Here on Earth by Tim Flannery

Every year there is a book that you just have to tell everyone to read.  For me that book starts the year - only the third book read and already one that I will be loaning, giving and recommending.

Tim Flannery wrote one of the best books (Weather Makers) on Global Warming and now he goes beyond that to look at the status of our planet - with Global Warming being one of the realities.  Like so many books on the environment it has a sense of hopelessness because of the size of the problems, but Flannery is not the average writer or scientist.  An Australian, writer, scientist means that he takes a broad world view to find the potential solutions and descriptions and is not limited as our own writers tend to be to the US.

This global look is appropriate since it is the planet we are talking about and the problems range from invasive Species to mineral extraction to over population to extinction of species to the climate and yet he works to give hope.  He reaches back to Darwin and other classic scientists but finds some of the hope in the Gaia movement of Lovelock and the broader Gaia centric writing of Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution) and contasts them with the Medea hypothesis that says that a species unchecked will ultimately destroy their home, habitat, and world.  And of course there is only one species like that - Humans. However it is not humans, but the larger animals that are keystones to the natural systems: "Earth's ecological include the big herbivores, those weighing a ton or more.  As we'll soon see, in marginal ecosystems such as deserts or tundra, these ecological bankers speed the flow of resources through the ecosystem, allowing a substantial "biological economy to be built on a slender resource base."

Flannery is an excellent writer and there is no labor to working through the components of earth history and the evolution of people.  He takes us to the Hobbits of Flores with the same ease as the sinking of pollution to the sea floor only to rise again in the food we want to eat.  "In US, mercury levels are four times higher in fish-eaters (defined as those who have eaten three or more servings of fish in the past 30 days) than others, and high levels of methyl mercury can cause myriad symptoms in humans..."

It is both science and philosophy and the fact that he challenges us to think based on a broad spectrum of knowledge is refreshing and effective.  In the end, he asks us to be intelligent, to use our intelligence to see the future and go beyond the immediate gain.  If we can, the future looks wonderful for the species still alive.  If not the picture is not good for us or them.