgia, the individuals profiled in Eating to Extinction are essential guides to treasured foods that have endured in the face of rampant sameness and standardization. They also provide a roadmap to a food system that is healthier, more robust, and, above all, richer in flavor and meaning.
Book Synopsis Human Extinction: The Ignored Threat by : Michal H. Hall
Download or read book Human Extinction: The Ignored Threat written by Michal H. Hall and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-17 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After pointing out that there are threats to our extinction of which most people are aware, this book looks at a very big threat that is being totally ignored. It has a chapter talking about why it is being ignored. However before that, in recognition of the fact that most people know nothing about overpopulation, there is a chapter explaining what overpopulation is and why we are ignoring it. The book then addresses our fixation on our escapes and childish diversions. It becomes obvious that we have become a people of escape that are diverting our thoughts and attention into trivia. The book follows this by discussing all of the things that will happen if we keep on ignoring overpopulation. This provides a gruesome picture of how our species will eventually die-out. This involves the ecosystems collapse leaving us with nothing such as food, water, air we can breathe, marine life, trees for oxygen or plants and animals. All of this will cause our species to turn on itself in fear, panic and chaotic violence that will soon lead to extinction. However the next chapter is positive, because it maps out what will happen if we don't ignore it and do address it. That is because this would mean that our great grandchildren would live and live a life that would be much more pleasant. Of course, this would demand some things that would be very hard to sell. For instance every couple in the world would need to have no more than one child, and they would also be encouraged to have no child at all. Only then would we reduce our population on the Earth to a point where the Earth and its ecosystems could sustain us. The book also addresses all of the things that would vehemently fight having one child to make it very hard to achieve. However it also offers us some hope that it will be done and our future will be secure.
Download or read book X-Risk written by Thomas Moynihan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How humanity came to contemplate its possible extinction. From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of serious scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history. Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. He shows how, far from being a secular reprise of religious prophecies of apocalypse, existential risk is a thoroughly modern idea, made possible by the burgeoning sciences and philosophical tumult of the Enlightenment era. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being.
Book Synopsis The Uninhabitable Earth by : David Wallace-Wells
Download or read book The Uninhabitable Earth written by David Wallace-Wells and published by Tim Duggan Books. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books
Book Synopsis The End of the World by : John Leslie
Download or read book The End of the World written by John Leslie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-08 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we in imminent danger of extinction? Yes, we probably are, argues John Leslie in his chilling account of the dangers facing the human race as we approach the second millenium. The End of the World is a sobering assessment of the many disasters that scientists have predicted and speculated on as leading to apocalypse. In the first comprehensive survey, potential catastrophes - ranging from deadly diseases to high-energy physics experiments - are explored to help us understand the risks. One of the greatest threats facing humankind, however, is the insurmountable fact that we are a relatively young species, a risk which is at the heart of the 'Doomsday Argument'. This argument, if correct, makes the dangers we face more serious than we could have ever imagined. This more than anything makes the arrogance and ignorance of politicians, and indeed philosophers, so disturbing as they continue to ignore the manifest dangers facing future generations.
Book Synopsis Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary by : Christos Lynteris
Download or read book Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary written by Christos Lynteris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops an examination and critique of human extinction as a result of the ‘next pandemic’ and turns attention towards the role of pandemic catastrophe in the renegotiation of what it means to be human. Nested in debates in anthropology, philosophy, social theory and global health, the book argues that fear of and fascination with the ‘next pandemic’ stem not so much from an anticipation of a biological extinction of the human species, as from an expectation of the loss of mastery over human/non-humanl relations. Christos Lynteris employs the notion of the ‘pandemic imaginary’ in order to understand the way in which pandemic-borne human extinction refashions our understanding of humanity and its place in the world. The book challenges us to think how cosmological, aesthetic, ontological and political aspects of pandemic catastrophe are intertwined. The chapters examine the vital entanglement of epidemiological studies, popular culture, modes of scientific visualisation, and pandemic preparedness campaigns. This volume will be relevant for scholars and advanced students of anthropology as well as global health, and for many others interested in catastrophe, the ‘end of the world’ and the (post)apocalyptic.
Book Synopsis Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by : Annalee Newitz
Download or read book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember written by Annalee Newitz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference. It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death. Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.
Book Synopsis Of Population and Pollution by : Arnold James Byron
Download or read book Of Population and Pollution written by Arnold James Byron and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to end overpopulation and solve the global warming dilemma, author Arnold J. Byron defines humanity's severest situation in order to work backward from it-and find a solution that will revitalize our stressed planet into a healthy one. The result is his intrepid collection of essays, Of Population and Pollution: A Global Warming Primer. Confronting the possibility of human extinction, this book provides a straightforward, feasible strategy to prevent it, even identifying the specific world leaders needed to successfully implement the plan. From explanations on how thermal depolymerization can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the necessity of replacing nuclear power with solar- and wind-powered electricity, the author presents practical suggestions that address all of the factors currently distressing our environment. This compelling, no-nonsense guide will kick-start you into actively fighting against the worst-case scenario and spreading the word-so that by working together, all across the globe, we might save our planet before it's too late. Discover the steps you can take today to ensure you still have a life tomorrow.
Book Synopsis Anticipation, Sustainability, Futures and Human Extinction by : Bruce E. Tonn
Download or read book Anticipation, Sustainability, Futures and Human Extinction written by Bruce E. Tonn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-16 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the philosophical underpinnings, policy foundations, institutional innovations, and deep cultural changes needed to ensure that humanity has the best chance of surviving and flourishing into the very distant future. Anticipation of threats to the sustainability of human civilization needs to encompass time periods that span not just decades but millennia. All existential risks need to be jointly assessed, as opposed to addressing risks such as climate change and pandemics separately. Exploring the potential events that are likely to cause the biggest risks as well as asking why we should even desire to thrive into the distant future, this work looks at the ‘biggest picture possible’ in order to argue that futures-oriented decision-making ought to be a permanent aspect of human society and futures-oriented policy making must take precedent over the day-to-day policy making of current generations in times of great peril. The book concludes with a discourse on the truly fundamental bottom-up changes needed in our personal psychologies and culture to support these top-down recommendations. This book is of great interest to philosophers, policy analysts, political scientists, economists, psychologists, planners, and theologians.
Book Synopsis Imagining Extinction by : Ursula K. Heise
Download or read book Imagining Extinction written by Ursula K. Heise and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-08-10 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are currently facing the sixth mass extinction of species in the history of life on Earth, biologists claim—the first one caused by humans. Heise argues that understanding these stories and symbols is indispensable for any effective advocacy on behalf of endangered species. More than that, she shows how biodiversity conservation, even and especially in its scientific and legal dimensions, is shaped by cultural assumptions about what is valuable in nature and what is not.
Book Synopsis Death and the Afterlife by : Samuel Scheffler
Download or read book Death and the Afterlife written by Samuel Scheffler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suppose you knew that, though you yourself would live your life to its natural end, the earth and all its inhabitants would be destroyed thirty days after your death. To what extent would you remain committed to your current projects and plans? Would scientists still search for a cure for cancer? Would couples still want children? In Death and the Afterlife, philosopher Samuel Scheffler poses this thought experiment in order to show that the continued life of the human race after our deaths--the "afterlife" of the title--matters to us to an astonishing and previously neglected degree. Indeed, Scheffler shows that, in certain important respects, the future existence of people who are as yet unborn matters more to us than our own continued existence and the continued existence of those we love. Without the expectation that humanity has a future, many of the things that now matter to us would cease to do so. By contrast, the prospect of our own deaths does little to undermine our confidence in the value of our activities. Despite the terror we may feel when contemplating our deaths, the prospect of humanity's imminent extinction would pose a far greater threat to our ability to lead lives of wholehearted engagement. Scheffler further demonstrates that, although we are not unreasonable to fear death, personal immortality, like the imminent extinction of humanity, would also undermine our confidence in the values we hold dear. His arresting conclusion is that, in order for us to lead value-laden lives, what is necessary is that we ourselves should die and that others should live. Death and the Afterlife concludes with commentary by four distinguished philosophers--Harry Frankfurt, Niko Kolodny, Seana Shiffrin, and Susan Wolf--who discuss Scheffler's ideas with insight and imagination. Scheffler adds a final reply.
Download or read book Citizen Cyborg written by James Hughes and published by . This book was released on 2004-10-27 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, "democratic transhumanism," by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human - "posthuman" or "transhuman" - the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions.
Download or read book Going Dark written by Guy R McPherson and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are the last individuals of our species on Earth. How shall we respond? How shall we act? If industrial civilization is maintained, climate change will cause human extinction in the near term. If industrial civilization falls, sufficient ionizing radiation will be released from the world's nuclear power plants to cause human extinction in the near term. In the wake of this horrific conclusion, conservation biologist Guy McPherson proposes we act with compassion, courage, and creativity. He suggests we act with the kind of empathy for which humans are renowned. In other words, he suggests we act with decency toward the humans and other organisms with which we share this beautiful planet. Going Dark is the story of one scientist's response to the horrors we face. It is a deeply personal narrative infused with abundant evidence to support its terrifying claims. In the words of syndicated cartoonist David Fitzsimmons, McPherson's ""approach is disarming and his message is both life-changing and convincingly alarming. A blend of Paul Revere with Rachel Carson, Guy McPherson is a significant voice of rational conscience nudging in the wilderness. Fierce as Ed Abbey, and equally prophetic, Professor McPherson is a modern-day John Muir with a global perspective. Beyond the warnings is a body of thoughtful and pragmatic real world ideas."" "Going Dark peels the shadow from the cozy dreams we've all bought into. You know the ones: technology will save us from climate change; the products we consume are endless and untainted; our modern idea of happiness and convenience doesn't crush others; the heartbeat of the industrial economy that pulses within us all is sustainable and ethical. McPherson's latest work will make you think twice, twice. If you feel discomfort as you read you are reading it correctly." -Cameron Conaway, author of Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet. "There is an end of the world scenario, but there is no James Bond or Superman around to save everything at the last moment. Read this book if you dare." Professor Richard Davies
