by Edward O. Wilson (Alfred A Knopf, 2002)

Biologist Edward O. Wilson is one of the worldï¿œs most respected scientists. Heï¿œs also one of the ones ringing the loudest alarm bells. The Future of Life, his call to arms, is an impassioned cry for us to recognize the importance and value of the diversity of life, and to accept the position we now find ourselves suddenly thrust into: that of having to decide between preserving the amazing natural riches that nourished our success as a species and risking the loss of both nature and civilization:

ï¿œOn or about October 12, 1999, the world population reached 6 billion. It has continued to climb at an annual rate of 1.4 percent, adding 200,000 people each day or the equivalent of the population of a large city each week. The rate, although beginning to slow, is still basically exponential: the more people, the faster the growth, thence still more people sooner and an even faster growth, and so on, upward toward astronomical numbers, unless this trend is reversed and growth rate is reduced to zero or less. This exponentiation means that people born in 1950 were the first to see the human population double in their lifetime, from 2.5 billion to over 6 billion. During the twentieth century more people were added to the world than in all of previous human history.ï¿œ