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By Root 808 0

of climate change, science and policy on the nitrogen cycle is in its infancy, and water and land use are hardly considered at all on a global scale. And inter-linkages between all the boundaries must be recognized and addressed through any global multilateral process: Already the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols are beginning to clash. As we have seen, there are many potential synergies too: Encouraging denitrification means protecting wetland, thereby helping meet the water and biodiversity boundaries at the same time.

Can humanity manage the planet—and itself—toward this transition to sustainability? I believe that we can. Whether we will remains to be seen. But the grounds for optimism are at least as strong as the grounds for pessimism, and only optimism can give us the motivation and passion we will need to succeed. Voices of doom may be persuasive, but theirs is a counsel of despair. The world—and our own children—deserve better. The truth is that global environmental problems are soluble. Let us go forward and solve them.

NOTES

PREFACE

1. http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-30-gingrich-slams-obama-on-bp-gulfspill-and-sounds-off-on-climate/.

2. I swear I wrote the bit about the volcano months before I discovered Gingrich’s quote.

3. BusinessGreen, 2011: “Analysts: German Nuclear Shutdown Set to Send Emissions Soaring,” March 17, 2011, http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2034702/analysts-german-nuclear-shutdown-set-send-emissions-soaring.

4. This is not an original insight of mine. I have heard it many times: James Lovelock may have said it first.

INTRODUCTION: THE ASCENT OF MAN

1. Such carbonates were conclusively identified by the Mars Spirit Rover. See R. Morris et al., 2010: “Identification of Carbonate-Rich Outcrops on Mars by the Spirit Rover,” Science, July 23, 2010, vol. 329, no. 5990, pp. 421–4.

2. H. Williams and T. Lenton, 2007: “The Flask Model: Emergence of Nutrient-Recycling Microbial Ecosystems and Their Disruption by Environment-Altering ‘Rebel’ Organisms,” Oikos, 116, 7, 1087–1105.

3. J. McNeil, 2001: Something New Under the Sun—An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World, Penguin, p. 9.

4. For the latest count, see the Population Clock on http://math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html.

5. S. Brand, 2009: Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Atlantic Books.

6. R. Jastrow and M. Rampino, 2008: Origins of Life in the Universe, Cambridge University Press.

7. R. Cowen, 2004: History of Life, Blackwell Publishing, p. 290.

8. Jastrow and Rampino, cited above, p. 362.

9. F. Burton, 2009: Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution, University of New Mexico Press.

1: BIODIVERSITY

1. IUCN Red List 2008, Table 7 (Excel spreadsheet): Species changing IUCN Red List status, from http://iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red_list/2008_red_list_summary_statistics/.

2. S. Butchart et al., 2010: “Global Biodiversity: Indicators of Recent Declines,” Science, 328, 5982, 1164–8.

3. M. von Arx and C. Breitenmoser-Wursten, 2008: Lynx pardinus. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2009.1. http://www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on October 19, 2009.

4. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010: Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, Montréal, 94 pp.

5. See http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_tigers_e_1.pdf and IUCN listing for Panthera tigris for the latest information.

6. J. Walston et al., 2010: “Bringing the Tiger Back from the Brink: The Six Percent Solution,” PLoS Biology, 8, 9, e1000485.

7. K. Herrera et al., 2009: “To What Extent Did Neanderthals and Modern Humans Interact?,” Biological Reviews, 84, 2, 245–57.

8. G. Stix, 2008: “Traces of a Distant Past,” Scientific American, July 2008, 56–63.

9. C. Finlayson et al., 2006: “Late Survival of Neanderthals at the Southernmost Extreme of Europe,” Nature, 443, 850–3.

10. S. Churchill, 2009: “Shanidar 3 Neandertal Rib Puncture Wound and Paleolithic Weaponry,” Journal of Human Evolution, 57, 2, 163–78.

11. F. Rozzi et al., 2009: “Cutmarked Human Remains Bearing Neandertal Features