Australian paleontologist and biologist Tim Flannery, discoverer of dozens of mammals and dinosaurs (existing and extinct) in Australia and Melanesia, author of several works on ecological history, published a new work - the book Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet. History of the Planet)
The man is exposed in her as a chemical addict, a selfish killer of the amazing living cover of his home planet.
The vast majority of scientists believe that humans have overturned ecosystems and have a potentially disastrous impact on the climate. Some - perhaps in response to public indifference - tend to exaggerate the scope of the trouble. “Here on Earth” clearly refers to this group. Fortunately, the author had the strength to abandon the rhetoric and note how difficult it is to be the first intelligent life form that got the entire planet at its disposal. “Infancy is the most dangerous period,” stresses Mr. Flannery.
The scientist believes that, in some way, the mechanistic, soulless concept of Charles Darwin is to blame for the current situation. It is contrasted with the more holistic theory of Alfred Russell Wallace, also an English naturalist who came to the same conclusions independently of Darwin. While Darwin "sought enlightenment by studying the smaller pieces of the puzzle of life," writes the author, "Wallace saw the whole picture." He believed that the role of man in evolution is not limited to the desire to reproduce (or earn money, as social Darwinists later believed) and victory over competitors. Wallace was one of the first to accuse a person of "criminal apathy": already at the end of the 19th century, cities were suffocating from mud.
Flannery then confronts two more modern concepts. Paleontologist Peter Ward once proposed the "Medea hypothesis": natural selection forces a biological species to exploit resources until the ecosystem is destroyed and the species destroys itself. Indeed, the author agrees, some species and civilizations have come to such a sad end. But there is another view - the "Gaia hypothesis" developed by ecologist James Lovelock: evolution is presented here as "a series of win-win consequences that result in a productive, stable and universal Earth." At least it was so until human egoism rose to its full height.
Here is one example: for many years people used the services of a honey guide - a small bird that finds a hive and calls a person. The man ruins the hive, takes the honey and leaves the bird what it likes the most - the larvae and combs. Alas, the scientist complains, lately "lazy people" have switched to the industrial production of sugar and turned away from nature.
At times, Mr. Flannery goes too far. So, he writes that, according to 2007 data, 220 thousand people die annually from pesticide poisoning. The author forgets to point out that, according to the World Health Organization, pesticide use is a common method of suicide in South Asia. In other words, the problem has more to do with cultural and psychological aspects than with ecological Armageddon.
The scientist claims that 42 thousand people are poisoned with pesticides annually in the United States. However, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, from 1998 to 2005, only 3,271 such cases were recorded, and only 0.6% of them received the status of acute poisoning.
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Distortions and exaggerations reach indecent proportions in the book. For example, Mr. Flannery describes how biologists after the Chernobyl disaster discovered that certain Mediterranean shrimp species had extremely high concentrations of polonium-210 radionuclides in some organs. The author ominously notes that Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with this poison in 2006. But he apparently did not pay attention to the fact that in the journal Science in 1982 (four years before Chernobyl) exactly the same high level of polonium-210 was described in the same organs of the same species of shrimp collected in the Atlantic. This is the result of natural radiation.
Despite these shortcomings, Here on Earth is a useful book. She reminds us that the qualities that have drawn us into environmental problems will help us to get out. By rejecting not only Ward, but also Lovelock, Mr. Flannery concludes that we will change our values as a result of active choice, not natural selection. After all, we have a mind, right?