Jill Schneiderman - The Earth Around Us

Maintaining a Livable Planet

Jill S. Schneiderman
Editor

First published 2003 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright 2000 by Jill S. Schneiderman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Schneiderman, Jill S.
The earth around us: Maintaining a livable planet / edited by Jill S. Schneiderman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-4091-8
1. Environmental sciences. 2. NatureEffect of human beings on. I. Title.
GE105 .S325 2000
333.7dc21

99-057152

ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-4091-3 (pbk)

When Rachel Carsonscientist, writer, activistaccepted the National Book Award for The Sea Around Us, she commented, "But this notion, that 'science' is something that belongs in a separate compartment of its own, apart from everyday life, is one that I should like to challenge. We live in a scientific age; yet we assume that knowledge is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience." This book, The Earth Around Us, honors that sentiment. Throughout its pages, it brings to its readers the scientific understanding of the consequences of human activity on Earth.

Some of the thirty-one essays that constitute this book offer poetic accounts of human thinking about our Earth. Others provide direct and accessible stories of human actions and their aftermath on the planet. In all cases the essays in The Earth Around Us encompass a unique resource, a collection of writings by society's foremost scientist-writers, whose goal is to empower its readers by giving them access to scientific information that will bear directly on the ability of Homo sapiens to secure a sustainable future on planet Earth. Here readers will glean the perspectives of visionary geoscientists who contemplate Earth's history and the place of humans in it. If the future of humanity is to be environmentally tenable, the public must contemplate these viewpoints.

Scientists articulate their working concepts to the reading public all too infrequently. Authors of essays in The Earth Around Us affirm the ability of scientists to communicate relevant science in a clear and engaging fashion, and they enthusiastically embrace their responsibility to do so. The result is a book of lively essays that will captivate readers desiring basic knowledge that can be used to balance human actions within Earths natural system.

According to environmental activist and writer Robert Gottlieb, a key element in Rachel Carson's argument in her book Silent Spring was that science and specialized technical knowledge were separated from public inputscience alone cannot fix all the environmental disturbances that humans create. Problems in the physical world are multifaceted; solutions to them will require consideration of ethics and policy as well as judgment informed by cultural, political, social, and historical context. In some cases, to solve the problems that we have induced through the application of scientific principles will necessitate technologies that do not yet exist. Nonetheless, a scientifically aware public, one that knows the ABCs of the earth system, will be able to hold accountable others who act in ignorance of Earth's essential character. By adjusting the compass of our thinking about the natural world, The Earth Around Us enables readers to think, speak, and act from knowledge.

The book comprises seven parts, each of which I introduce briefly with a description of the main theme. The book's first section gives readers a sense of Earths time and history as well as the place of people in it. detail geologically aware, innovative thought and action where people have had to respond to environmental challenges. In the sixth part, authors take up issues of planetary change on a global scalein particular, alterations to the atmosphere. In an effort to spur creative thinking for an environmentally sound and decent future, essayists writing in the final portion of The Earth Around Us express philosophies meant to inspire humans to think outside their quotidian existence.

This book is akin to a chorus of voices. Each part can be encountered alone or in relation to the others. Readers can enjoy the essays in any order they choose because each piece of written work was crafted individually. However, the constituent essays form an integrated aggregate that takes the reader on a journey toward prescience about humanity's environmental future. Ultimately, the book is an enticing set of true stories with geological themes. Together the essays make a strong case for the centrality of earth science to environmental sustainability.

In the dystopic future envisioned by poet and novelist Marge Piercy in her book He, She and It, the heroine Shira describes listening to a lecture "about two billion people who had starved to death in the Famine, when the ocean rose over rice paddies and breadbaskets of the delta countries like Bangladesh and Egypt, when the Great Plains dried up and blew away in dust storms that darkened the skies and brought early winter, when the deserts of Africa and the new desert of the Amazon spread month by month."humans to act as geological agents at nongeological rates.