Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive A Mass Extinction
Annalee Newitz
Anchor
Nonfiction, Science/Sociology
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: If there's one thing the history of the earth teaches us, is that change is inevitable - as is extinction. Since its formation, the planet's atmosphere has veered from snowball to greenhouse, methane to oxygen, lush tropical paradise to barren wasteland, even the occasional catastrophic impact from space. Species come and go, with life enduring massive upheavals and bottlenecks. So far as we know, however, humans are the first species to not only be able to observe and predict coming catastrophes, but engineer our own survival. As life itself has to change to survive in dramatically altered circumstances, so, too, we will have to change: how we live, how we think, what we value, even perhaps our own bodies. In this book, author Annalee Newitz looks to the past to understand where humans have come from and what we've come through, then to the present and future to consider what challenges we face in our long-term survival and what we might have to do to endure.
REVIEW: Oh, the sweet optimism of the previous decade... Starting with the earliest life forms (cyanobacteria) to showcase how life has proliferated even under the most trying of circumstances and bounced back from extinction-level events of almost unimaginable proportions, Newitz's book - published in 2013 - offers tempered optimism, based on humanity's previous brushes with oblivion, that we can overcome the numerous challenges before us - climate collapse, resource scarcity, disease, and more - and come out the other side, perhaps altered on a fundamental level but still alive and potentially thriving. Unfortunately, I'm reading this after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that makes a lie of her extensive chapter on global disease and how humanity "will" come together to confront and overcome the next pandemic threat... something which, as we sadly know, is not what happened, at least not as well as one might hope. Instead of coming together and embracing science for the good of the whole, too many turned to tribalism and denial and weaponized ignorance to deepen divides and gain short-term political ground on the backs of long-term damage and death tolls, even leading to potential knock-on effects (I have to wonder if the politicized ranting about vaccines is linked to the current worrying dip in standard childhood vaccinations and rise in diseases like measles in "developed" nations that had once beaten it back; even as I type this, one American state proposed banning COVID vaccines altogether, a move which, even if it was withdrawn, is an exceptionally worrisome sign of the overall political climate that has gained far, far too much traction in recent years, not to mention the general state of education that allowed said climate to develop in the first place... but I digress). Considering that this book was written only ten years ago, it's a sad statement that the author's optimism has so quickly dated her book. It also makes other scenarios and changes she proposes seem far less likely to come to fruition; she does acknowledge that there needs to be sufficient political will to fix problems current and future, but I think she underestimated the level of resistance and even active backsliding those in power seem prepared to execute just to maintain their grips and the illusion that nothing needs to change (because if nothing changes they won't lose their power). That things do need to change is absolutely undeniable, and the many different possible changes and responses to different threats are outlined here, through numerous interviews with experts. From living skyscrapers to underground shelters to potential body modifications and even space colonization, all manner of possibilities are discussed.
Despite the unfortunate dating (after only a decade), it's an interesting exploration of what the future could bring if humans choose to rise to the occasion. I wish I had more faith that any of the futures Newitz outlines here will come to pass. If they do, I fear it will only be after our current catastrophic age plays out to the very last gasp, with far more losses all around than should be necessary if we really lived up to our own species name of "wise man".
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