Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life

Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016) is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, biologist, and environmental advocate Edward O. Wilson’s in-depth look at the planetary threat of mass extinction, known as the Sixth Extinction, taking place at humanity’s own hands. The current rate of extinction is nearly 1,000 times higher than during the pre-human era, and traditional conservation movements will not work fast enough to save the natural world. However, Wilson argues that there is still time to save up to 85% of Earth’s biodiversity. His solution: Devote half of the planet’s surface to nature preserves. The book is divided into three parts: a discussion of the source of the problem; an analysis of the interconnectedness, complexity, and richness of living organisms and their ecosystems; and Wilson’s solution for saving the remaining wildlands and stabilizing all of life’s future.

In Part 1, Wilson discusses the source of the problem at hand: Human-driven activities are causing species populations to decline and increasing the rate of extinctions. There have only been five other geologically recorded mass extinction events during Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. After the most recent such event, the planet took around 10 million years to recover. In a flash of geological time, humans are transforming the habitats, climate, and the very ground that we walk on, resulting in geologists, as well as Wilson, arguing for the age we live in to be called the “Anthropocene.