God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future [Hardcover]

Ed Ayres (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1999

Monumental changes are occurring on the planet, yet most people are unaware of them. In God's Last Offer, environmentalist Ed Ayres paints a vivid "big picture" of where the world is headed. He identifies a lethal combination of events -- radical climate changes, increasing species extinction, unsustainable consumption, and exploding human populations -- and presents a blueprint for a radical shift of policies and priorities to avoid a cataclysm.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The window of opportunity is closing fast," cautions World Watch editor Ayres, who urges us to seize "God's last offer" of precious time and to reverse the global trends that threaten ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. His levelheaded, closely argued manifesto identifies "four spikes" of revolutionary change that endanger planetary survival: first, global warming caused by a rise in carbon dioxide emissions due to overreliance on fossil fuels; second, loss of biodiversity through mass extinctions of plant and animal species; third, a surge of unsustainable, resource-depleting consumption as global media and advertising goad the rest of the world to ape the West's consumerist binge; finally, exploding population growth, which exacerbates all the other trends. Ayres's painstaking analysis of these problems, and of how they feed into one another, presents a forceful challenge to those who deny that a crisis exists or minimize its seriousness. Sifting through the ecopolitical debates of the last quarter century, Ayres dismantles the perceptual obstructions that block our awareness of a crisis: truncated news, propaganda by vested interests, diversionary disputes, apathy, fragmentation of knowledge. While his reflective essay comes up short in offering specific solutions, its primary aim is to reorient thinking, and in that it succeeds, making it a vital companion to the Worldwatch Institute's popular annual report, State of the World.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Ayres, editorial director of the environmental group Worldwatch, sees the world's recent spate of natural and economic disasters all stemming from human degradation of the planet. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and the collapse of Asian economies, Ayres argues, are the result of four interconnected threats: the rise of carbon gas emissions, increasing extinctions of plant and animal species, an unsustainable rate of consumption, and an ever-growing human population. Together they have not only altered our weather patterns (e.g., global warming), they have put unbearable stresses on national economies, resulting in foundering currencies and roller-coaster financial markets. Ayres delineates several of these connected environmental and economic catastrophes, such as the drying of the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from Texas to South Dakota and provides irrigation for America's breadbasket. But this isn't scaremongering. Objective and detailed, it's must reading for all concerned about the fate of Earth and its inhabitants. Brian McCombie

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581254
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581255
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,470,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Summation Of Where We Stand Environmentally!, February 17, 2001

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future (Paperback)

For those of us who are vitally interested in the details surrounding the global assault on the biosphere caused by humankind and the massive environmental changes wreaked on the earth by technological innovation and mass consumerism, this is a critically important book to read. In clear, unemotional, and incontrovertible terms, author Ed Ayres lays out the nature of each of the four major environmental threats, and traces each of them to their manifesting sources. Using the data collected as the editorial director of the environmental group Worldwatch, the author mounts a sometimes passionate, and always convincing argument against the wall of negative environmental change being unleashed on the earth by science and technology gone absolutely wild.

After briefly summarizing the ways in which the overall environmental threats are interconnected with our overall problems and our unnecessarily wasteful materialistic lifestyles, he identifies the four most dangerous master processes (or mega-phenomena) that are quickly altering the basis for biological life on earth. First among these is the rise on carbon gas emissions, which he links to the overuse of private automobile transportation and the rapidly dwindling degree of forestation in the world, especially in the Amazon area of the new hemisphere. Among other things, this is quickly changing the nature of the world's weather, and this single fact is extremely worrying to Ayres. Next he describes the ways in which the various technological implementations have expedited the rate of species extinction, rapidly depleted and profoundly weakening the primordial basis for life on the planet itself.

Likewise, this profound intrusion into the nature of the biosphere threatens the foundations of biological life itself, and we must recognize how threatening this is to us as a species. Third, he points out the number of ways in which the ever-accelerating degree of human over-consumption of the world's limited resources, and has the unfortunate side effect of also despoiling and polluting the world's potable water (and food) supplies. Finally, he shows how the explosion in world population combined with the other three master processes will soon stress the third world countries toward a catastrophic collision with their own degrading environmental conditions.

Ayres also extends his argument to mount a stinging indictment of the relatively sophisticated and dangerously disingenuous efforts on the part of money-grubbing global corporations, international institutions, and various governmental bodies to mislead and misguide public perceptions and awareness of the increasingly dangerous situation. Their callous manipulation of the instruments of the media have lulled the masses of the so-called advanced countries into a frightening degree of apathy and complacency regarding the environment. In a world that revolves around making money and corporate profits, the last thing anyone in a position of authority and responsibility wants to have to publicly confront and recognize is the almost herculean effort (and the corresponding drastic alteration in our lifestyles and level of individual consumption) necessary in order to effectively change the practices and approaches of an economy so organized and so perpetuated.

In concluding, the author recommends a number of practical approaches that would be instrumental in turning the tide into amore positive direction. While admitting the social, political, and economic difficulties associated with so doing, he argues that what is necessary in order to avoid the environmental catastrophes otherwise directly confronting us, we must rapidly shift our perspectives, values, and practices and learn very quickly to relate to each other and to the world around us in a much more responsible and comprehensive fashion. This is a wonderful book and is one I highly recommend for anyone concerned about learning more about the massive ways in which the human assault on the ecosystem is threatening our continuing survival as a society and as a species.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound information with personal solutions, February 10, 2000

By 

Judy Morris (Loveland, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future (Hardcover)

I was impressed with the compilation of the massive amounts of information about the environment put in a way that creates an illumination of the actual problem that exists on earth. More impressively, it gives practical solutions that each of us personally can work to do in our lives.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The tide turns! A must read for the "naysayer"!, November 24, 1999

By 

Phil Dutton (Cornwall, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future (Hardcover)

Ayers is brilliant! I could not put the book down! In his characteristic style (from "Worldwatch") Ayers paints a clear picture of the dangerous place we are headed (if not already there) -a world that will require a collective concentrated focus on mitigation of the effects of the four megaphenomena (see above), and a reversal of those trends, if our species is to survive. This book is not for the light-hearted. If you have the slightest shade of "green" in your soul, this book will give you a paradigm shift that will change your life. If you don't, you will.