Summary Of The Future Of Life By Edward Wilson

Edward Wilson, a renowned environmentalist, wrote The Future of Life to analyze the concerns with the growing population and its affect on our biosphere. Being a scientist who studied at Harvard, he not only includes his own opinions, but also facts and statistics to back up his argument. The book begins with an imaginary letter to Thoreau, who is seen as the leader of environmentalists. In the letter, Wilson describes the conditions of Earth that have changed since Thoreau was alive and reinforces the idea that our planet is slowly crumbling from our hands. In addition, he also criticizes Thoreau for not being a “true” environmentalist, beginning his judgmental tone apparent throughout the rest of the novel.
In the first chapter, “Ends of the Earth,” Wilson includes a very long and intricate lesson about biology; how species formed, how they became extinct, and how scientists discovered them. He focuses on the classification of the organisms and how they fit into our world today. in “The Bottleneck,” he explains the situation he believes humans are in; the population is growing too
He focuses most of the chapter on population, since he believes that is the main cause of our current situation because it causes all the others to form. His universal idea throughout the novel is clearly that humans are the problem and they are the only ones who can fix it. In “The Planetary Killers,” he goes into more detail about the negative impacts that our species has had on others, including pollution from factories, deforestation, hunting to extinction, and many more. His main evidence comes from China, where its rapid industrialization has negatively impacted nature. His purpose, trying to convince people to care more about the environment, starts to appear in this