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The unnatural world : the race to remake civilization in Earth's newest age / David Biello.

by Biello, David.

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Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2016.

Nature and civilization.

Global environmental change

Nature -- Effect of human beings on.

Civilization, Modern -- 21st century.

9781476743905 (hc.)

First Scribner hardcover edition.

294 pages ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-275) and index.

Alter Earth -- Iron rules -- Written in stone -- Terra incognita -- Ground work -- Big death -- The people's epoch -- A better anthropocene -- City folks -- The long thaw -- The final frontier.

An environmental journalist examines the world humanity has created through climate change and chronicles the scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people who are working toward saving the planet. We are facing disasters of our own making on the only planet known to bear life in the vast void of the universe. We have become unwitting gardeners of the Earth, not in control, but setting the conditions under which all of life flourishes - or not. Truly, it's survival of the innovators. The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas; a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct; a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have. What is the threat? It is us. In a time when a species dies out every ten minutes, when summers are getting hotter, winters colder, and oceans higher, some people still deny mankind's effect on the Earth. But all of our impacts on the planet have ushered in what qualifies as a new geologic epoch, thanks to global warming, mass extinction, and such technologies as nuclear weapons and plastics. An examination of the world we have created and the glimmers of hope emerging from the efforts of individuals seeking to change our future. Instead of a world without us, this history of the future shows how to become good gardeners, helping people thrive along with an abundance of plants, animals, all the exuberant profusion of life on Earth - a better world with us.

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