Adventures in the Anthropocene
A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A science journalist travels the world to explore humanity’s ecological devastation—and its potential for renewal in this “compelling read” (Guardian, UK).
We live in times of profound environmental change. According to a growing scientific consensus, the dramatic results of man-made climate change have ushered the world into a new geological era: the Anthropocene, or Age of Man. As an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince couldn’t help but wonder if the greatest cause of this dramatic planetary change—humans’ singular ability to adapt and innovate—might also hold the key to our survival.
To investigate this provocative question, Vince travelled the world in search of ordinary people making extraordinary changes to the way they live—and, in many cases, finding new ways to thrive. From Nepal to Patagonia and beyond, Vince journeys into mountains and deserts, forests and farmlands, to get an up close and personal view of our changing environment.
Part science journal, part travelogue, Adventures in the Anthropocene recounts Vince’s journey, and introduces an essential new perspective on the future of life on Earth.</
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science journalist Vince has produced a book, simultaneously deeply depressing and thoroughly uplifting, that is all but impossible to put down. Organizing her stories by ecosystem, Vince chronicles the planetary changes humans have wrought during the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch. In superb prose she summarizes the actions of people whose lives have been irrevocably affected by climate change, urbanization, industrialization, and rampant greed. These same people, some of the poorest on the planet, are taking active steps to transform their lives and communities. Vince writes in the first chapter about Mahabir Pun, a Nepalese teacher who brought free WiFi connections to remote Himalayan villages, enabling students to attend school online and village nurses and midwives to work in a telemedicine and dentistry clinic linked via webcam. She also describes the remarkable efforts of an Indian civil engineer, Chewang Norphel, to construct temporary glaciers to provide water for remote, high-elevation villages whose natural glacial aquifers have disappeared as temperatures rise. Vince travelled for two years, interviewing and observing, to compile this amazing view of both the present and the future, and she concludes that it is not yet too late to create a rich and sustainable "shared future." Illus.
