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THE FUTURE OF LIFE
BY EDWARD O. WILSON
Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 256 pp., $22, hardbound, ISBN: 0679450785.

Reviewed by Don Eulert

In this book’s Prologue, A Letter to Thoreau, Wilson addresses: ?Henry! May I call you by your Christian name? Your words invite familiarity and make little sense otherwise . . .? and signs off, ?Affectionately yours,? Edward.
This delightful monologue/lecture, rich with familiarity and anecdote, serves their (and our) common interest ?to address accurately the human condition? and to place the study of natural history in context and continuity. Wilson explains to Thoreau the meanings of (even the reasons for) his solitary sojourn (?your spirit craved an epiphany?), and links him as ?pointed straight toward the modern science of ecology.? But Wilson also chides Thoreau for not attending to the miraculous and numerous members of the food chain underfoot, a ?more encompassing wisdom? that science and technology have advanced.
Wilson’s knowledge-store is voluminous and encompassing. As a researcher in entomology he has contributed significantly to discoveries—and describes others’ sleuthing in unlikely places—that prove our biodiverse world far richer than previously guessed. As a naturalist he abhors how rapidly it is disappearing, ?cut to pieces, mowed down, plowed under, gobbled up, replaced by human artifacts.?
When Thoreau wrote, little more than a billion people lived on Earth; now we number more than six billion. We may peak out at between eight and ten billion by century’s end, which Wilson terms ?the bottleneck? through which we might pass, ?but just barely.? Although the situation is desperate, there are signs that the battle—for a decent standard of living and shelter for most of the vulnerable plant and animal species—can be won.
To pass through this bottleneck, ?a global land ethic is urgently needed. Not just any [agreeable sentiment], but one based on the best understanding of ourselves and the world around us that science and technology can provide.? A sobering statistic: four more planet Earths would be required for every person to reach present U.S. levels of consumption. Worldwide stress on the natural world will lead not only to habitat destruction, but also to diminished per-capita fresh water and unbalance of carbon dioxide in the life cycle.
The chapter Nature’s Last Stand introduces one after another graceful, rare, and beautiful habitat and species, with narratives of their extinction via lethal erosion of the biosphere. Wilson ends with a scenario from the year 2100. Gone are the biodiversity hotspots (which have yielded the compounds for most of our medicines), gone are half or more of the Earth’s plant and animal species. What remains the same: homo sapiens’ nature to ?multiply and expand heedlessly until the environment bites back . . . [in] feedback loops—disease, famine, war, and competition for scarce resources.? If present trends continue, ?the most memorable heritage of the twenty-first century will be the Age of Loneliness that lies before humanity.? Wilson imagines a testament we will have left behind, beginning with ?We bequeath to you the synthetic jungles of Hawaii and a scrubland where once thrived the prodigious Amazon forest . . .?

MYRIAD BENEFITS OF NATURE
In the next chapter, The Planetary Killer, ?the trail of homo sapiens, serial killer of the biosphere, reaches to the farthest corners of the world.? Wilson’s postmortem specifics make fascinating reading, like catching your breath going by the scene of a fatal car accident, as he ranges across continents and species like a Crime Scene Investigator. Leaving out the devastation of the past, The World Conservation Union Red List estimates that one in four of the world’s present mammal species and one in eight bird species may not survive the next 100 years. However, Wilson imagines patting one of the last surviving Sumatran rhinos, ?a reassuring touch of my hand. We know more about the problem, Emi; it is not too late.? For E. O. Wilson, the answer is to be found—as he earlier explained to Thoreau—in science and technology.
First, numbers can convince us. The value that ecosystems provide yearly to humanity, free of charge —$33 trillion, twice the GNP of all countries in the world. Fact: ?the more species that live together, the more stable and productive the ecosystems they compose.? And, ?all the quarter-million plant species—in fact, all species of organisms—are potential donors of genes that can be transferred by genetic engineering . . . [to produce] ?cold-hardy, pest-proofed, perennial, fast-growing, highly nutritious? crops more easily sowed and harvested. Here Wilson pauses to evaluate sound reasons for anxiety over genetic engineering, but comes near to my rancher brother’s answer when I chide him for growing patented wheat: ?How else you gonna feed everybody??

THE TRUTH IN NUMBERS
Nine of the ten leading prescription drugs originally came from organisms. For drugs to control bacterial diseases, only two per cent of ascomycete fungi have been studied, and Wilson estimates that ?probably fewer than ten percent . . . have even been discovered.? A story about the medical breakthrough using secretion from the poison dart frog reads like excellent science fiction. Likewise the breakthrough drug that ?can stop cold the development of disease symptoms in HIV-positive patients? found in a specific tree species in Borneo. In each case the donors are rare, and ?It is no exaggeration to say that the search for natural medicine is a race between science and extinction.?
All this makes Wilson sound like a social ecologist of the Murray Bookchin school—we must preserve biodiversity for social benefit (oversimplified). While he’s no Dave Foreman of the deep ecology school, in the chapter For the Love of Life, Wilson seems to endorse its biocentrism ethic: ?all kinds of organisms have an intrinsic right to exist.? Wilson’s conservation ethic aims ?to pass on to future generations the best part of the non-human world.? The issue, ?like all great decisions, is moral.? We might call Wilson’s a heartful ecology based on science. ?To know this world is to gain a proprietary attachment to it. To know it well is to love and take responsibility for it.?
This science of the heart ?appears to arise from emotions pro-grammed in the very genes of human social behavior. Because all organisms have descended from a common ancestor, it is correct to say that the biosphere as a whole began to think when humanity was born.? Wilson then presents a ?must-read? summary of research in environmental psychology and biophelia (the innate tendency of humans to focus on life-forms and to affiliate emotionally with natural terrains), and its implications for mental health and preventive medicine.
The concluding chapter is highlighted by stories of Wilson’s own laudatory personal engagement with key organizations (Conservation International, World Conservation International, World Wildlife Foundation, Nature Conservancy, and others you could support). Just as he has used many voices and points of view to make lively writing throughout, here he includes a ?stereotype skirmish with imaginary opponents engaging in typical denunciations.?

RELIGION AND ENVIRONMENT
Certainly I started this book skeptical, even though E. O. Wilson is a two-time Pulitzer-Prize author. Coming from a constructivist view, I have read a reductionist scientism into Wilson’s stubborn views against postmodernism: ?a rebel crew milling beneath the black flag of anarchy? (Consilience, p. 40). And I had taken Huston Smith’s side [most recent book Why Religion Matters]—in a seeming dualistic dialogue of science and soul, genetic biodeterminism (or empiricism) versus transcendence. But finally Wilson’s book has been a conversion experience for me, as eloquent anecdotes of his own transcendent experiences in the natural world (?fitted by evolution, by God, if you prefer?) dismiss dualism.
Wilson’s Consilience also says, ?transcendentalism is fundamentally the same whether God is invoked or not.? What bothers Huston Smith and other followers of wisdom traditions might be summarized by Wilson’s position that ?Casual explanations of brain activity and evolution, while imperfect, already cover the most facts known about moral behavior with the greatest accuracy and the smallest number of free-standing assumptions.? But Wilson in the concluding chapter The Solution expresses ?cautious optimism? that science and religions can be joined. All religions view nature as God’s holy handiwork. ?These epistemological distinctions, so important in other spheres . . . can be safely put aside in the case of the environment.?
Therefore, ?The convergence in opinion is strong enough that the problem is no longer the reasons for conservation but the best method to achieve it.?
These methods would be logistic and empirical solutions. Computer capacity and economic management dominate Wilson’s twelve key elements in The Solution chapter. His solutions reiterate ?science and technology? driving political action and land management, although he notes ?it will be the ethics and desires of the people, not their leaders which will decide our future.? While Wilson calls for this ?change of heart,? he gives scant attention to how we arrive at shifts in consumerism, in public consciousness and perception—those necessary means.
Then I get it. This book intends to be the means! Widely read as a wakeup source-book, the Silent Spring of this century, it will provoke a call for action.

AN IMPERATIVE TEXT FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS
In the beginning address to Thoreau, Wilson is pragmatic. ?Humanity is the species forced by its basic nature to make moral choices and seek fulfillment in a changing world by any means it can devise.? But then goes on, ?You searched for essence the Walden . . . and you hit upon an ethic with a solid feel to it: nature is ours to explore forever; it is our crucible and refuge; it is our natural home; it is all these things. Save it, you said: ‘in wilderness is the preservation of the world.’?
Nature is transcendent, and the biodiverse membrane that covers Earth ?is the miracle we have been given.? E. O. Wilson dramatizes how the miracle becomes tragedy when a large part of it will be lost forever. Psychologists who accept that their work involves moral agency will find it an imperative text. This visionary work will elicit your admiration and reading pleasure. Your own dialogue with Wilson’s intelligence, scientific acuity, and familiarity will challenge your ways of addressing the human condition, just as he challenged and teased Thoreau’s—and my own.
The book ends, ?I believe we will choose wisely. A civilization able to envision God and to embark on the colonization of space will surely find the way to save the integrity of this planet and the magnificent life it harbors.?

DON EULERT is Professor of Cultural Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) and designs graduate courses in Humanistic Studies. He can be reached at fax (760) 788-2541 or deulert@alliant.edu.