The Green Evolution

$24.99

The Green Evolution sits on my mental bookshelf among resonant works that were, from my first encounter with them as a young adult, transformative: Rachel Carson’s (1962) Silent Spring; Edward Abbey’s (1968) Desert Solitaire; and Duane Elgin’s (1981) Voluntary Simplicity, to name a few favorites. Their foresight, arguments, evidence, and messages still relevant, I revisit those powerful texts even today. These-and now, Jeffrey Ravage’s book- are urgent reminders of what we certainly know in our collective body, if not in our collective mind: ecological balance is everything, and humans-more than any other living thing-bear responsibility for having destructively, catastrophically upset that balance. Greed, ill-advised industrial practices, widespread consumerism, and short-sighted, self-serving policies have-in a mere 150 years-contaminated the long relationship of humans to our natural environment. It is an environment we share with all living things, and when it can no longer support the abundance of interdependent life that constitutes planetary health, it will no longer sustain us.

 

Ravage’s book is provocatively subtitled How we can survive the global ecological collapse and continue as a technological civilization, which articulates his thesis, amply illustrated in thirteen engaging, and at times mind-blowing, chapters. He lays out the status quo, then goes deep into specific aspects of the vast, global system in which we’re all enmeshed, which is comprised of needs; natural resources; industrial activities and their toxic byproducts; and waste. He shows how our approaches to survival, growth, and domination have been woefully shortsighted, bringing us and the earth to an unthinkable brink.

 

Ravage’s writing voice is friendly, crusty, snarky, and wonderfully well-informed. He is a brilliant, systemic thinker; a scientist, and a philosopher whose goal is to activate new ways of thinking. The Green Evolution is, Ravage says, “a point of departure,” and as such bears an ultimately hopeful and inspiring-if dire-message.

 

Janna Goodwin- Author, Playwright, Professor

120 in stock

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Description

The Green Evolution First Edition

“The Green Evolution, or: How we can survive the global ecological collapse and continue as a technological civilization,“ (First Edition) is a work inspired by a love of nature and humanity as well. For human nature evolved from nature. It is designed to inform the reader about how life works, not what we have been told about how it works or how we wish it would. Life has existed on this planet for over 4 billion years. It has survived six mass extinction events. It has shown resilience and innovation over this span and has much to tell us about how we might survive this seventh mass extinction event-the one of our own making.

The Green Evolution illuminates the path to survival by using our technology and power to restore the ecosystem.The main principle of ecological restoration is to rely on the resilience of the ecosystem to restore itself. However, to do that successfully, we must understand how ecosystems function. And unfortunately, we have lost that understanding at nearly every level of our societies. Science is beginning to regain these insights with advances in ecology and other life sciences, but it may not happen fast enough to save humanity. Simply understanding that we are dealing with systems and not static singularities can make the difference between a speedy recovery or the redirection of the landscape into a desert. The human race excels at creating deserts from lush environments. We’ve done it for tens of thousands of years; often, without understanding, we were causing it. Presently, we are so far out of touch with the rhythms and needs of survival that we all need a refresher on what reality is (and is not). I’ve collected the research to answer these pressing questions with over 150 cited studies.

Many of those who understand the dire predicament we face have already judged our fate as sealed. Those who continue to deny that anything untoward is happening reinforce this perception of hopelessness. But we can survive this trial we have set against ourselves.

We are at childhood’s end, and a new chapter awaits us no matter what we do. If we want to choose the outcome that leads to survival, this book is our primer on how that might be possible. To that end, we dissect the vital characteristics of healthy living systems so that we might emulate them. And finding a simple framework we illuminate it.

This new awareness is the Green Evolution. A sentient race’s ability to choose to change its behaviors and evolve is the step that will lead us to our next great adventure. But only if we take that step. Together.

 

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Additional information

Weight 1.4 kg
Dimensions 9 × 6.5 × 2 cm

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