2021 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS – FINALIST (NATURE/ENVIRONMENT)
2020 14TH ANNUAL NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS – FINALIST
How different might the history of our species have been had our hunter-gatherer forebears failed to migrate out of Africa in time to survive 70, 000 years ago when threatened by extinction due to climate change brought on by the last ice age? Simply put, we would not exist. Now, similarly threatened, we too must act quickly if we hope to survive. Yet despite all the signs of a potential greenhouse mass extinction, again due to climate change, this threat is still being ignored.
Like the passengers aboard the Titanic, who knew that in two hours and forty minutes they would either be in a lifeboat or drowning in the cold waters of the Atlantic but waited a full hour before taking action-we too are not getting our lifeboats ready.
This book is a wake-up call and looks to evolution itself for guidance on how to avoid extinction.
Evolution, the author claims, seems firmly on the side of survival and has left Evolutionary Survival Patterns-Adapt, Innovate, Mature, and Migrate to Survive or go Extinct. Survival depends on how we adapt and innovate as well as on whether we can mature and migrate. Unfortunately, misuse of the Adapt and Innovate patterns over the last two hundred years has driven us to the brink of self-extinction. What can be done?
Survival, this book claims, will not emerge from the products of adapting and innovating-science, technologies, and inventions-but by migrating and maturing to evolutionary maturity-maturing beyond the ability to drive ourselves and other species to extinction-and by restoring Earth’s habitats, species and a return to sustaining our lives from within Earth’s ecosystems, as our forebears did. And failing these, like them, we must be free, willing, and able to choose to migrate-to other planets if necessary-to survive.
Mục lục
T a b l e O f C o n t e n t s
INTRODUCTION
The Struggle for Life and Survival
Can Homo sapiens survive or is extinction inevitable?
xv
PART ONE
EVOLUTION VERSUS THE UNIVERSE AND
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND SURVIVAL
_________________
CHAPTER 1
Earth
The Planet Evolution Terraformed for Life and Survival
5
CHAPTER 2
Does the Universe Come with Evolutionary Species
Survival Mechanisms?
Are There Evolutionary Rules for Intelligent
Species Survival?
17
CHAPTER 3
Is Species Survival the Default Evolutionary Outcome?
33
CHAPTER 4
An Introduction to Intelligent Species Survival Patterns
51
PART TWO
THE MAKING OF AN INTELLIGENT SPECIES
FROM SLIME TO APE-MAN TO SPACEMAN
_________________
CHAPTER 5
Species-Driven Evolution
A Grand Evolutionary Experiment
Did Evolution Deal Intelligent Species a Hand
in Its Own Evolution
67
CHAPTER 6
The Role of Climate Change
in the Making of an Intelligent Species
Evolution’s Tool to Prod Intelligent Species to Greater
Maturity and Survival or Extinction
91
PART THREE
EVOLUTIONARY RULES FOR
INTELLIGENT SPECIES SURVIVAL
_________________
CHAPTER 7
Habitats
The Conditions Necessary for the Evolution
and Sustainment of Life
133
CHAPTER 8
Sustainability
Habitat Survival Drives Species Survival
Drives Habitat Survival
183
CHAPTER 9
Adaptation
Must be Survival-driven to
Preserve Habitats and Biodiversity
213
CHAPTER 10
Innovation
From Ape-man to Spaceman
in Three Million Years—to . . . ?
253
CHAPTER 11
Migration
A Built-in Evolutionary Survival Response
To Survive, an Intelligent Species
Must be Free and Able to Migrate
309
PART FOUR
SURVIVAL
THE REASON INTELLIGENT SPECIES EVOLVED
AN EVOLUTIONARY GAME OF LIFE
_________________
CHAPTER 12
Survival
The Reason Intelligent Species Evolved
The Default Outcome in the Evolutionary Game of Life
339
CHAPTER 13
Evolutionary Maturity
The Only Path to Intelligent Species Survival
367
CHAPTER 14
Extinction
A Human Universe without Humans
405
PART FIVE
GOING BACK TO THE PAST TO SAVE THE FUTURE
FROM CIVILIZATION TO ECOLIZATION
_________________
CHAPTER 15
Freedom to Choose
Survival vs. Extinction
Has Homo Sapiens Lost the Ability to Choose?
431
CHAPTER 16
From Civilization to Ecolization
Going Back to the Past to Save the Future
481
GLOSSARY
515
NOTES & REFERENCES
531
LIST OF PHOTOS & CHARTS
545
LIST OF TABLES
549
INDEX
551