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Product Description
Three out of four Americans now think of themselves as environmentalists. Millions of children are busy with projects to save the Earth. But we all would be more effective at resolving today's pressing environmental issues if we had a clearer understanding of the ecological principles behind them. With this lively guide to the essentials of ecology, Ernest Callenbach provides a pocket-sized introduction to the wonderful complexity of life on Earth—and our part in it.
Callenbach uses everyday, nontechnical language to explain sixty basic ecological concepts. These brief, information-packed entries are arranged alphabetically and amply cross-referenced. Thus the reader can move freely around a dynamic network of ideas, gaining easy access to the new thinking that scientists, environmentalists, politicians, government officials, business people, and concerned citizens everywhere are using to seek a sustainable future for humanity.
As timely as today's news, Ecology includes current findings on the microscopic beings that first made plant and animal life possible and now regulate global temperature and oxygen levels—a dramatic new story of the intricate interconnections of all life on Earth. Finally we have a book that equips us to take informed personal and political action with the ecological wisdom needed for the twenty-first century.
Amazon.com Review
Everyone talks about the weather, the old saw has it, but no one can do anything about it. Similarly, it seems, we all talk about environmental problems, but few of us seem able to propose rational solutions to such matters as global warming and deforestation. Ernest Callenbach, the author of the futuristic novel Ecotopia, aims with this little primer to increase our ecological literacy, and thus our ability to act on pressing environmental problems with a better informed vision. Beginning with his homespun rendering of the principal laws of ecology ("All things are interconnected. Everything goes somewhere. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Nature bats last.") Callenbach shows that all environmental relationships are reciprocal, and that if you tinker with one element of an ecosystem--by, say, removing trees from a rainforest--you are likely to alter other elements as well, more often than not for the worse. His lively entries cover the basic chemistry of air, the usefulness of bacteria (from which, Callenbach reminds us, all life forms descended), the ecosystemic effects of industrial pollution, and the principles of sustainable city design--all in the space of 150 pages. This slender, well-written volume serves as a welcome brush-up course for environmental activists and as an introduction for beginning students of the ways of the physical world. --Gregory McNamee
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