Book review by Ian Whyte. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life
EO Wilson has a towering presence among those, including myself, interested in the natural world. His knowledge of that world is immense, and he shares it freely in his books. The ecosphere, which both birthed life and constitutes its only source of nurture, has been stable and able to support all life including us. This is because it is composed of an immense number of very diverse species, living on a healthy Earth, which together create the web of life. This symbiosis is being smashed by human activity. Everywhere extinctions are rampant and the numbers within species still extant are being significantly and disastrously reduced. The current anthropocentric paradigm, for me, is the source of the problem. Unfortunately for this book, and life in general, this view is not much expressed by Wilson.
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