About the book
Vaclav Smil sets out to measure, as precisely as the evidence allows, how much humanity has taken from the Earth's stores of living matter since prehistoric times. No other species has reshaped the biosphere in so many ways or on a scale to match Homo sapiens. Smil covers every kind of harvest, from the hunting of megafauna by early humans to modern crop farming, and every use of the biomass gathered, whether as food, energy or raw material. He argues that civilization could not have advanced without these harvests, yet their current scale and intensity are now altering the basis of its well-being. The account draws on fields from anthropology to environmental science.
Bill Gates, who says no author's books excite him more than Smil's, praised its clear, numeric picture of how people have changed the biosphere, while warning that it reads a little dry.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Bill Gates (CEO/Microsoft)
There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil. Here he gives as clear and as numeric a picture as is possible of how humans have altered the biosphere. The book is a bit dry and I had to look up a number of terms that were unfamiliar to me, but it tells a critical story if you care about the impact we’re having on the planet.
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