Reviews for For Pet's Sake, Do Something! Book 3

The average rating for For Pet's Sake, Do Something! Book 3 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-07 00:00:00 Robert English Paul and Anne Ehrlich are respected thinkers in the modern environmental movement. Paul achieved infamy in 1968, following the publication of his book, The Population Bomb. It made dire predictions, warning of mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s, and won him the intense and enduring hatred of every fiend suffering from a loony obsession with perpetual growth. The predictions probably would have come true, but Ehrlich's timing could not possibly have been more unlucky. He was blindsided by the unfortunately lucky efforts of Norman Borlaug, who tried to eliminate world hunger. His Green Revolution dramatically increased grain yields, leading to a dramatic surge in population, making the original problem far worse ' progress! Catastrophe was postponed for a few decades. In 2008, on the fortieth anniversary of The Population Bomb, Paul and Anne published The Dominant Animal. They admitted that the original book had a serious defect ' it was too optimistic. The new book presents an extremely intimate "birds and bees" discussion of the facts of life regarding the immense challenges of the twenty-first century, including overpopulation, overconsumption, peak energy, global heating, toxic pollution, mass extinctions, and on and on. It neatly describes the hominid journey, millions of years long, which led to what we have become today. This book is special because of its expanded discussion of cultural evolution. Genetic evolution is a slow motion process that modifies genes over the passage of many generations. Cultural evolution modifies and accumulates information, and it can happen with dizzying speed. Other animals learn behaviors by imitating their elders. Humans learn behaviors and ideas, via imitation and complex communication. Alas, cultural evolution enabled us to become the dominant animal on Earth, a backhanded honor, sodden with appalling consequences. It's not a book to read for pleasure, but it should be read by everyone on the planet, two or three times. It fills many of the huge empty gaps in our education, and in the media coverage of our era. You don't have to be a propeller-head to understand it. Hopefully, it will make enormous throbbing consumer fantasies go flaccid, and reorient minds to life in actual reality. On the bright side, we're not 100% committed to mass suicide. There are people all over who think that self-destruction is totally unhip. Most of them are far more interested in moving toward a survivable future. The Internet enables ordinary people to make their ideas available to billions of others, and everyone now has access to a much broader range of ideas. Sometimes the efforts of individuals succeed in sending cultural evolution off in a new direction ' all that's needed is a healthy imagination and good timing. Ecological history has thoroughly compiled our major mistakes. In theory, we could study this history, change our habits, and break out of the centuries-long cycle of repeated mistakes. That might be fun. When luck is in the air, large societies can make huge changes with dazzling speed ' like the collapse of the Soviet Union. We don't need more technology; we need social change that's inspired by clear thinking. The authors recommend a number of rational things we could do, but make no effort to mesmerize us with magical thinking. The Ehrlichs are not betting heavily on a future of endless "sustainable" growth. They are sharing two lifetimes of learning with the younger generations, and that's very thoughtful of them. Daniel Quinn's work taught me that a segment of humankind went sideways with the transition to agriculture. Everyone agrees that our problems grew explosively from that time. In their 1987 book, Earth, the Ehrlichs wrote, "In retrospect, the agricultural revolution may prove to be the greatest mistake that ever occurred in the biosphere ' a mistake not just for Homo sapiens, but for the integrity of all ecosystems." Other writers, like Shepard, Livingston, and Crosby, understood that the roots of our problems were older. They point to the Great Leap Forward, about 40,000 years ago, the cave painting craze. The Ehrlichs agree that the Great Leap "greatly accelerated our rise to dominance," but they also look even farther back. Our ancestors began making chipped-stone tools about 2.5 million years ago. "It was the start on the road to dominance that has produced technological 'descendants' as varied as books, blenders, SUVs, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons." Other animals sometimes use tools, like chimps fishing for termites with a stick. Hominids became increasingly innovative at making tools. Without stone tools, life would have been a struggle for Homo habilis. Modern consumers cannot survive without tools, but chimps without termite sticks would be just fine. Further population growth, at any rate, is insane. In Earth, the Ehrlichs discussed China's one child policy, an impressive success that prevented 350 million births, and the corresponding environmental harm and social misery. The Ehrlichs recommended that all governments implement fertility control programs ' especially in over-developed consumer societies like ours ' because it was the moral and responsible thing to do. This notion was not repeated in the new book. The authors deeply lament the fact that overpopulation remains a taboo subject among world leaders ' inexcusable stupidity. Just as destructive as overpopulation is overconsumption. Billions of people, both rich and poor, have been programmed to believe that nothing is better than shopping. I never watch horror movies. Whenever I have an urge to get really grossed out, I go to a mall and observe the super-trendy shopping zombies. Eeeeek! The Ehrlichs recommended creating an organization similar to Planned Parenthood to help us plan our acts of consumption with utmost wisdom and responsibility. Abstinence is usually the most mature option. George Basalla now steps into the spotlight. He pointed out that technological innovation was almost never motivated by fundamental human needs. Everyone agrees that we were healthier and happier before agriculture. Cars were not invented because people had lost the ability to walk. What "need" is being met by cell phones, TVs, and computers? Phooey on frivolous stuff. Wouldn't it be nicer to have a future? This book devotes loads of attention to the many serious problems that have resulted from our experiment in cultural evolution. One sentence hit me like a large stone hammer. The authors are celebrating our glorious achievements. Human brains have evolved capabilities "far beyond those of other animals, allowing us to become the dominant animal and (we hope) to remain so." We hope so? Dominant is cool? Isn't "dominant animal" essentially the one and only reason why we're racing toward catastrophe? Play with the notion of the "formerly dominant animal." What might that look like? Could we live without tools once again, running around naked in the jungle? Could we shut down the asylum and go back home, to the family of life, and live happily ever after? That would be fun. Have a nice day!

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-03 00:00:00 Richard Desjardins WASHINGTON POST ' Book review What the World Is Coming To By Michael Ruse, co-editor of the forthcoming "Evolution: The First Four Billion Years" Thursday, August 7, 2008; C02 THE DOMINANT ANIMAL Human Evolution and the Environment By Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich Island Press/Shearwater. 428 pp. $35 Canadians joke that, given their vile winters, they are the only people in the world who welcome global warming. But some things are too serious for humor. The world is in a crisis because of rising temperatures. Climate patterns have been disrupted, with devastating effects on lands near and far. Regions that once produced food in abundance are now arid deserts. Australians, for instance, are starting to realize that their steady succession of droughts may not be a statistical blip but something more serious and permanent. The polar regions north and south are melting and breaking up, leading not just to short-term effects for animals but also to fears of rising ocean levels and the consequent flooding of today's dry land. Miami could find itself the Venice of the future, a city surrounded by waters. No one has more authority to write on these matters than the husband-and-wife team of Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich. For decades now they have been documenting and warning of humans' effects on the environment. Their new book, "The Dominant Animal," continues their chronicle of the damage we have done to our home. And although they write in prose of a high quality that is rare among academics, let alone scientists, gloomy reading is what they offer. But they want to do more than simply wail, Cassandra-like. They also want to dig into how and why we got into the predicament in which we find ourselves. For the Ehrlichs, human evolution is the cause of our technological triumphs and tragedies. They emphasize that it is a mistake to think, however, that the causes of such evolution can be reduced simplistically to single factors. We must take into account both genetics and culture. The underlying foundation of human thought and behavior may be innate and rooted in our DNA, but the peculiar thing about Homo sapiens is how we lay culture and learning on top of all our biology. A prime example is controlling population growth. As the Ehrlichs point out, from an evolutionary perspective, nothing is more important than having babies. Until fairly recently, human numbers were kept in check by the natural misfortunes that befall almost all animals and plants, such as diseases, predators and food failures. But, thanks to culture, especially in the 20th century, human population exploded: A billion people were added in the two decades from 1950 to 1970. This was a direct function of technological advances, especially pesticides (leading to larger harvests) and antibiotics (leading to fewer deaths from disease). These huge increases put pressures on people to produce even greater amounts of food, more housing and everything else needed for living. The most rational thing would be for us to notice that life has changed and to restrict our family sizes. But it isn't that simple. The Ehrlichs stress that human evolution at the cultural level is "sticky." We don't just change behaviors, throwing over beliefs, because circumstances are different. Patterns of behavior and thought get engrained and are hard to modify, and there are good biological reasons for this. If something works well over the course of time, then it makes sense that it should be protected against change: Stay with the tried and trusted because on average this will pay off the biggest dividends. This stickiness has clearly contributed to our ecological crisis. Cultural patterns in such areas as agriculture have led to the great success of humankind, but these same patterns are leading us to strip rain forests and pump out greenhouse gases, leading to today's mess. Getting an understanding of how the interactions of biology and culture affect human behavior is itself reason to read this book. I wish, however, that the Ehrlichs had made more of their profound insights. The last part of "The Dominant Animal" addresses how we might improve our position, for instance, by eschewing fossil fuels and relying much more on renewable sources of energy. But there is not enough about how we are to overcome our sticky cultural assumptions and do what is in our long-term interest. Houston, for example, recycles less than 3 percent of its waste, whereas San Francisco recycles nearly 70 percent. This is not because the people of Houston are less evolved than the people of San Francisco, but because the infrastructure and incentives are just not there. We need to be discussing how our inclinations to choose the quick and easy fix can be replaced by other cultural imperatives. In wartime, for instance, people can be persuaded to make sacrifices for the sake of the nation. Should we be thinking about a war on environmental destruction? This is an important book, with much information and some really stimulating ideas. We need to build on these ideas, because the world is in an environmental mess and things are not getting better. © 2008 The Washington Post Company