Our Future Earth vividly describes how the decisions made about the environment in the next decades will affect the next 100,000 years of life on the planet, and shows how far today's environmental debate is overlooking crucial long-term evidence. By considering the Earth's history over millions of years, and not merely over the last couple of centuries, this book changes our understanding. It draws on geological evidence to show that the greatest immediate threat to humans will not be global warming, but global cooling. And the extent of human control over the environment now makes the direction of climate change a greater matter of choice than the public realises. This lucid book will prompt climate sceptics, activists and everyone in between to think again about our future Earth, because the real consequences of our behaviour are set to be far more dramatic than we expect.
Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science writer with a PhD in biology and geology from Duke University. He has published over three dozen articles in major journals including Science and Quaternary Research, following research into the long-term history of climate in Africa, South America and the Polar Regions. He has written for popular audiences in periodicals such as National Geographic and is the author of Your Atomic Self.
"This is like one of Jared Diamond's magisterial accounts, except set in the future, not in the past"
- Bill McKibben
"Passionate and excellent"
- Geographical
"Our Future Earth is a richly informative and deeply persuasive book – one that will be relevant for generations"
- Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe
"'This intriguing and thought-provoking view of the far future is an essential read for all interested in the full force of climate change"
- Paul Andrew Mayewski, Director of the Climate Change Institute, author of The Ice Chronicles