God's last offer : negotiating for a sustainable future

Monumental changes are occurring on the planet, yet most people are unaware of them. In God's Last Offer, environmentalist Ed Ayres paints a vivid "big picture" of where the world is headed. He identifies a lethal combination of events -- radical climate changes, increasing species extinction, unsustainable consumption, and exploding human populations -- and presents a blueprint for a radical shift of policies and priorities to avoid a cataclysm.

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"The window of opportunity is closing fast," cautions World Watch editor Ayres, who urges us to seize "God's last offer" of precious time and to reverse the global trends that threaten ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. His levelheaded, closely argued manifesto identifies "four spikes" of revolutionary change that endanger planetary survival: first, global warming caused by a rise in carbon dioxide emissions due to overreliance on fossil fuels; second, loss of biodiversity through mass extinctions of plant and animal species; third, a surge of unsustainable, resource-depleting consumption as global media and advertising goad the rest of the world to ape the West's consumerist binge; finally, exploding population growth, which exacerbates all the other trends. Ayres's painstaking analysis of these problems, and of how they feed into one another, presents a forceful challenge to those who deny that a crisis exists or minimize its seriousness. Sifting through the ecopolitical debates of the last quarter century, Ayres dismantles the perceptual obstructions that block our awareness of a crisis: truncated news, propaganda by vested interests, diversionary disputes, apathy, fragmentation of knowledge. While his reflective essay comes up short in offering specific solutions, its primary aim is to reorient thinking, and in that it succeeds, making it a vital companion to the Worldwatch Institute's popular annual report, State of the World. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus评论

Carefully researched science journalism and alarmist polemic mingle in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it treatise. Ayres, editorial director of the Worldwatch Institute, uses a wealth of statistics and published reports to trace what he calls "a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us." This blitz, he goes on to say, comes to us in the form of four "spikes": a surge in the presence of carbon gases in the atmosphere, causing the by now well-reported increase in global warming; a marked rise in the rate of extinction of plant and animal species; an increase in the human consumption of natural resources; and a potentially cataclysmic rise in human population. These spikes, Ayres says, cannot be understood in isolation; they all feed into one another, with the mere presence of more people requiring the use of more wood, water, plants, and animals. Ayres's use of science in making this foundational argument is solid and seemingly inarguable. He takes a more emotional tone with the second part of his book, which is directed toward policy issues. Why, he asks, does it seem as if no one cares that the world is in grave danger? He argues that the media, operating under the guise of objectivity, do little to convey the urgency of the bad environmental news he reports. "When the media," he writes, "dwell on crimes, crashes, and scandals, they provide a rich diet of distractions from news of the spikes that are killing us. For those who have interests in keeping the public thus distracted, no conspiracy is necessary; all that's needed is to let the media do what they already have a strong financial incentive to do"--namely, to let the corporations whose advertising sustains them run rampant. Ayres's apocalyptic tone is at odds with his earlier cool scientific rationality, and it may cause some readers to dismiss his well-made glimpse into a difficult future as simply more doomsday-speak. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Ayres, editorial director of the environmental group Worldwatch, sees the world's recent spate of natural and economic disasters all stemming from human degradation of the planet. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and the collapse of Asian economies, Ayres argues, are the result of four interconnected threats: the rise of carbon gas emissions, increasing extinctions of plant and animal species, an unsustainable rate of consumption, and an ever-growing human population. Together they have not only altered our weather patterns (e.g., global warming), they have put unbearable stresses on national economies, resulting in foundering currencies and roller-coaster financial markets. Ayres delineates several of these connected environmental and economic catastrophes, such as the drying of the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from Texas to South Dakota and provides irrigation for America's breadbasket. But this isn't scaremongering. Objective and detailed, it's must reading for all concerned about the fate of Earth and its inhabitants. --Brian McCombie

Introduction A Diminishing Capacity for Astonisment	p. 1
1 The Four Spikes	p. 9
2 The Obstructions to Perception	p. 47
3 The Shocks of Synergy	p. 91
4 Ambushes of the Past and What they Tell Us	p. 125
5 Do You Know Where You Got Your Information?	p. 149
6 Information Denied, Disregarded, or Disappeared	p. 185
7 Keeping Up with Shifting Power	p. 225
8 You	p. 253
9 The Offer	p. 281
Notes	p. 309
Index	p. 343

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