Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth--by People, for People (Hardcover)

by James Trefil (Author) "It was a beautiful day in the Black Hills, one of those days when the sky was so blue and the grass was so green..." (more)
Key Phrases: United States, Garden of Eden, North America (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
With several lively and informal works of popular science to his credit (Sharks Have No Bones; Are We Unique?), Trefil is certainly qualified to tackle the controversial, timely topic of how humans ought to affect the planet they live on. He argues that from the dawn of an agricultural society, man has always engineered nature to suit his needs. And because we're the only form of life with the ability to move mountains (as much literally as metaphorically), there's no rational reason not to manage the environment mainly for the benefit of manâ€"an aggressive, unapologetic inversion of an Earth First philosophy. With the advent of 21st-century scientific breakthroughsâ€"particularly the mapping of DNA and forays into genetic manipulationâ€"this rather radically reasoned book declares that a bold new world of "overcoming the limits imposed by nature" awaits. It's a vision of planetary terraforming imbued with bravura and optimism (Trefil declares that alarm over global warming is a nearsighted cousin to the millennium hysteria around Y2K). The author's hubristic, occasionally cranky dismissal of the environmental movement as mere "pop ecology" is sure to have greens seeing red. But readers who think of the wilderness primarily as a place to spend the weekend will be reassured by his vision of the power of science, rather than restrained stewardship, as mankind's best bet for saving the planet.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
I began reading this book in earnest on the hottest day of the year. Through all of western Washington state, from the 49th parallel through Seattle and on to Oregon, thermometers pushed above 100 degrees, and some gauges registered much higher. Homeowners saturated their lawns to try to keep them from roasting in the sun, vehicles broke down, and people did what they could to cope with the heat.

Home air conditioning is considered a luxury in the cooler climes of the Evergreen State, so the malls, restaurants and movie theatres were jam-packed -- and some ad hoc lemonade stands did enough business for the little gougers to start college funds. Interstate 5 was choked with cars heading to Canada to try to find relief -- though it was scarcely much cooler north of the border. If the warm air had been accompanied by the kind of humidity that residents of Washington, D.C. are used to, it's likely that corpses would have started piling up. If that sounds far-fetched, recall that nearly 15,000 people died from a heatwave in France last summer. In July 1995, a week-long hot spell in Chicago killed more than 700 people.

Sometimes the natural seems tranquil, maternal even. When winter gives way to spring, only those with severe allergies fail to be moved by the sunlight and the flowers and the wonderful warming breeze. But then a hail storm or a heat wave hits, and our dealings with Ma Nature take on shades of "Leiningen Versus the Ants." In Human Nature, George Mason University physicist James Trefil offers his expertise on such climatological tussles. He says that science is about to give mankind the tools to tame nature and argues that we should use them.

The author nudges readers up to the subject by writing of his acquisition, in the early '70s, of abandoned farmland near the Blue Ridge mountains, where he planned to build a house and raise a family. While canvassing the property and trying to decide where to build, he got a weird vibe. "I will never forget the feeling of -- it's hard to find the right word but I guess 'inhospitality' will do -- I got from the land," he says. "There was no water, no shelter, nothing but the hot sun and the dry grass." By doing this "back-to-the-land thing" that was all the rage in the Me Decade, Trefil acquired an understanding of the natural world that had been missing from his admittedly "largely urban" life. That is: "I learned that nature is not good and it's not bad -- it just is." And that we have to deal with it as best we can.

Trefil argues that this inhospitality has always been the way of things. Ever since our ancestors started walking upright (he spends a tedious number of pages arguing with creationists that evolution really is a fact), the human race has manipulated the natural environment to suit our needs. Hunter-gatherers learned how to attract and manage prey and possibly came up with some very inventive uses of fire. When European settlers came to North America, they were shocked to learn that native tribes did controlled burns of fields ( because the first grasses that shot up after a blaze would draw the buffalo like a magnet).

Farming took this control one step further. Farmers displaced vegetation and bred new strains of plants to favor their own sustenance, not the plants'. Forests were razed to create arable land. Canals and dams redirected water to irrigate crops, a process that profoundly reshaped civilization. Animals were bred to produce traits that humans wanted -- again, against the dictates of what the natural world might have preferred. The weaker but more useful strains of both plants and animals had to be protected against predators, many of which were hunted to extinction. Insecticides helped to kill the insects that would eat the plants, but these chemicals, in their earlier, more indiscriminate doses, were hell on bird and amphibian populations.

We don't yet manipulate weather as we do agriculture, but we are increasingly prepared to do so. In the introduction, Trefil refers to something that a Washington Post editorial mentioned last September: Although storms around the turn of the 20th century tended to catch people by surprise, today weather tracking and forecasting have developed to the point that Hurricane Isabel was in the news a week before she struck. People had plenty of advance warning to either get out of the way or take precautions. Schools were shut down early, and local governments distributed sandbags. Stores could stock up on emergency items and thus be less likely to run out of them and create panics. The Weather Channel and local news outlets followed all the twists of the storm and provided minute-to-minute coverage.

In the long run, says Trefil, we are proving less than willing to take the hand that the natural world has dealt us. He even predicts that, from the genetic reengineering of plants and animals to advances in ecosystem management to innovative methods of predicting and reducing global warming, humanity is set to finally get a firmer grasp on nature.

Of course, there's a difference between can and ought, and Trefil doesn't try to skirt either the science or the ethics of what he's proposing. He thinks that nature can and should be managed like a garden, to the gardener's benefit. Some think that man would make a lousy gardener, or that even if he could, he shouldn't. So let's fight about it. Human Nature is the ideal place to start.

Reviewed by Jeremy Lott
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Times Books (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805072489
• ISBN-13: 978-0805072488
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,718,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging discussion of planetary management issues, July 27, 2004

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The main title of this book, "Human Nature" is a bit misleading. What physics professor and scientific generalist James Trefil is really talking about is humans and nature, as he says in the Preface, and how to manage the planet (as in the subtitle). Trefil has a "benefits-to-humans" principle to guide us:

"The global ecosystem should be managed for the benefit, broadly conceived, of human beings." (p. 13 and p. 218)

Note well the qualification "broadly conceived." Trefil allows that benefits to humans might include "some sort of innate human attraction to complex natural ecosystems" and that we might "prefer scenery that contains both water and a variety of plants and animals." (pp. 214-215) However he goes on to say that his first reaction to "the heat, humidity, and discomfort" of a rainforest is to ask, "Why would anyone want to preserve THIS?"

Why indeed?

Well, because it's there. Because it's beautiful...etc. Trefil appreciates this answer but assigns a higher value to human utility than to human aesthetics. To be fair, however, his vision of a managed earth includes "both cities and wilderness areas." (p. 226)

Nonetheless this book will offend environmentalists because of its industry-friendly tone (e.g., Part II is entitled "The Myths of Pop Ecology") and because Trefil occupies a middle ground between the extremes of a paved earth and a wilderness earth, and also because he assigns such a high value to human life as opposed to the lives of other creatures.

Okay, to some specifics. His idea of the symbolic meaning of the Garden of Eden as a falling from grace is the standard model from Christianity; however a broader view sees it as the symbolic expression of the birth of human consciousness. We were "innocent" and then suddenly we saw that we were "naked." We became "conscious"--especially of our animal nature.

More important than this difference of interpretation is his idea that we have taken ourselves out...of the process of natural selection--and [have] became something unique in the history of our planet." (p. 39)

Clearly we are unique on this planet. However to imagine that we have somehow stepped out of the process of natural selection is presumptuous. Our culture--as amazing as it is--is nonetheless itself a product of natural selection. It cannot negate natural selection except in a purely local way. To appreciate this imagine that we have established colonies on the moon and Mars. Suppose then that the earth suffers some horrific "sterilizing" catastrophe, such as being hit by a gigantic meteor. The colonies on the moon and Mars will survive but earth-bound humans will probably go the way of the dinosaurs.

This is natural selection at work. Beings with the ability to occupy niches away from planet earth will be selected in such natural events (including the microbes in and on their bodies) as opposed to those beings who lack such an ability. To make this even clearer, imagine the inhabitants of a similar solar system light years away who cannot for whatever reason leave their home planet. If all life on that planet is destroyed those beings are extinct. Again, this is natural selection at work. We survived. They didn't. Extraterrestrial events are part of the environment that does the "selecting."

It is not surprising that Trefil wants to make a distinction between "natural" and human. But this distinction is artificial. The title of his third chapter, "Leaving Nature Behind" reflects this distinction. But it is a false distinction--useful yes, but ultimately untrue. We cannot leave nature behind. We are part of nature. Cultural evolution is a subset of biological evolution in a way similar to the way number theory is a subset of mathematics, or that English is a subset of human languages.

There are also some fuzzy conclusions. On page 62 in his zest to go after some "myths" from "pop ecology" he points to what he calls "The poisoned planet myth" and then backs off a little by saying "it's partly true and partly false." And then he decides that "it's a clear example of the sin-and-retribution theme associated with Noah's flood."

Well, it's not a "myth" if it's partly true; and his attempt at guilt by association is an example of the sort of logic condemned in undergraduate philosophy classes.

Another example is from page 143 where Trefil is discussing global warming. He writes, "If the warming is due to global trends beyond our control, then all we can do is think about adapting to higher temperatures." If something is "beyond our control" then we can, by definition, do nothing about it, and his statement is a gratuitous tautology. But what Trefil really means here is that if the warming is caused by nature, as opposed to being caused by humans (as he notes in the next sentence), we can only think cool thoughts. Actually even warming caused by events beyond human control can in fact be mitigated, as Trefil points out elsewhere in the book.

Regardless of its faults this is among the very best science books I have read over the last three or four years. It is just so interesting that the pages practically turn themselves. I think Trefil is able to engage the reader partly because his take on a number of controversial scientific questions is original and surprising, candid and calm, and because he argues his case so very well without giving in to politically-correct notions. In particular his discussion of "The Question of Extinction" (Chapter 8) is informed and convincingly presented. I also found his concluding chapters on "...Choices" and "The Managed Planet" fascinating.

Trefil's engaging style allows the reader to enter into a dialogue as he reads and to feel that both sides of an issue are being presented fairly. This is a rare and radiant talent for any writer, but especially for a writer of books on difficult and controversial subjects.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars introductory level discussion of environmental issues, September 27, 2004

By	Mike Garrison (Covington, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm not quite sure who this book is written for. I guess it is targeted at the intelligent and somewhat skeptical reader who does not have any technical background in environmental science. The book presents a lot of useful background information, and provides a science framework for discussing several subjects that are often presented in more emotional/political terms.

The book works best as a tool to introduce the idea that some of these questions (global climate change, endangered species, genetic engineering) can be reasonably discussed. It is not necessary to make faith-based decisions about them based on who you want to believe - there is data available and you do not have to be a specialist to get a basic understanding of the issues.

However, Trefil draws several conclusions in this book which are simply unsupported by any data he presents. In his quest to simplify and condense the subjects, he has to throw out almost all of the shaded nuances. But the devil is in the details. Many of the details he skips over are big enough to completely change the answers involved.

This book should only be a beginning, not an end. Ideally it would serve to make people think "that's an interesting subject - I want to learn more about it". Pope said "a little learning is a dangerous thing", and that definitely applies to this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars evolving relationship of humanity and the environment, April 25, 2009

By	pmwinters - See all my reviews

This review is from: Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth--by People, for People (Paperback)

Professor Trefil's book engages the reader to think about the evolving relatioship between humans and the environment in light of new advances in science & technology. These advances can provide breakthroughs in medicine and environmental management, yet at the same time, can raise many ethical questions as to what the appropriate role of humaity should be with regard to "nature". Increasingly, whether we like it or not, Trefil argues, we are fast moving toward the day when we will completely "manage" the Planet. The author is genuinely concerned about Earth's future, yet challenges current environmental orthodoxy on a range of issues from biotechnolgy to the greenhouse effect. One of the things I liked best about Human Nature is the fact that it made me re-examine some of my previously held assumptions about the history of science and ecology and offered up a thoughtful and well argued position on where we might go from here.