The World according to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth by Stuart Pimm

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Stuart Pimm, a professor at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, rounds up all the most recent data on what's happening with the planet and interprets it based on his years of research and advising on policy. From deforestation and species extinction to the fate of the ocean, Pimm supplies a succint, yet powerful, assessment.

From the Publisher

Take a globe-circling tour of our endangered planet with conservation biologist Stuart Pimm­­who is taking stock and keeping score.

We use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply. We consume 42 percent of the world's plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants 100 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that the human impact on our 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. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement.

Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the "science" in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts," checking the numbers gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. Pimm explains the numerical results in lucid prose. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where those numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet. With Pimm as our indomitable guide, we travel fromthe volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawaii to the boreal forests of Siberia. We see a blue whale off the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the blue oceans are slowly turning to barren deserts. We go birdwatching high up in the leafy canopy of the Amazon, from which we can see the hundreds of smoke plumes busily working at deforestation. At times, the view looks rather grim. But Pimm is no Cassandra; he never preaches or scolds. Ever optimistic, this book presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction.

"[T]his book is unashamedly optimistic. It is a celebration of our spectacular and fascinating world. I have made no attempt to restrain my joy as I encounter its natural history and its peoples. By the time you read the Epilogue you will know that our world is not doomed, it is not fatally wounded, but neither is it healthy. It needs attention. . . ."
­­Stuart Pimm, from the Prologue

Publishers Weekly

"With clarity and humor, Pimm makes a strong case for 'ecology on a global scale.'"

Science

Pimm presents our relation to our planet … with a precision and clarity that have seldom been approached in other works on this topic."

Nature

" … Pimm has written an engaging and important book."

Booklist

"… lively, instructive accounting of the state of the earth … Pimm's brisk explanations of the calculation of such figures as the amount of annual plant growth consumed and wasted by human beings are invaluable."

New Scientist

"Pimm is excellent at showing how scientists frame questions and how they try to answer them."

Science News

Pimm is a conservation biologist extraordinaire … with a knack for bringing his expertise to people outside academia. Rather than dwell on what we should do to minimize our impact … he lets the numbers speak."

Natural History Magazine

"Packed with sobering information …"

Kirkus Starred Review

"Sobering and compelling: a must read."

Publishers Weekly

Calling himself "the investment banker of the global biological accounts," conservation biologist Pimm balances the raw numbers of what the earth produces against what humans take away annually, and, as an accountant might, quietly but insistently draws our attention to long-range projections. The numbers, he finds, do not quite add up. Pimm, who is a professor of conservation biology at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation and who publishes regularly in New Scientist, Nature and Science, is an advocate of conservation policy nationally and abroad, but he is not prone to moralizing. As he writes, "I will not hector you about having many children, driving a large car, eating meat," and yet he says that "the impacts I will describe already seriously degrade the lives of huge numbers of people." With clarity and humor, Pimm cites quantities, such as the one billion tons of plant growth human beings eat each year, the 35% of the oceans' continental shelf productivity they consume and the 60% of accessible freshwater runoff they utilize. Basing his argument on massive numbers like these, and on his own genial but forceful responses to them, Pimm makes a strong case for "ecology on a global scale." Readers reached by this book may just change their habits. (Aug. 1) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Professor of conservation biology at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, Pimm was featured in the 1996 PBS Nova program "Nature's Numbers." Like David Malin Roodman's The Natural Wealth of Nations: Harnessing the Market for the Environment (LJ 11/1/98), this book explains environmental issues numerically to answer questions of whether humans will be better off in the next century. Written in a conversational and anecdotal style with less emphasis on theory than found in Roodman's book, Pimm's study distills scientific findings from such noted journals as Nature and Science into simple, memorable numbers and noteworthy facts. Witty chapter headings such as "Billions of Tons of Green Stuff," "When Vegetation Rioted and Big Trees Were King," and "Man Eats Planet! Two-Fifths Already Gone!" will appeal to a wide range of readers. Despite the irritating references to subsequent chapters and inconsistency in italicized subpoints, this book is recommended, especially for environmental planners, statisticians, mathematicians, science librarians, and nonspecialists who seek to be better informed. Margaret Aycock, Gulf Coast Environmental Lib., Beaumont, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A biologist estimates the pace at which we're depleting Earth's resources, and the numbers he comes up with are grim. Bottom line: human beings annually use more than 40 percent of the planet's resources, and the population continues to grow. Pimm (Conservation Biology/Columbia Univ.) gives detailed descriptions of land-use practices in various areas. To many readers the mention of the Amazon rain forest calls up an unbroken vista of lush trees with exotic creatures lurking in the underbrush. But in a flight above the Amazon, the smoke of constant forest fires hides the trees. On the ground, the picture Pimm sees is even uglier: with the trees gone, the land can barely support a year's worth of crops. The same story holds true in Africa and southern Asia. North America's soil was originally deep enough so that when the farmers moved west to newer fields, second-growth forests were able to take root. But even in the better soil of the American heartland, a farmer seduced by two or three good years in a row can still be wiped out when the inevitable bad times arrive. Irrigation eventually leaves land unusable because of accumulated salts. Pimm holds up the saga of Easter Island as the ultimate ecological horror story. Its Polynesian settlers gradually destroyed the land and the trees; finally they had nothing to eat and no way to escape. And we are depleting the oceans almost as brutally as the land, the author adds. Not all is doom and gloom, but no reader is likely to go away thinking the environment can heal itself. Pimm concludes with a few practical suggestions for avoiding worldwide starvation. It is possible, he thinks, to have both food and nature-if we act before we findourselves on our own Easter Island. Sobering and compelling: a must-read.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Interviews & Essays

Table of Contents

Interviews & Essays

As an ecologist, I did not -- and had not expected to -- enjoy lowland Hawai'i. Cities, tourist traps, sugarcane fields, and golf courses carpet the land. Almost nothing is native -- the people, the plants, the birds are from elsewhere. Why travel 12 hours in a jet to visit a land where almost no native species survive? In Hawai'i, one sees the same weedy plants that have inherited so much of the earth, the same birds and rodents that also steal kitchen scraps in New Delhi, Sydney, Cape Town, or London. No: My career would be elsewhere -- perhaps the remote jungles of New Guinea or the mountains of Asia. I would study the pristine as far from people as I could carry my tent.

Yet, off I went and had the dream and nightmare that my book's prologue describes. The dream is of Hawai'i as the once-spectacular and so uniquely isolated crucible of life. Charles Darwin knew that it eclipsed his Galápagos. Yes, it is badly mauled by human actions, but what little remains of the upland forests is still marvellous and precious. The nightmare is that the loss of what remained would likely happen on my watch. A generation from now, what would matter would be how much of Hawai'i had been saved, not papers in scientific journals. Almost a decade before we scientists who study how to conserve life on earth had a name for ourselves (conservation biologists), I had become one.

Scientists, Hawai'i taught me, have a crucial role in measuring human impacts, understanding their effects on the variety of life, and doing something about the problems. We cannot shirk that responsibility and retire to our ivory towers pretending that scientists are specially exempt from the obligations of citizenship and stewardship.

Hawai'i is so small, so perfect a microcosm of our planet, that the "today Hawai'i, tomorrow the world" theme of the book's prologue is inescapable. From any island's volcano top, the global questions of how much of earth's forests, rivers, and oceans remain deafen other inquiries. I just had to answer those questions and, with this book, I did. An equal imperative was to suggest solutions. I've tried to do that, too.

Oh: that second prediction? I would never live in New York. Never! Well, there is no more cosmopolitan city. Half its inhabitants were born outside of the U.S. I guess we represent every country. So where else to explore what the 6 billion of us must do to ensure life on earth has a future?

I no longer make predictions about where I will live. (Stuart Pimm)