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berserkbeast13's review
2.0
Although it is fun hearing a biologist talk about how cool life is and identifying biomes that are crucial to global conservation, the book lacks direction. He kind of just talks about how important biology and biodiversity is but gives NO WAY OF PRESERVING THESE SYSTEMS. What's the point of it then? Thankfully Half-Earth Socialism exists, which is more the book I was expecting this to be.
I know how cool life and biodiversity is, I wanna know how to save it and allow it to flourish!
I know how cool life and biodiversity is, I wanna know how to save it and allow it to flourish!
jarekko's review
3.0
Even though Wilson tells great stories about particular ecosystems, he does not deliver a compelling argument for the reasons why we should organize around saving biodiversity. For him it seems obvious, but it is not a good way to convince anyone. Also, there is little to no detail about relations between biodiversity and climate change in terms of how saving the species and ecosystems can help fight the climate crisis.
Thus, I was left unfulfilled.
Thus, I was left unfulfilled.
seclement's review
2.0
A grand idea from a very talented scientist and writer, yet unfortunately this book misses the mark.
I was so very excited to read this book, but ultimately I was so very disappointed. Whilst much of this book is beautifully and accessibly written - and the passion and optimism of Wilson is something to greatly admire - the central thesis of this book is left to just a few dozen pages at the end. The whole book could have been devoted to explaining the why and then, even more importantly, the where and the how of the idea that we set aside half of the Earth for nature. Instead, most of the book is devoted to describing the wonder of biodiversity and tearing apart the work of those he calls alternately "Anthropocenists" or "Anthropocene enthusiasts". Whilst Wilson acknowledges that the Anthropocene is here, he seems to think that many people who write about the Anthropocene are enthusiastic about it and believe it to be the death of nature. Having just finished writing an academic book about the Anthropocene and having read almost every book in the British library on the Anthropocene as well as most of the journal articles on the Anthropocene and biodiversity, I must say that was incredibly disappointed with the way he handled this literature. Before I get too much into that, let's go through what is good and not so great about this book.
Strengths of the book
EO Wilson is an excellent narrator, and he is able to write accessible, beautiful prose in a passionate way. He can weave together personal anecdote with scientific evidence effortlessly after a lifetime in the field. His passion and optimism are clearly conveyed, and his belief in the power of science and reason are so admirable in these post-truth days when people don't even believe something is real when it is right in front of them. The book is written in short chapters with beautiful old illustrations, which make it a pleasure to read, and could make it a nice book not just for naturalists and nature enthusiasts, but also the general public with little knowledge of biodiversity. The book conveys the wonders of biodiversity, and the solution proposed in Half-Earth is bold and elegant, and the rationale is sound.
Weaknesses of the book
Given that this is the third book in a trilogy, one would expect this book to really lay out the why, where, and how of achieving the goal of Half-Earth. As I said earlier, this is not the case, and it is only really on page 185 of 212 that he really gets to this at all. Even then he goes off on quite a tangent about technology (e.g. robotics, gene editing, synthetic biology). He is quite taken with the idea that this technology will save us, but the link to biodiversity is tenuous at best. He even seems to acknowledge this by asking the question "what does all of this have to do with biodiversity?" but when he goes on to answer this question, I was still left confused, particularly with how it was going to connect to the proposal of protecting half of the Earth to allow 80% of species to survive (which is one of the premises behind the proposal).
My greatest disappointment with the book, perhaps, is just how much he misrepresents the work of those who he perceives as disagreeing with him. I have read the work of all of those he critiques, and he really misrepresents their work and their argument. Because this is a popular book and not an academic one, he doesn't actually go through and pick apart their arguments or point out any misuse of data. He doesn't even reference most of it. Rather, the reader, I suppose, must just take at face value what he says because he is one of the most famous scientists in this space, and thus we are meant to believe that his portrayal and his opinion of these works are correct. I found this incredibly frustrating, as he dismisses entire concepts and bodies of literature with just a sentence or two, without even describing the arguments accurately. Whilst he acknowledges and discusses at length how ecology and conservation biology are sciences in their infancy (at one point suggesting they are much like other sciences at the dawn of the 20th century), he then proceeds to dismiss anyone who questions some of the received wisdom within those sciences, if they are questioning something that he believes to be true. This might be fine if he actually devoted some time to discussing the actual evidence and the arguments at hand, but he doesn't, and the critiques are altogether a distraction from what the book is meant to be about. Why is so much of a book that is meant to be devoted to outlining an ambitious idea for saving the biosphere devoted to attacking a few ideas in the field that do not threaten that ambitious idea? And why reduce the arguments of those writing about the Anthropocene to one sliver of this literature, the extreme eco-modernists. (If you would like to read about eco-modernists, I suggest searching online for their manifesto - these are the people that EO Wilson is really writing about when he talks about "Anthropocene enthusiasts", although he is even simplifying the eco-modernists' perspectives.)
What is perhaps most concerning, however, is that he dismisses critiques that conservation has been largely ineffective but also quite unjust over its relatively short history. He discusses a few studies that he claims proves that conservation as it is currently practiced has had some modicum of success, and is quite resistant to the idea that there are fundamental flaws in our efforts to halt biodiversity loss. I was particularly interested to see whether he would explain how the Half-Earth agenda would address the fundamental drivers of biodiversity loss, but this book never does that. What is more, he explicitly dismisses the idea that protected areas and conservation organisations have not always fully considered the social and economic dimensions of their work in a fair way, but doesn't really explain why except to say that he has been involved in very big conservation organisations for a long time. There are some legitimate critiques of the idea of protecting half of the Earth in terms of who decides, where will that be, and how you will address the fundamental fact that the responsibility for the loss of species is decidedly not shared equally across the globe. The Anthropocene is not caused by the whole human race so much as it is mostly caused by a relatively small subset of humans. How will the half-earth agenda be able to address this, when most of the areas he deems worthy of protection are in areas of the world where people have played only a minor role in destroying the biosphere?
I quite like the idea of protecting half of the earth to halt the Sixth Extinction, but I am so disappointed that this book doesn't even get to how this could practically be implemented or how it could be implemented without further deepening the divide between developed and developing countries. We can barely even agree on trade deals that affect the food we eat every day, let alone getting the whole world to agree to protect the "right places" in the "right way". It feels rather naive, which is surprising, I think, for a man as intelligent and experienced as Wilson.
The contempt for the idea that semi-wild places can be valuable, and the contempt for any expert or member of the general public who believes them to be valuable, is palpable in this book. Wilson, like so many naturalists, has a clear view on what is 'ideal' and what is 'wild'. Under his worldview, so much of the world (including all of the European continent) wouldn't qualify as the sort of nature he believes is worth protecting. The landscapes that most of us interact with on a daily basis are not the landscapes he proposes we protect. Not only could this contempt and this perspective, undermine the success of this agenda, but it is also is the reason that so many people criticise the Half-Earth project as one that is out of touch with 1) the fundamental drivers of biodiversity loss, 2) the social and cultural connections to landscapes across the world, and 3) the fact that responsibility for biodiversity loss is not shared equally, but concentrated among the most wealthy. Those areas of the world that are already wealthy and have already destroyed their environment are of little value in the Half-Earth project, so what this proposal will likely amount to is those wealthy countries asking less wealthy countries to not do what we have already done. We are left with not a bold idea so much as more of the same in conservation, but at a bigger scale.
EO Wilson is still an amazing scientist and researcher, but I would recommend reading some of his other work instead of this one. If you want to know more about the Half Earth project, they have a great website, and I would recommend just reading there if you want to know more. They are currently undertaking a massive global assessment to identify where (on both land and water) these reserves should be, so I will await the results of that assessment to understand better what this proposal might actually mean in practice. I hope they also take into consideration the many social and economic assessments of the project as well, and think about how to achieve BOTH a just and sustainable future for life on Earth. Protection of half of the planet requires the cooperation of people, whether or not they are enthusiastic about biodiversity. One also need not be enthusiastic about the Anthropocene to recognise the cold, unwelcome reality of living in it, and I wish this book had done a better job of marrying enthusiasm for biodiversity with the practical realities of protecting half of a very changed planet. Perhaps the evolution of these ideas is still to come.
I was so very excited to read this book, but ultimately I was so very disappointed. Whilst much of this book is beautifully and accessibly written - and the passion and optimism of Wilson is something to greatly admire - the central thesis of this book is left to just a few dozen pages at the end. The whole book could have been devoted to explaining the why and then, even more importantly, the where and the how of the idea that we set aside half of the Earth for nature. Instead, most of the book is devoted to describing the wonder of biodiversity and tearing apart the work of those he calls alternately "Anthropocenists" or "Anthropocene enthusiasts". Whilst Wilson acknowledges that the Anthropocene is here, he seems to think that many people who write about the Anthropocene are enthusiastic about it and believe it to be the death of nature. Having just finished writing an academic book about the Anthropocene and having read almost every book in the British library on the Anthropocene as well as most of the journal articles on the Anthropocene and biodiversity, I must say that was incredibly disappointed with the way he handled this literature. Before I get too much into that, let's go through what is good and not so great about this book.
Strengths of the book
EO Wilson is an excellent narrator, and he is able to write accessible, beautiful prose in a passionate way. He can weave together personal anecdote with scientific evidence effortlessly after a lifetime in the field. His passion and optimism are clearly conveyed, and his belief in the power of science and reason are so admirable in these post-truth days when people don't even believe something is real when it is right in front of them. The book is written in short chapters with beautiful old illustrations, which make it a pleasure to read, and could make it a nice book not just for naturalists and nature enthusiasts, but also the general public with little knowledge of biodiversity. The book conveys the wonders of biodiversity, and the solution proposed in Half-Earth is bold and elegant, and the rationale is sound.
Weaknesses of the book
Given that this is the third book in a trilogy, one would expect this book to really lay out the why, where, and how of achieving the goal of Half-Earth. As I said earlier, this is not the case, and it is only really on page 185 of 212 that he really gets to this at all. Even then he goes off on quite a tangent about technology (e.g. robotics, gene editing, synthetic biology). He is quite taken with the idea that this technology will save us, but the link to biodiversity is tenuous at best. He even seems to acknowledge this by asking the question "what does all of this have to do with biodiversity?" but when he goes on to answer this question, I was still left confused, particularly with how it was going to connect to the proposal of protecting half of the Earth to allow 80% of species to survive (which is one of the premises behind the proposal).
My greatest disappointment with the book, perhaps, is just how much he misrepresents the work of those who he perceives as disagreeing with him. I have read the work of all of those he critiques, and he really misrepresents their work and their argument. Because this is a popular book and not an academic one, he doesn't actually go through and pick apart their arguments or point out any misuse of data. He doesn't even reference most of it. Rather, the reader, I suppose, must just take at face value what he says because he is one of the most famous scientists in this space, and thus we are meant to believe that his portrayal and his opinion of these works are correct. I found this incredibly frustrating, as he dismisses entire concepts and bodies of literature with just a sentence or two, without even describing the arguments accurately. Whilst he acknowledges and discusses at length how ecology and conservation biology are sciences in their infancy (at one point suggesting they are much like other sciences at the dawn of the 20th century), he then proceeds to dismiss anyone who questions some of the received wisdom within those sciences, if they are questioning something that he believes to be true. This might be fine if he actually devoted some time to discussing the actual evidence and the arguments at hand, but he doesn't, and the critiques are altogether a distraction from what the book is meant to be about. Why is so much of a book that is meant to be devoted to outlining an ambitious idea for saving the biosphere devoted to attacking a few ideas in the field that do not threaten that ambitious idea? And why reduce the arguments of those writing about the Anthropocene to one sliver of this literature, the extreme eco-modernists. (If you would like to read about eco-modernists, I suggest searching online for their manifesto - these are the people that EO Wilson is really writing about when he talks about "Anthropocene enthusiasts", although he is even simplifying the eco-modernists' perspectives.)
What is perhaps most concerning, however, is that he dismisses critiques that conservation has been largely ineffective but also quite unjust over its relatively short history. He discusses a few studies that he claims proves that conservation as it is currently practiced has had some modicum of success, and is quite resistant to the idea that there are fundamental flaws in our efforts to halt biodiversity loss. I was particularly interested to see whether he would explain how the Half-Earth agenda would address the fundamental drivers of biodiversity loss, but this book never does that. What is more, he explicitly dismisses the idea that protected areas and conservation organisations have not always fully considered the social and economic dimensions of their work in a fair way, but doesn't really explain why except to say that he has been involved in very big conservation organisations for a long time. There are some legitimate critiques of the idea of protecting half of the Earth in terms of who decides, where will that be, and how you will address the fundamental fact that the responsibility for the loss of species is decidedly not shared equally across the globe. The Anthropocene is not caused by the whole human race so much as it is mostly caused by a relatively small subset of humans. How will the half-earth agenda be able to address this, when most of the areas he deems worthy of protection are in areas of the world where people have played only a minor role in destroying the biosphere?
I quite like the idea of protecting half of the earth to halt the Sixth Extinction, but I am so disappointed that this book doesn't even get to how this could practically be implemented or how it could be implemented without further deepening the divide between developed and developing countries. We can barely even agree on trade deals that affect the food we eat every day, let alone getting the whole world to agree to protect the "right places" in the "right way". It feels rather naive, which is surprising, I think, for a man as intelligent and experienced as Wilson.
The contempt for the idea that semi-wild places can be valuable, and the contempt for any expert or member of the general public who believes them to be valuable, is palpable in this book. Wilson, like so many naturalists, has a clear view on what is 'ideal' and what is 'wild'. Under his worldview, so much of the world (including all of the European continent) wouldn't qualify as the sort of nature he believes is worth protecting. The landscapes that most of us interact with on a daily basis are not the landscapes he proposes we protect. Not only could this contempt and this perspective, undermine the success of this agenda, but it is also is the reason that so many people criticise the Half-Earth project as one that is out of touch with 1) the fundamental drivers of biodiversity loss, 2) the social and cultural connections to landscapes across the world, and 3) the fact that responsibility for biodiversity loss is not shared equally, but concentrated among the most wealthy. Those areas of the world that are already wealthy and have already destroyed their environment are of little value in the Half-Earth project, so what this proposal will likely amount to is those wealthy countries asking less wealthy countries to not do what we have already done. We are left with not a bold idea so much as more of the same in conservation, but at a bigger scale.
EO Wilson is still an amazing scientist and researcher, but I would recommend reading some of his other work instead of this one. If you want to know more about the Half Earth project, they have a great website, and I would recommend just reading there if you want to know more. They are currently undertaking a massive global assessment to identify where (on both land and water) these reserves should be, so I will await the results of that assessment to understand better what this proposal might actually mean in practice. I hope they also take into consideration the many social and economic assessments of the project as well, and think about how to achieve BOTH a just and sustainable future for life on Earth. Protection of half of the planet requires the cooperation of people, whether or not they are enthusiastic about biodiversity. One also need not be enthusiastic about the Anthropocene to recognise the cold, unwelcome reality of living in it, and I wish this book had done a better job of marrying enthusiasm for biodiversity with the practical realities of protecting half of a very changed planet. Perhaps the evolution of these ideas is still to come.
hmclint's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
1.0
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why I did not like this book, but it took me almost a year to finally get through it after frequent breaks. After reading other reviews I think it boils down to the writer wanting show how much he knows and how amazing his specific field is without writing a cohesive story which made it a very dense, slow read. Books like these are hard to keep relevant as well since species populations change so quickly so even though it’s only a few years old, it felt outdated.
trippalli's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
A scientific lol at history of biology and our planet Earth, the changed, the stretch and ebb, what helps, what is reversible and improvable and what is fine and irreversible...a scientific analysis with consideration and reflection on both iology roots and evolution and goes out way invested in for medicine and how far we've gone creating unique new life in bacteria DNA construction and what we lost when naturalism and that arise of studying the earth went unfunded.. And how important and essential all contributions and all life is, even undiscovered life.. It's all essential to a healthy planet and this book takes a deep look at all these elements, influences, history and future options
_moth_'s review
5.0
It is difficult to read E. O. Wilson and not have the desire to be a naturalist. We were lucky enough to hear him talk about the Half Earth project in person and his passion on the subject would be impressive for a man half his age. Look at the numbers, find a bit of the world that inspires awe, and do a little daydreaming.
jgrkdunn's review
Profound. Required reading for everyone who has even the slightest curiosity about the future of the human species and the future of all living things. Now one of my three top recommendations for inquiring minds along with "Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher and "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold.