Book Description

Previous civilizations have collapsed due to ecological disasters, and we now stand on the brink of a series of global environmental cataclysms that humans have never before experienced. A victim of our own brilliantly reckless ingenuity, we have made a Faustian bargain, trading the modern, yet destructive, technological present for a shattered and dying world filled the toxic remnants of that resourceful hubris. Oceans are inundated with plastics, while they are simultaneously being depleted of the once thought inexhaustible aquatic life. The beauty and the extraordinary life of coral reefs are being replaced with little more than ocean rubble. Seas are warming, acidifying, and are losing life-giving oxygen. Toxins are filling the air, water, and soil. Species are being exterminated across the planet. Rainforests are being leveled, turning the land into a wasteland. Glaciers are melting and rapidly vanishing. The disturbing truth is that for centuries humans have been altering the environment of the only home they have known, making it less capable of supporting terrestrial life. This de-terraforming has accelerated at a breakneck pace as technology, globalism, and populations have exploded. Greed and rabid consumerism drive a relentless global machine that churns through the planet's limited resources at an unsustainable pace while enslaving millions to provide products to the more fortunate of the world. In 1947 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the likelihood of a civilization-ending human-created global catastrophe. In that year, the clock was set to seven minutes to midnight, and while that forecast has fluctuated over the years, it has never strayed far from the fateful midnight hour. We are now on a trajectory that is almost certain to end with the clock reaching that fatal apocalyptic hour collapsing human civilization and much of the life on the planet along with it. A great deal of environmental destruction has occurred, and more damage is inevitable as the momentum of previous human actions exacts its appalling toll. Yet, while many calamities are unavoidable, there is still a glimmer of hope that we can still mitigate the damage and start to slow and turn back the clock from arriving at that prophetic moment. If we have the will to do so, we can still build an amazing and sustainable future.