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Scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, present a science-based response to those who argue that efforts to protect the global environment have gone too far.

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9781559634830

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The Ehrlichs (Healing the Planet, 1991, etc.) land a sober-sided sleeve across the collective windpipe of today's environmental glad-tiders. Brownlash is what the Ehrlichs call those efforts made to minimize the seriousness of environmental problems still bedeviling planet Earth. This happy bunch - Gregg Easterbrook, Julian Simon, Dixy Lee Ray, et al. - have twisted the findings of empirical science and arrived at a body of antiscience, suggest the Ehrlichs, for less than ethical ends. The Ehrlichs have no issue with scientists who challenge conventional thinking, but they find repugnant the brownlash that is simply a vehicle for right-wing ideology or to further some economic or political goal. Since scientific knowledge is not one of the hallmarks of this country's population, the brownlashers have managed to sow seeds of doubt. So the husband-and-wife environmental science team explains once again overpopulation, global climate change, ozone depletion, and losses of biodiversity. They answer questions about the dangers with brisk, no-nonsense answers: They write about a population overshooting the carrying capacity of its turf; about renewable resources becoming nonrenewable due to rate of use; about long-term sustainability and ethical decency toward the Earth as intelligent goals. Sound familiar? The figures have been updated, the latest studies have been plumbed, but these are the same points the Ehrlichs have been fielding since 1970. That doesn't mean they're stuck in a rut, it's just that they got it right the first time around. Ignorance is what allows the brownlashers a toehold. Learn what you can on a topic and make your own decisions, counsel the Ehrlichs. A little reflection, a little common sense, they'll wager, and the glad-riders will be out on the street selling pencils. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Paul R. Ehrlich is a co-founder with Peter H. Raven of the field of co-evolution, and has pursued long-term studies of the structure, dynamics, and genetics of natural butterfly populations. He has also been a pioneer in alerting the public to the problems of overpopulation, and in raising issues of population, resources, and the environment as matters of public policy. Ehrlich is the author of The Population Bomb, and many other books, as well as hundreds of papers. Ehrlich is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Ehrlich has received several honorary degrees, the John Muir Award of the Sierra Club, the Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International, a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (given in lieu of a Nobel Prize in areas where the Nobel is not given), in 1993 the Volvo Environmental Prize, in 1994 the United Nations' Sasakawa Environment Prize, in 1995 the Heinz Award for the Environment, in 1998 the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, in 1999 the Blue Planet Prize, in 2001 the Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. In addition to The Population Bomb, Ehrlich is the author of Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect (Island Press, 2000) and co-author of The Work of Nature: How The Diversity Of Life Sustains Us (Island Press, 1998). With his wife Anne, he is the author of Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future (Island Press, 1996) and One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future (Island Press, 2004). His latest book with Anne is The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (Island Press, 2008). Paul R. Ehrlich received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Anne H. Erlich is affiliated with Stanford's Biology Department and Center for Conservation Biology. She has served on the board of the Sierra Club and other conservation organizations, has coauthored ten books with her husband, and is a recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

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