Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet

Praised by Bill Bryson in the introduction to his book A Short History of Nearly Everything as one of the three most influential scientists working in the world today.
We will be targeting not just scientists but a wide-range of authors for endorsements for Here on Earth, a list that includes writers such as Bill McKibben, Ian Frazier, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Ed Hoagland, Jim Harrison, Rick Bass, and Gary Snyder.


Tim Flannery’s newest book Here on Earth is a history of our planet from its earliest moments dating back to the Big Bang some 4.5 billion years and the story of the evolution of our own species, from microscopic, unicellular organisms millions of years ago to the most powerful species the world has ever seen. Fifty thousand years after our ancestors left Africa, our species is entering a new stage in its development. We have formed a global civilization of unprecedented size and power and have become masters of technology. But for all our progress, what is the fate of our civilization, our species, and our planet?

In Here on Earth, Tim Flannery sets out to answer these questions. At war, Flannery says, are two competing views to explain Earth’s history and to hint at its future. The Medea hypothesis argues that species will, if left unchecked, destroy themselves by exploiting their resources to the point of ecosystem collapse. This hypothesis can explain the great extinction episodes of Earth’s prehistory and show that the current destructive path of our species is a continuation of that process. But perhaps more compelling, Flannery argues, is James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which sees the planet as a living, breathing organism. In this vein, Flannery depicts the Earth as a self-regulating body—the oceans and waters are its bloodstream, helping to circulate nutrients; the Earth’s crust is its skeleton, permitting the recycling of elements; and the planet’s beings, from the simple ecology of a bacterial community to an ant colony to a human being, are interconnected.
Our species, Flannery argues, is now equipped as never before to explore our true relationship with the planet on which our biological, economic and cultural futures depend. But our success as a species has had disastrous effects on many of the Earth’s ecosystems and could lead to our downfall. Drawing on the teachings of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s theories of evolution and Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, Tim Flannery’s Here on Earth is not just a dazzling account of life on our planet. It will change the way you live.

Section 1
Mother Nature or Monster Earth?
Chapter 1
Evolution’s Motive Force
Pebbles in the sand walk of perpetual worries. Darwin loses faith and discovers the monster that created us. Like confessing a murder—but of what or whom? Charles Darwin Jr’s death at evolution’s dawning. The sagacity and morality of worms. More are born than can survive. Which ‘favoured races’? Understanding mired in ignorance. Yan Fu and heavens’ performance.
Chapter 2
Of Genes, Mnemes and Destruction
Dawkins’ selfish genes in a selfish world. Competition: the leitmotif of the 20th century. A Lamarckian vision of cultural evolution. Semon’s marvellous mnemes, including one that changed the atmosphere. Ward’s terrifying Medea. The survival of the fittest as the survival of none.
Chapter 3
Evolution’s Legacy
Alfred Russel Wallace: a working class evolutionist with a social conscience. Flashes of genius. Pondering man’s place in the Universe. Studies of dust. Musings on the beetle that writes. On evolution and football. Would a Wallacean world have been different? The sum of cooperation of all life. Venus and Mars, and Lovelock’s jet-propelled understanding. Gaia, from the horse’s mouth. The mysteries of Daisyworld. Gaia and The Lord of the Flies. Sir Francis Bacon and the great Christian morality play. A new pagan emptiness?
Chapter 4
A Fresh Look at Earth
Earth’s animated crust—from dust to dust. Great self-choreographed extravaganzas of electrochemical reaction. Elements wrought from stardust. Transubstantiation of the carbony hosts. The 100-terrawatt budget that unbalances Earth’s organs. Life creates the continents and the atmosphere. Earth our great oyster. For the love of cadmium. The misleading salt of the Earth. Storage in stone. The abyss—sump or pump? The arrival of the burrowers.
Chapter 5
The Commonwealth of Virtue
The tightness of connections—a doctor’s opinion. The importance of geo-pheromones. A living planet without a brain? The test of homeostasis—can Gaia control herself? The faint young Sun paradox. A Milankovich failure—or a schizoid Earth? A commonwealth of virtue. Life in a country long unchanged. How women are making men in their mind’s image. Why the world is full of lonely giants. Earth’s productivity—a sort of magic pudding? May the African honeyguide frame our thinking.
SECTION 2
A Turbulent Youth
Chapter 6
Man the Disrupter
Why the largest, fiercest and strangest have disappeared. What makes us different? The lying deer and the importance of the mneme. Our Medean face, and the sins of a wanderer. Why Adam and Eve never met. The tale of the toad pioneers. How Homo erectus trained the Old World giants.
Chapter 7
New Worlds
Why we should call Australia home. Don’t blink or you’ll miss the extinction. Do Neanderthals hide piecemeal within us? Conquest of the Mammoth Steppe. Of Pharaohs and pygmy elephants. Emptying the Americas. The unicorn and the wanderer of Baghdad. How the hobbit saved the dragon and the giant rat of Flores. Why pests come in pairs. Pleistocene weather makers?
Chapter 8
Biophilia
Making gardens with fire. Hunters and the challenge of the commons. The Telefol and the long-beaked echidna. Respect for elders can protect ecosystems. Survival of the fittest ecosystem? The wisent of Bialowieza, and the swamp deer of Beijing. Royal hunting—a progenitor of modern conservation. Almost every large creature survives by our good grace. Why we love lawns and water views. The heart of man and a humanist credo.
SECTION 3
Ever Since Agriculture
Chapter 9
Superorganisms
Civilisations created without the use of reason. The Pioneer and The Soul of the White Ant. Bodies and superorganisms. Ant herders, farmers and slaves. Buffon’s needle theorem and ant democracy. South American ants vs Elizabethan England. An amazing New World civilisation.
Chapter 10
Superorganismic Glue
Monogamy and the origins of superorganisms. How polyandry pays off, and the mystery of inclusion. A species-wide brush with death preconditioning us to superorganise. The miracle at the pin factory. The collective strength of the weak. Why we’re becoming more stupid, but more peaceful. The loss of commonsense? The unlikely triumph of democracy. A second human influence on the atmosphere.
Chapter 11
Ascent of the Ultimate Superorganism
Empire of the idea. Five roads to civilisation. The smallest superorganism and its love of taro. Crops, towns, metals and empires—predestined steps to superorganisation? Printing, gunpowder and the compass: the value of imperfect connections. Can we see ourselves in Rome? Collapse leaving millennia of tribal war. The scientific method, industrial revolution, and political reform—a triumphal triad. The superglue that is American culture. Colonial success and its sequel.
SECTION 4
Toxic Climax?
Chapter 12
War against Nature
The whole world as an enemy. On destroying a gram of matter. Richfield Corporation’s atomic tar-oil. Hydrogen bombs to melt the Arctic ice. Borisov—the would-be father of the polar gulf stream. A memento of atomic madness in every brain. Radiation takes the express train to the abyss.
Chapter 13
Gaia-killers
How Nazi research led to Silent Spring. A Japanese beetle invades America and is carpet-bombed with pesticides. Death chemicals passed on in mothers’ milk. Organochlorines and organophosphates. Poisoning the salmon, too. The eagle and the banker. The toxic 1960s live on in us. Denmark and the decline of sperm. PCBs, hermaphrodites and shrivelled sex organs. Toxins silently fill the abyss. ‘Man must conquer nature.’
Chapter 14
The Eleventh Hour?
Tentative signs of progress—with weapons and POPs. But PFSs and other new threats remain. One man’s poison...the deaths of vultures. Diclofenac and the discomfort of the Parsees. Of frog plagues and pregnant women. What about the bees? Then there’s the world’s poison we cannot see.
Chapter 15
Undoing the Work of Ages
Creating chemical chaos. Mercury and the horror of Minimata. Backwards-walking cats. From the heavens to the abyss, and onto our dinner plates. Coal, cremation and the $2 solution. Cadmium, cigarettes and Itai Itai! Lead, schizophrenia and murder—it’s in the bones. Antifoul and sex change. The prehistoric nuclear reactors of Gabon. Plutonium-239—an elemental dinosaur threatening to destroy our world. Carbon—the globally deadly imbalance—it’s worse than the experts thought. Hotter, more flooded and less habitable. Can a greenhouse world host a global superorganism?
SECTION 5
Our Present State
Hope and Roadblocks
Chapter 16
‘As the Stars of Heaven’
A selfish and greedy brain—but still it works. Ecological release and overpopulation. What will control us? Of Medea and Malthus. The immorality of the growing affluent. The Miracle of 2009. The demographic transition—the battleground between mneme and gene.
Chapter 17
Discounting the Future
Young men with guns. An evolutionary approach to understanding foolish behaviour. $100 today—or how much in a year? Are men more stupid and impatient than women? Of sex and risk. Why poverty is the ultimate enemy of sustainability. The importance of game theory.
Chapter 18
Greed and the Market
Business or crime? Try and stop me, then. Can you trust a neoclassical economist? An unhealthy interest in self-interest. The discount factor and collective disfunction. Deception nearly disables Lord Stern. Blood and Gore in the new economy. If quarterly profits destroy, how about triennial ones? Green bonds for the war on unsustainable practices. A global fund for global commons? Robert Monks and the Universal Investor. How smart is Harvard? Personal interests—or civilisation’s survival?
Chapter 19
Of War and Inequality
Trade and peace, and war and the city. Earth, the first victim of the next world war. In a globalised world is war civil or conventional? Somali pirates showing the way. The eradication of poverty no fantasy, but it will take a century. Relative improvement keeps the peace. Sacrifice by the wealthiest. If we cannot help the poor, we cannot save the rich. The violence of a dying tribal world.
Chapter 20
A New Tool Kit
From Forma Urbis to Google Earth. Intelligent cars and other smart machines. DONG and Better Place. Electric cars—here sooner than we think. An autonomous nervous system for a city. Smart farming and the need for efficiency. Malaysia stopping illegal logging the intelligent way. The land is getting smart, but what about the oceans? Argo probes. Will we foresee Earth’s challenges?
Chapter 21
Governance
Monkeys play at politics. The end of history? The fate of the benign dictators. Limiting the powers of the powerful few. Obama’s great breakthrough. Back to the 1950s. Are all high-level governments subject to irrelevance? Are they needed? The perplexing problem of the global commons. Game theory and accord at Copenhagen. But is it a new way forward—or concord for collapse? One pole nationalised, and the other? Grotius and the high seas. The fate of the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Sovereignty reined in, but never eliminated. A Gaian Security Council? Everyone a guardian.
Chapter 22
Restoring the Life-force
Giving a fit touch to nature. Expanding Earth’s biocapacity. Photosynthesis—a miraculous transformation. How trees grow. Dead and living carbon. A perfect carbon capture mechanism in search of storage. The importance of rainforests. The promise of charcoal. Reversing the coal-fired power plants. Food and energy for a hungry planet. On humus and agriculture. Carbon at home on the range. The importance of roots. Stopping desertification. Fire, carbon and wildlife. What the Pintubi knew. A felicitous indicator of planetary health.
SECTION 6
An Intelligent Earth?
Chapter 23
What Lies on the Other Side?
Where will evolution take us? Belief as self-fulfilled prophesy. Intelligent Earth—or The Road? The cost of unity and the gravest of crimes. A transformation prolonged and agonising, or short and clean? If we succeed much will be lost. Will it be Chinglish? The end of the global frontier. Nature already ended? A domesticated Earth, or a re-wilded one? Paying the Medean debt. Fitting a brain to a body. The obligation of intelligence. For the good of the Gaian whole. The Faustus species. Earth as one entire, perfect living creature. Are we alone? A universe to nurture the human spirit.