24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
David Susuki and Holly Dressel's message must be heard!, December 15, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: From Naked Ape to Super Species: A Personal Perspective on Humanity and the Global Ecocrisis (Hardcover)
This book will make you open your eyes to what mankind has done and continues to do, to our fragile planet. But what I really enjoyed about this book is the fact that David Susuki believes it's not to late to change our destructive path, and that we can still make changes to save our planet from our global eco-crisis.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Timely Perspective On Humanity in the Biosphere, April 22, 2002
SUZUKI:
Although David Suzuki was trained to genetically engineer fruit flies to grow arms from their heads, his perspective on science and life is remarkably human. I would go so far as to say that his understanding of humanity and its place in nature is perhaps unequaled among environmental philosophers today. Aside from working as a scientist, Suzuki also spent some 30-some years producing nature documentaries. This gave him the opportunity travel the globe, visit many different cultures and geographic regions, from indigenous tribes to povrety-striken Third World nations. It was through profound cultural education that Suzuki unlearned the mad science he studied as a youth and gained new understand about culture, economics and biodiversity. Nowadays, Suzuki mainly spends his time writing books and articles. He also runs an environmental organization in Canada, where he and his family live, called the David Suzuki Foundation. The website address is: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK:
In this book Suzuki teams up with writer and researcher Holly Dressel to produce a sort of global guide to the biosphere-a work of scope and detail that will amaze you. They will walk you through ancient arboreal forests and the global economy with the ease of an experienced mountain tracker. They will be introduced you to people and movements that are sure to move. And perhaps most importantly the book will provide you with an important ecological perspective. Filled with stories, anecdotes, interesting facts, and tons of suggestions and references, from books to organizations - "From Naked Ape to Super-Species" is nothing less than a manual for humanity. Simply put, this is one of the most important books I have read.
EXERPT:
"Time is the one ingredient that is absolutely for vital for nature. It is the vast sweep of evolutionary time that has allowed life to flourish and huge changes to occur. In the 4 billion years that life has existed, the sun has increased in intensity by 25 percent, magnetic poles have switched and reversed back, continents have smashed into each other and then pulled apart, ice ages and warm periods have come and gone, and the atmosphere has been transformed from a non-oxygen to a oxygen-rich one. Yet life has persisted, simply because of the immense periods of time it has to make adjustments.
Today, the rate at which we are extracting trees, fish, topsoil and clean water, as well as creating pollutants and greenhouse gases, may match the speed of information technology and the economy, but it is not in synch with the reproductive rates of natural systems. More and more, our sources of information are no longer connected to the natural world and its limits. Politics, civic action and participatory democracy need time too. Democratic groups like PTAs and other voluntary human institutions take time to do their work.
Until we slow down the rate of growth in information and technology and learn to pay attention to the true pace of the non-technological planet, we'll keep making unrealistic demands that can't be fulfilled. At the very least, we need to understand that our accelerated rates of production and use of human-made technical information function at a completely different pace from that of the natural rates of information exchange, like those I experienced in the Brazilian rain forest."
MAIN ISSUES:
General Environment Issuses: from the toxification of our environment to Environmental Justice.
Consumer Issues: How do our shopping habits effect the world aroud us?
The Question of Progress: What does it mean?
Food Issues and Biotechnology: In Canada, America, the world abroad.
Globalization Issues: Impacts at home and abroad
Global Warming and Forest Issues
Non-Violent Direct Actions: some groups and individuals fighting against large international corporations for local sovereignty
Human Rights, Environmental Rights
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Want to know why people vote Green?, January 13, 2000
This review is from: From Naked Ape to Super Species: A Personal Perspective on Humanity and the Global Ecocrisis (Hardcover)
Suzuki's previous books are a hard act to follow, but he and Dressel provide an informative and interesting view of the environmental problems we are facing.
It factually points out the hypocrisy and short-sightedness of uncontrolled capitalism and globalisation and is full of interesting anecdotes, well-referenced, and makes you think pretty deeply about the developed world's current paragigm of "progress".
If you want to read one book about the health of our society and environment this is a very good choice. This book should be mandatory reading worldwide for senior highschool students and all of us who are already past that.
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