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September 14, 2004
The World according to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth
| Title | The World according to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth | |
| Author | Stuart L. Pimm | |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill, New York | |
| Date | 2001 | |
| ISBN | 0-07-137490-6 | |
| Reviewed by | Jane Szita | |
| How to take Earth-saving action when environmental damage is so notoriously difficult to quantify? Enter Stuart Pimm, calling himself "an investment banker of the global, biological accounts," who attempts to put our impact on the planet into the only terms our market-driven culture can understand: figures. In doing so, he creates a kind of ecology-by-numbers. Actually a conservation biologist, Pimm compares and adjusts the figures obtained by scientists in a variety of fields, while explaining what these numbers mean in plain, but highly readable, English. Moreover, he does all this while undertaking a global tour of the Earth’s many ecosystems, circling the planet from the air to cover the volcanoes of Hawaii, the rainforest of the Amazon, the boreal forests of Siberia and the world’s oceans. The figures, arrived at through an elegant process of calculation and cross-reference, are predictably alarming: for example, we are forcing species into extinction 100 times faster than the natural ‘die-out’ rate, we are using 50 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply and consuming 42 per cent of the world’s plant growth. Yet far from becoming a doom-and-gloom read, the book conveys Pimm’s sense of optimism, his appreciation of the Earth and its resources, and his conviction that much can be done if we act now. | ||
Posted by Books Editor at September 14, 2004 09:33 PM