How The Earth Carries Us

This book focuses on the Earth’s carrying capacity to service the needs of its human populations as well as preserve the ecosystems that provide natural resources that sustain life and support human activities in 2020 and later in the century (2050 and beyond). It addresses the two principal factors that challenge the limits of the carrying capacity: growing populations/demographic moves and global warming/climate change. It also covers the effects that these factors have on water availability, food security, sanitation and natural resources. The status of these basic needs that sustain life and societal activities with respect to population increases and global warming driven climate changes are discussed on two time frames. One with respect to the 2020 and the other with measured and computer guided projected future impacts later as the century progresses to 2050 and later, Attention is given to Africa, Asia, and somewhat for South America because of their projected increases in population. The purpose of the book is to provide those in decision-making roles and those that advise them with a sound set of facts and figures to think about to support their decisions/actions. A secondary purpose is to present data that stresses the need to act now, firmly and with investment to plan to adapt to changing conditions rather than wait until forced to do so. The book also discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world’s societies and how they have reacted. The book will be of use to students in first/second year of college/university programs in Environmental Sciences/Studies, demographics, and ancillary fields such as agriculture science, urban/land use planners, political science, public health, and consultants at academic and professional levels.

A time long ago, on the planet of Boldly, a race was on the verge of extinction with little hope left to find a way to stop it. The leader and his scientist tried taking DNA from other species on the planet to create a new life form. A new life they did create, yet it was not acceptable. The scientist told the leader, A female we must have. This statement brought many questions as to how or where. The only females on the planet were infertile. As they sat and pondered as to how they would come about such females, an idea occurred. Lets build a ship, said the scientist, to carry us to other worlds in search of a female.

With its thirty-three essays, This Impermanent Earth charts the course of the American literary response to the twentieth century’s accumulation of environmental deprivations. Arranged chronologically from 1974 to the present, the works have been culled from The Georgia Review, long considered an important venue for nonfiction among literary magazines published in the United States. The essays range in subject matter from twentieth-century examples of what was then called nature writing, through writing after 2000 that gradually redefines the environment in increasingly human terms, to a more inclusive expansion that considers all human surroundings as material for environmental inquiry. Likewise, the approaches range from formal essays to prose works that reflect the movement toward innovation and experimentation. The collection builds as it progresses; later essays grow from earlier ones. This Impermanent Earth is more than a historical survey of a literary form, however. The Georgia Review’s talented writers and its longtime commitment to the art of editorial practice have produced a collection that is, as one reviewer put it, “incredibly moving, varied, and inspiring.” It is a book that will be as at home in the reading room as in the classroom.