Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet

This biologist’s “monumental cri de Coeur” for our planet offers a holistic view of our species, the waste we produce, and a path toward sustainability (Nature). In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld traces the entwined histories of population growth and resource consumption to reveal how our global waste crises came about. As Hengeveld explains, human life depends on energy, which we first obtained through food. Later, we supplemented this with energy from water, wind, animals, and finally fossil fuels, as one source after another fell short of our ever-growing needs. Greater energy consumption has created greater waste, including the atmospheric waste that is driving climate change. As we face a web of interconnected problems, addressing them individually will not work. Instead, Hengeveld argues, we need to tackle their common cause: our staggering population growth. A practical look at the sustainability of our planet from a biologist and expert in the abundances and distributions of species, Wasted World examines the whole process of using, wasting, and exhausting energy and material resources. And by elucidating the complexity of the causes of our current global state, Hengeveld offers us a way forward.

© 2012 The University of Chicago Press (Ebook): 9780226327013

Release date

Ebook: 1 March 2012