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Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth
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63
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
45/100Critics
81/100Scholars
Author:
Tony Hiss, E.O. Wilson
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
March 30, 2021
Beginning in the vast North American Boreal Forest that stretches through Canada, and roving across the continent, from the Northern Sierra to Alabama's Paint Rock Forest, from the Appalachian Trail to a ranch in Mexico, Tony Hiss sets out on a journey to take stock of the superorganism that is the earth: its land, its elements, its plants and animals, its greatest threats--and what we can do to keep it, and ourselves, alive. Hiss not only invites us to understand the scope and gravity of the problems we face, but also makes the case for why protecting half the land is the way to fix those problems. He highlights the important work of the many groups already involved in this fight, such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and the global animal tracking project ICARUS. And he introduces us to the engineers, geologists, biologists, botanists, oceanographers, ecologists, and other Half Earthers like Hiss himself who are allied in their dedication to the unifying, essential cause of saving our own planet from ourselves.
What The Reviewers Say
Hard Greens will take heart from Tony Hiss’s Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth. Mr. Hiss, a former staff writer for the New Yorker whose previous books include The Experience of Place, is no conservative, and he occasionally lapses into Soft Green doomsaying about endangered humanity and planetary catastrophe. But the book is mostly an upbeat and engaging account of the remarkable progress being made to preserve vast wild spaces for animals to roam.
In Rescuing the Planet, author Tony Hiss advocates setting aside 50 percent of North America’s land over the next 30 years as protected wild area.
With its combination of passion, inspiration, and rigor, this makes a good companion to Bill Gates’ How To Avoid a Climate Disaster. Excellent natural history and more optimistic than usual..
