We Alone: How Humans Have Conquered the Planet and Can Also Save It, David Western

-About this book

This personal and thoughtful book by renowned Kenya conservationist David Western traces our global conquest from Maasai herders battling droughts in Africa to the technological frontiers of California.

Western draws on a half century of research in the savannas and his own life’s journey to argue that conservation is not a modern invention. The success of all societies past and present lies in conservation practices, breaking biological barriers and learning to live in large cooperative groups able to sustain a healthy environment.

Our ecological emancipation from nature enabled us to expand our horizons from conserving food and water for survival to saving whales, elephants, and our cultural heritage. In the Anthropocene, our scientific knowledge and modern sensibilities offer hope for combating global warming and creating a planet able to sustain the wealth of life, but only if we use our unique cultural capacity of cooperation to plan our future.

-Contents

Preface
Introduction: Confronting the Human Age
Part I. The Roots of Our Success
1. Survival in the Savannas
2. Consuming Passions
3. The Conservation Paradox
4. Limits to Growth: Hope or Despair?
5. Lessons from Disasters
6. Why Some Succeed Where Others Fail
7. Icons of Two Worlds
8. An Altruistic Species
9. Breaking Biological Barriers
10. Domesticating Nature
11. Ecological Emancipation
Part II. The Human Age
12. The Global Express
13. Converging Worlds
14. Our Novel Age
15. The Modern Conservation Movement
Part III. Our Once and Future Planet
16. Unnatural Reconnections
17. New Tools for a New Age
18. Cleaning Our Planetary Nest
19. Nature and Human Well-being
20. Natural Capital
21. The City and the Planet
Conclusion: From Conservation Philosophy to Citizen Action
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
-caractéristiques

Date de parution :24 November  2020

N .de pages : 320 pages

ISBN-10 : 0300251165

ISBN-13 : 978-0300251166

Éditeur : Yale University Press

Dimensions : 15.56 x 2.7 x 23.5 cm

Poids de l’article : 666 g

Langue : Anglais