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Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?, by Alan Weisman
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A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us.
In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.
But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth--and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?
Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful.
By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative presence, Countdown reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. Weisman again shows that he is one of the most provocative journalists at work today, with a book whose message is so compelling that it will change how we see our lives and our destiny.
- Sales Rank: #365957 in Books
- Published on: 2014-05-06
- Released on: 2014-05-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.38" w x 5.50" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Intrepid planetary journalist Weisman put our minds in a whirl with his best-selling The World without Us (2007), a vivid projection of what would happen if humankind suddenly vanished. Here he asks a really tough question: What will happen on the warming earth if our population continues to grow? Aware that population control is a treacherous subject, Weisman boldly traveled to more than 20 diverse countries, from India to Italy to Japan, instigating remarkably candid conversations with religious leaders, scientists, and public-health experts. Spirited descriptions, a firm grasp of complex material, and a bomb defuser’s steady precision make for a riveting read as Weisman takes a close look at China’s one-child policy and the religious and political imperatives responsible for large Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox Jewish families in Jerusalem in spite of scarce resources. In stricken Niger, he talks with two brothers, both imams. One says “man cannot hold back doomsday”; the other actively supports the use of contraception. In Uganda, he discovers the connection between family planning, wildlife protection, and economy-boosting ecotourism. Weisman’s cogent and forthright global inquiry, a major work, delineates how education, women’s equality, and family planning can curb poverty, thirst, hunger, and environmental destruction. Rigorous and provoking, Countdown will generate numerous media appearances for Weisman and spur many a debate. --Donna Seaman
Review
"Spirited descriptions, a firm grasp of complex material, and a bomb defuser's steady precision make for a riveting read... Weisman's cogent and forthright global inquiry, a major work, delineates how education, women's equality, and family planning can curb poverty, thirst, hunger, and environmental destruction. Rigorous and provoking, Countdown will generate numerous media appearances for Weisman and spur many a debate." -- Booklist (starred review)
"Provocative and sobering, this vividly reported book raises profound concerns about our future." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Weisman offers heart-rending portrayals of nations already suffering demographic collapse... A realistic, vividly detailed exploration of the greatest problem facing our species." -- Kirkus (starred review)
"Rousing." -- Ihsan Taylor, New York Times Book Review's "Paperback Row"
"Unflinching and ready for anything, Weisman's Countdown tackles the biggest question facing not only us, but every other living thing on earth. How many people can there be on the earth? Written with extraordinary clarity, without all the arm-waving and doomsaying that seems to kill the conversation, his firsthand tour of the globe offers both worst case scenarios and the most hopeful futures we can imagine." -- Craig Childs, author of Apocalyptic Planet and House of Rain
"Countdown converts globetrotting research into flowing journalism, highlighting a simple truth: there are, quite plainly, too many of us. A world that understands Weisman's words will understand the pressing need for change." -- Bill Streever, author of Cold and Heat
"A frenzied barnstormer of a book.... Countdown is a chaotic stew of big stories, bold ideas and conflicted characters, punctuated by moments of quiet grace--just like our people-packed planet." -- Scientific American
"A hugely impressive piece of reportage, a cacophony of voices from across the world." -- Washington Post
"Rousing, urgent.... By exploring and integrating the lessons from cultures the world over, Weisman has been able to provide a blueprint that will ultimately benefit the planet as a whole. "Countdown" is a timely, essential, and hopeful work - one that suggests compassion in place of consumption and promises a return to an equilibrium that will prove a veritable windfall for humans, non-humans, and ecosystems alike." -- The Oregonian
"Countdown is a gripping narrative by a fair-minded investigative journalist who interviewed dozens of scientists and experts in various fields in 21 countries. He also scoured the literature to deliver not so much a doomsday narrative but a warning followed by the practical solution employed by various countries to get control of their population." -- Wall Street Journal
"He makes a strong case for slowing global population growth-and even for reducing overall population numbers-as a prerequisite for achieving a sustainable future...Weisman's book...offers hope... Weisman's emphasis on expanding access to contraception as the next-best strategy is both pragmatic and workable, as past efforts have shown. It is to be hoped that his message may be heeded sooner rather than later." -- Nature
"Weisman's stories--from his travel to contemporary Israel and Palestine, where reproducing is a form of warfare, to histories of family planning in Asia and South America--are fascinating and often chilling." -- Slate
"Weisman reminds us that when the experts are worried, we should pay attention." -- Los Angeles Times
"Weisman's gift as a writer with a love of science is in drawing links for readers on how everything in our world is connected - in this case, population, consumption and the environment.... The pleasure in reading Countdown is in the interplay of interviews with experts and with everyday working people around the world, all trying to figure out the size of family they want." -- Toronto Star
"[Weisman] found vivid, real-world portraits of what overpopulation portends." -- Men's Journal
"Alan Weisman's Countdown is rich, subtle and elaborate. His magisterial work should be the first port of call for anyone interested in the relationship between population and the environment...It's a tightly argued, fast-paced adventure that crosses the plant in search of contrasts." -- Literary Review
"While it is very much an alarming assessment, it is not without some genuine hope...It's a must read for all those who are concerned about the human prospect." -- Robert Walker, president of the Population Institute
"Weisman's anecdotes and explanations...draw a clear picture.... Countdown asks the hard questions." -- Shelf Awareness
About the Author
Alan Weisman is the author of several books, including The World Without Us: an international best-seller translated in 34 languages, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China. His work has been selected for many anthologies, including Best American Science Writing. An award-winning journalist, his reports have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Vanity Fair, Wilson Quarterly, Mother Jones, and Orion, and on NPR. A former contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he is a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions. He lives in western Massachusetts.
Most helpful customer reviews
55 of 61 people found the following review helpful.
A worldwide perspective on population problems facing the planet. . .
By CrazyAboutBooks
Different people appreciate books according to their own tastes, still, I'm puzzled by a couple of the reviews published at this time of COUNTDOWN: OUR LAST, BEST HOPE FOR A FUTURE ON EARTH. I found this book fascinating. This book isn't meant to be a story in the traditional sense; it was written to provide information, although in my opinion, the information covered is as illuminating as any story! Mr. Weisman basically covers the population explosion and the problems of feeding several billion more people. To make the point, he travels the world investigating how cultures within various countries deal with population problems. He frames this information within the historical context of that particular culture. It would appear that any meaningful discussion about population would have to place that discussion within historical, cultural, religious and other contexts. Otherwise, how can birth control, just for instance, be discussed especially since some religions forbid it. Or allow more than one wife. And it clearly matters if a family needs 10 or more children to work the fields or if the family lives in a city with both parents having an understanding that one or two children are more than manageable.
Mr. Weisman also discusses problems evident due to the number of people thriving (or not) at this time. He then points out what could happen in the future if human growth continues. He deals with both water and food issues because the question is totally valid: what will happen when the water runs out? How will we feed several billion more people. Regarding the rice/corn discussion, it takes a very long time to manipulate food to grow faster or taller or denser so that even growing enough rice will become ever more problematic (my own aside: GMOs are NOT a solution as is becoming more evident plus there is the worry about inserting substances in food that do not belong in food such as pesticides). Anyway, while I considered population to be a problem, I imagine many of us may simply think in terms of population based on where we live and how we eat. I found Mr. Weisman's two year journey around the world timely and I'm impressed with his accounts of those travels and his perceptions and ability to place that discussion in context of the culture. The Middle East/Israel discussion would obviously differ from a discussion of Europe, of China, of Africa, and all the other countries he visited.
I must admit I put the book down for the last time with vivid images of people falling off the earth and floating around in space for surely at some point, if we don't do something, we will become too many and weigh too much for this miracle we live on!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Amazon Customer
Outstanding observation of our world
115 of 134 people found the following review helpful.
A rambling, although interesting, inchoate mess of a book.
By Gengler
(NOTE: PLEASE click on read more" to read the entire review!)
I have waited so long for Weisman's follow up to The World Without Us. I was so eager for a book that I could use with my high school juniors and seniors who opt for my Environmental Science course - a book that would explain how all of the issues that they are passionate about, i.e., global warming, climate change, air pollution, water pollution, over fishing et al are rooted in one problem: the human population explosion. If anyone could tell this story, I expected that Alan Weisman could. After all, he had held my sophomores' attention through the conjectural regeneration that followed human demise. I couldn't wait to read his synthesis of the current state of our planet. Alas - this is not the book for my students. In fact, I wonder who the audience for this book will be. I suggest a professional association of editors. I hate to say it, but Countdown is a mess.
You know when you start reading a book, you immediately get a sense of what you're in for? About 10 pages into the book, I saw the flashing yellow lights in my mind's eye. "Uh-oh. This is meandering quite a bit". Weissman starts the book by examining birth rates in that crucible of human existence, the Middle East. In the first seven pages, Weissman recites a historical litany of facts from King Solomon, the Wailing Wall, the 10 commandments, Ramadan, Yasser Arafat's "biology bomb", ultra orthodox haredi, Egyptian bondage of the Jews, miraculous plagues that related God to nature, Zionism and Jesus' miracle wit loaves and fishes. This leads up to the first of a new set of Four Questions (think Passover haggadah) which is "How many people can their land really hold?" This is a good fundamental, relevant question to ask. The problem is that the process of getting to the question (never mind the answer itself which makes references housing, food, population densities, the Diaspora, linguistics, and the Talmud, in all of 5 (!) pages) is exhausting.
And so it goes. Encyclopedic research is thrown together in a somewhat haphazard fashion that is more confusing than enlightening. Folks who have some background in environmental science, or current events, will no doubt make the connections in their mind. I imagine that others may find this book a tough slog, thinking where is this all going? History, religions, politics, NGOs, commerce - it's all interesting. And one realizes that all these ingredients, from the human marketplace, come together in a gumbo that is killing our planet, and us. What it lacks is a unifying voice, an explicitly stated narrative to hold it all together. As it stands, the individual ever changing voices, stories, historic references, and descriptions become exhausting to read after awhile. I got through the whole book, but I had to limit my reading to 20 page sections at a time.
Obviously, Weisman is trying to lead us to the realization that human population increases have increased dramatically since the mid 19th century, and that the rate of increase is pushing us past the point of sustainability. Weissman makes the point that we may not have the time required to do anything about it at this point.
One slogs through this book hoping to glean something from this eclectic assortment of facts, anecdotes, and tropes that will provide some additional insight about what we can do, or where we are heading. On and on it goes, introducing stories about Pontifical councils, Jane Goodal and oil companies, Malthus - always Malthus -and numerous NGOs. Then the reader hits paragraphs like this one:
"In the mechanics of photosynthesis, wheat and rice are known as C3 plants - which means that the intitial building-block hydrocarbon molecules they make from the CO2 they inhale (sic) have three carbon carbon atoms. Corn and sorghum, which evolved later, are C4 plants. At a CIMMYT sister institution, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, plant geneticists are trying to rearrange the cell structure in rice leaves to kick it up from C3 to C4, which could raise its photosynthetic efficiency up to 50%. If they're successful, CIMMYT hopes that the same ploy will work with wheat. But IRRI scientists expect that it will take at least twenty years to produce commercially viable C4 rice. They also have another goal: as well as increase yields, they want to hot-rod rice with enough energy to fix its own airborne nitrogen, to lower or eliminate its dependency on synthetic fertilizer's costly fossil-fuel feedstock. Adapting any technology IRRI produces to wheat could take even longer, which doesn't help the immediate problem of feeding more Pakistanis before food wars erupt".
As a biology teacher, I take it slowly, and understand this paragraph (even the references to hot-roding, let alone the idea of fixing airborne nitrogen) but I wonder what the casual reader makes of all this? And so it goes. Acronyms - lots of acronyms - the aforementioned CIMMYT: OPT, OBE, BNP, HUGOS, CTPH, USAID, PHE, RH/FP, BMCA, CREHP, UNFPA - the list goes on and on. One brief quotation in book reads "USAID early recognized the lack of access to RH/FP services in the BMCA, and for close to a decade it funded CARE to implement CREHP in the area".
Countdown should have been mesmerizing. Instead, it's tiring. It is full of interesting, related stories. Stories about the impact of increasing populations, Mexican orphanages, forced sterilizations on women in Puerto Rico (certainly not advocated by Weisman) and their impact on the population of that island. Stories about teen prostitution in Mumbai. Stories well known to biologists, such as that of the establishment of the National Park Service, and the Kaibab plateau. This is all interesting relevant stuff. But its presentation in a haphazard, shotgun fashion makes it difficult for a reader to synthesize the meaning, and more importantly, the relevance of each story, each anecdote, and each acronym to Weissman story. The single thread that comes back to a reader's mind is this: "There are too many people. We're doomed". I get it. But when I was 300+ pages into this 400+ page book, I found myself dreading further examples of capitalist exploitation in India and mobilization against Coca Cola's exploitation of that country's groundwater.
Perhaps that's the point. Maybe Weissman wanted to write a volume that would bring it all together in order to take mankind by the shoulders and shake us until we're blue in the face while saying "Don't you get it! Wake up! Do something!"
So, finishing the book I found myself eagerly awaiting the suggestions for actions we could take. After all, the subtitle of the book refers to a "last, best hope for a future on earth". What is that best hope? What small measure we can take part in locally, regionally, nationally to get us off of what appears to be suicidal path? Countdown finishes with a whimper, a gentle and somewhat quaint admonition to "keep everything in reasonable balance" and in the epilogue, Weisman's gentle request to "leave space for our fellow species to do the same". That's it. That's how the book ends. A paragraph to say that the earth "cannot sustain our current numbers", a final warning about sea levels rising ("the only one I've found disputing Dr. Wanless's extreme predictions is a Florida real estate blogger" Weisman states) a re-assurance that "I don't want to cull anyone alive today" and after 400 plus pages, two final sentences advising us to leave more space for others. (oh yes, and birth control would be a good thing too.)
I've read the excerpts the pre-publication reviews. I recognize that Countdown has been deemed an "important" book, and I have no doubt that it is, in that it discusses an important issue. But it meanders. It lacks focus. It's pedantic. More importantly, it lacks a cohesive narrative. There's an ongoing sense of "look what else I found out while onducting my research. (Where, oh where, is the Rachel Carson for this generation who will tell this commanding story with contemporary eloquence and simple power?)
I question who the audience will be for this book. Laypersons? The lecture is too long. Scientists? Too basic. Teachers? Perhaps, in excerpts. Students? They will feel like they are being force fed a book that dulls their passion. It's too bad. There is a good story in all of this. Good stories have beginnings, middles, and ends - a narrative flow - which Countdown lacks. It's episodic, and the episodes often feel unrelated to each other. Their connection is to the big problem we face, and that's not enough to sustain it over the course of 400+ pages. As a result, Countdown becomes tedious, whereas it should have been dramatic and empowering.
Unfortunately, Countdown will not find a permanent place on my bookshelves. To paraphrase Weisman, too many books; I need to leave space for others.
(Note: my advance copy of Countdown did not contain an index, making it difficult to re-locate specific people, organizations, and events written in the text. I assume that this will be taken care of in the final copy.)
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