Planet in Peril?

Fülszöveg

Time is running outfast for 'spaceship Earth'. The world's population, now more than 3i thousand millión, grows at a rate of more than two children every second. Industrial pollution spreads wider every year. Conservationists fight in despairto save threatened species or natural areas.
This book looks for ways of saving the Earth, focusing urgently on the biosphere, thatthin layerof soil, airand waterthat covers the surface of the Earth and within which all life exists. Man's impact on the biosphere has inc.reased enormously in the last seventy years: the author charts that impact down to current examples of the creation of pollution, problems of land use and urbanization, the unforeseen consequences of massive engineering schemes, the changing attitudes towards forests, and the dangers of many agricultural policies.
Many nations already do quitea lot to conserve their own environment. Butthe problems cannot be solved without, firstly, much more knowledge about how the biosphere... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Time is running outfast for 'spaceship Earth'. The world's population, now more than 3i thousand millión, grows at a rate of more than two children every second. Industrial pollution spreads wider every year. Conservationists fight in despairto save threatened species or natural areas.
This book looks for ways of saving the Earth, focusing urgently on the biosphere, thatthin layerof soil, airand waterthat covers the surface of the Earth and within which all life exists. Man's impact on the biosphere has inc.reased enormously in the last seventy years: the author charts that impact down to current examples of the creation of pollution, problems of land use and urbanization, the unforeseen consequences of massive engineering schemes, the changing attitudes towards forests, and the dangers of many agricultural policies.
Many nations already do quitea lot to conserve their own environment. Butthe problems cannot be solved without, firstly, much more knowledge about how the biosphere works and, secondly, effective international action. In preparation forthe 1972 Stockholm 'Conference on the Humán Environment' the author describes the main work of the Man and the Biosphere Programme since 1968. If this book makes more of us aware of the urgent importance of that work, Planet in Peril? will have succeeded.
Raymond F. Dasmann is Senior Ecologist at the International Union forthe Conservation of Nature, Morges, Switzerland.
(A2962) 30p; FF4(not inc.taxes); $1.25 Canadian Vissza