The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth [Hardcover]

Stuart Pimm (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0071374906 | ISBN-13: 978-0071374903 | Publication Date: July 20, 2001 | Edition: 1

Take a globe-circling tour of our endangered planet with conservation biologist Stuart Pimm - who is taking stock and keeping score. We use 50 per cent of the world's freshwater supply. We consume 42 per cent of the world's plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants 100 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that the human impact on our planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all?And just what factors go into that 42 per cent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement. Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the 'science' in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself 'investment banker of the global, biological accounts', checking the numbers gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. Pimm explains the numerical results in lucid prose. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where those numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet. With Pimm as our indomitable guide, we travel from the volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawaii to the boreal forests of Siberia. We see a blue whale off the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the blue oceans are slowly turning to barren deserts.We go birdwatching high up in the leafy canopy of the Amazon, from which we can see the hundreds of smoke plumes busily working at deforestation. At times, the view looks rather grim. But Pimm is no Cassandra; he never preaches or scolds. Ever optimistic, this book presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction. '[T]his book is unashamedly optimistic. It is a celebration of our spectacular and fascinating world. I have made no attempt to restrain my joy as I encounter its natural history and its peoples. By the time you read the epilogue you will know that our world is not doomed, it is not fatally wounded, but neither is it healthy. It needs attention...' - Stuart Pimm, from the Prologue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Calling himself "the investment banker of the global biological accounts," conservation biologist Pimm balances the raw numbers of what the earth produces against what humans take away annually, and, as an accountant might, quietly but insistently draws our attention to long-range projections. The numbers, he finds, do not quite add up. Pimm, who is a professor of conservation biology at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation and who publishes regularly in New Scientist, Nature and Science, is an advocate of conservation policy nationally and abroad, but he is not prone to moralizing. As he writes, "I will not hector you about having many children, driving a large car, eating meat," and yet he says that "the impacts I will describe already seriously degrade the lives of huge numbers of people." With clarity and humor, Pimm cites quantities, such as the one billion tons of plant growth human beings eat each year, the 35% of the oceans' continental shelf productivity they consume and the 60% of accessible freshwater runoff they utilize. Basing his argument on massive numbers like these, and on his own genial but forceful responses to them, Pimm makes a strong case for "ecology on a global scale." Readers reached by this book may just change their habits.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Professor of conservation biology at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, Pimm was featured in the 1996 PBS Nova program "Nature's Numbers." Like David Malin Roodman's The Natural Wealth of Nations: Harnessing the Market for the Environment (LJ 11/1/98), this book explains environmental issues numerically to answer questions of whether humans will be better off in the next century. Written in a conversational and anecdotal style with less emphasis on theory than found in Roodman's book, Pimm's study distills scientific findings from such noted journals as Nature and Science into simple, memorable numbers and noteworthy facts. Witty chapter headings such as "Billions of Tons of Green Stuff," "When Vegetation Rioted and Big Trees Were King," and "Man Eats Planet! Two-Fifths Already Gone!" will appeal to a wide range of readers. Despite the irritating references to subsequent chapters and inconsistency in italicized subpoints, this book is recommended, especially for environmental planners, statisticians, mathematicians, science librarians, and nonspecialists who seek to be better informed. Margaret Aycock, Gulf Coast Environmental Lib., Beaumont, TX
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (July 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071374906
• ISBN-13: 978-0071374903
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Important Book that Everyone Should Read, September 21, 2001

By 

Alan Townsend (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth (Hardcover)

This book is well written, informative and an enjoyable read. But so are many books. What distinguishes this one is that it also presents a critical message - one that we all should take to heart. And do not assume: "oh, wonderful, here's another book just bemoaning the fate of the planet and predicting its destruction." Instead, Dr. Pimm's book does an exceptional job of clearly and accurately presenting a wealth of sobering information while maintaining a strong sense of optimism and inspiration. This is a truly outstanding and important book, and one does not need to be a scientist to understand and appreciate its content.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The World According To Pimm Review, December 10, 2001

By 

alamodoc (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth (Hardcover)

This is the first book I've read that concisely examines the problems and issues facing our planet Earth. Anyone who is interested in the future of the planet and wants to be able to make informed, rational decisions about a wide variety of ecological problems should read and reread this book. The material is presented in a very entertaining, informal way. The non-scientific person will not be mired in confusing (not to mention boring) data. He has a admirable ability to get right to the heart of the issues. He presents the material evenly and lets the reader make his own mind up about the problems presented.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are we the planet's cancer?, September 1, 2002

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth (Hardcover)

In this extraordinary work ecologist Stuart Pimm plays bio-accountant and gives us the bottom line on our planet's resources, how we are spending them and how much is left.

There are approximately 130 million square kilometers of land surface producing an average of about 1,000 tons of biomass a year. Of this 130 billion tons we use 42% (60 billion tons) for food, grazing, wood for building and burning, etc. Pimm's comment is "Man eats Planet! Two-Fifths Already Gone!" (Chapter 6).

Professor Pimm also audits the ocean and gives us similar bottom-line figures. He explains how he gets the information, how he collates it and how his various sources agree and don't agree. He is in the field and on the ocean, floating down Amazon rivers and flying over the African veldt. He recalls the land before industrialization and tells us how it has changed. He tells the story of the great American westward expansion and what that expansion did to the forests and the prairies. He recalls the tragedy of Easter Island. Pimm writes in a witty and fascinating style that makes the dry numbers come alive and sparkle like fish in incandescent water. One gets the sense in reading him that here is somebody who knows what he is talking about, somebody who has worked hard to understand how the planet's various systems work, and what is happening to them because of human consumption and waste. His tone is balanced and calm and conversational. He appears to have no axes to grind, no favorites to play. Although he claims in the Prologue that his book is "unashamedly optimistic" (p. 8), the implications of the numbers he presents are nonetheless alarming.

For example, Pimm reports that our population has nearly doubled since 1970 but the amount of cropland has only increased from 14 million square kilometers to 15. He notes that "Agriculture feeds far more people from almost the same area of land." He adds, "In this statistic, eternally optimistic Panglossians see continuing progress that allows us to push the envelope of our environmental constraints. In the same statistic, worried Cassandras notice the constraints on the area of croplands that prevent it from expanding with our growing population." (p. 106)

He notes that virtually all of the best cropland is already being used, but not necessarily for cultivation. A significant percentage is under the concrete and asphalt of our cities. Furthermore the drier lands in places like California's central valleys, the soils are quickly becoming salinized by irrigation so that they yield less and less per acre. In some place the salt content from irrigation of the soil is too high for food plants to grow. All over the world this problem exists and as Pimm notes there is no solution in sight. The croplands that benefit from rainwater, that is, water that is distilled by the water cycle, do not turn salty, but the amount of that land is strictly limited and shrinking because of urban sprawl.

Pimm uses a party metaphor to highlight the situation. Some guests he says pick out the cashews from the bowl of mixed nuts. "Not for them the lowly sunflower seeds, still in their husks...The high-graders who...[got the cashews] are now demanding the even more expensive Macadamia nuts. The doorbell is ringing, announcing the arrival of more guests..." (p. 107)

Pimm also looks at the fisheries and what affect our fishing has on them. His conclusion: "Humanity does not use all of the oceans' production, but what we do use is already enough to damage the oceans, seriously and perhaps permanently. (p. 127) He also notes that without government subsidies, in places like Canada, Russia, the US, Japan and Europe, fishing on a large scale would be impossible because it no longer pays. In Johannesburg where there is a world wide conference on ecology taking place as I write this, one of the main topics is how farm and fishing subsidies in first world countries are keeping the farmers and fishermen in third world countries poor. Food prices are kept artificially low so that African and Asian farmers cannot compete in the marketplace. That is one (unintended, one would hope) consequence of subsidies, but another is that the intense use of land and sea are rapidly reducing the yields, in some cases to the point of no return.

The land and the ocean are the first two parts of the book. In part three, on biodiversity, Pimm sheds some light on taxonomy and how difficult it is to count species. In an Epilogue, he addresses solutions and his hope for the future. Pimm is optimistic. I wish I could be. But until we feel the pain of lost resources, and actually have to give up some of our comfort, I don't think anything substantial is going to be done toward the avowed goal of sustained growth. (Actually, I think "sustained growth" may be an oxymoron dreamed up by some transnational corporations to excuse their continued pillaging of the planet's resources.) At any rate, humans act out of necessity. By the time the real necessity kicks in for most of the first world, much of the planet's resources will be gone.

The good news though, according to Pimm, is that most of those resources are renewable. The forests of the Eastern US have largely returned (without much of their animal wildlife or flora diversity, I must point out) and while the wild salmon may go the way of the dodo, there will be farm salmon, and if we lose the swordfish, there will still be tuna, etc.

This is an important book that anyone concerned about the future of our planet should not miss. It is in a sense fundamental to an understanding of the most important issues facing us today.