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Tracing our environmental impact through time, David Howe demonstrates how humanity’s exploitation of Earth’s natural resources has pushed our planet to its limit and asks: What’s next for our depleted planet?Everything we use started life in the earth, as a rock or a mineral vein, a layer of an ancient seabed, or perhaps the remains of a 400-million-year-old volcano. Humanity's ability to fashion nature to its own ends is by no means a new phenomenon—we have been inventing new ways to help ourselves to its bounty for tens of thousands of years. But today, we mine, quarry, pump, cut, blast, and crush Earth's resources at an unprecedented rate. We have become a dominant, even dangerous, force on the planet.
In
Extraction to Extinction, David Howe traces our impact through time to unearth how our obsession with endlessly producing and throwing away more and more stuff could destroy our planet. But is there still time to turn it around?
List of contents
IntroductionRocks and Resources
Concentrate
Bricks, Pots and Ceramics
Copper
Iron and Steel
Concrete
Glass
Aluminum
Plastics
Lithium, Rare Earths and the Information Age
Pollution and the Wounded Planet
Coal, Oil and Climate Change
The Anthropocene
References
Acknowledgements
Index
About the author
David Howe OBE is a retired academic who has studied both Earth sciences and social sciences. He has written books on psychology, relationships and social work. His passions include walking, popular science, and writing, and he is the author of two previous non-fiction books.
Summary
Tracing our environmental impact through time, David Howe demonstrates how humanity’s exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources has pushed our planet to its limit and asks: what’s next for our depleted planet?
