A scientist audits the Earth

Pimm, Stuart L. (Stuart Leonard) (Author).

Summary: "Humans use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply and consume 42 percent of its plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants one hundred times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that our impact on the planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied."--BOOK JACKET.

Record details

ISBN: 0813535409
ISBN: 9780813535401
Physical Description: print
xiii, 285 pages : maps ; 23 cm.
Publisher: New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2004.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Originally published: World according to Pimm. New York : McGraw-Hill, c2001.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-272) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Ch. 1. Billions of tons of green stuff -- Ch. 2. What Earth does for us -- and what we do to Earth -- Ch. 3. Not the forest primeval -- Ch. 4. When vegetation rioted and big trees were king -- Ch. 5. Peace and quiet and good Earth -- Ch. 6. "Man eats planet! two-fifths are already gone!" -- Ch. 7. Water, water everywhere? -- Ch. 8. On the hero's platform -- Ch. 9. Lots of good fish in the sea -- Ch. 10. The wisdom to use nature's resources -- Ch. 11. An inordinate fondness for beetles -- Ch. 12. ...Abode hits destined hour, and went his way -- Ch. 13. Nature's eggs in few baskets.