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[from THE FUTURIST, July-August 2002]
The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson. Alfred A. Knopf, www.aaknopf.com. 2002. 229 pages. Order now.
What We Lose with Species Loss
Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson examines the interaction between humans and other species, in particular those species that have lost or are losing the battle against human encroachment. It is certainly a familiar story, but Wilson's approach in The Future of Life is one of intelligence and hope.
"The race is now going on between the technoscientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it," he writes. "If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact."
The tragedy of the disappearance of species--some once widespread and familiar, some newly discovered at the brink of extinction, some gone before we know they exist--is far-reaching. We don't know, for example, all that a rain forest has to offer or all the uses that may lie hidden in a single gene of an animal like South America's poison dart frog. The discovery of a beneficial painkiller derived from the frog's poisonous secretions came at the very moment when its habitat is all but gone and the species is nearly extinct. We may never know what remains to be discovered or what was snuffed out before we knew what it was or what it could do.
A letter to Thoreau serves as Wilson's introduction. It outlines the state of the world ecosystem, quoting statistics and drawing on Thoreau's proposal of a land ethic as an answer to the "bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption." This land ethic, says Wilson, must be a global one "where economic progress and conservation are treated as one and the same goal." Wilson's approach is mostly historical, narrating stories of encounters between humans and nature where the environment has lost out. He remains optimistic for the future, however.
"Everyone has some kind of environmental ethic," he says, and the solution requires cooperation among government, the private sector, and science and technology. Wilson does not neglect the importance of religion or the growing prominence of the environment in religious thought; most of the details of his solution, however, are placed squarely on the shoulders of politicians, private conservation agencies, and the technoscientific community. "The interlocking of the three agents is vital to global conservation," he writes. "The trends in their evolution are encouraging."