{"product_id":"ten-billion-isbn-9780345806475","title":"Ten Billion","description":"Deforestation. Desertification. Species extinction. Global warming. Growing threats to food and water. The driving issues of our times are the result of one huge problem: Us.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs the population continues to grow, our problems will increase. And this means that every way we look at it, a planet of ten billion people is likely to be a nightmare.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eStephen Emmott, a scientist whose lab is at the forefront of research into complex natural systems, sounds the alarm. TEN BILLION is a snapshot of our planet, and our species, approaching a crisis, and a stark analysis of where this leaves us. TEN BILLION is not another climate book. TEN BILLION is a book about us.“A rallying call to arms. . . . Succinct and righteously pessimistic. . . . [with] an indispensible message to galvanize a world in potential crisis.” \u003cbr\u003e    —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise from the U.K. for TEN BILLION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The cumulative effect of [Emmott’s] uncluttered, unadorned prose, buttressed with graphs and illustrations, is significant. . . . A spine-chilling warning of the environmental disaster that awaits the Earth.” \u003cbr\u003e    —\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e (4 stars)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Powerful. . . . Compelling. . . . The shift in thinking that will be needed if we are to prepare ourselves for living in a different world begins with reading Emmott's indispensable book.”\u003cbr\u003e    --\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"A stark, simple and short warning about the coming catastrophe, which [Emmott] feels is inevitable, resulting from human overpopulation and over-exploitation of the world’s resources. . . . A valuable contribution to rekindling a discussion on global population that has waxed and waned in the two centuries since Thomas Robert Malthus first brought the issue to public attention.\"\u003cbr\u003e      --\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcclaim for the theater production of TEN BILLION, performed by Stephen Emmott at London's Royal Court Theatre:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This an hour of \u003ci\u003eMatrix\u003c\/i\u003e moments, of reminders of what underlies our daily lives. It's freeing to face the facts as well as alarming. . . . It informs, unsettles, provokes. Job done.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Professor Emmott argues his case with an implacable logic. He is quiet, humane and deeply concerned and when he says . . . 'I think we're fucked,' you have to believe him.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e (London) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A new kind of talk . . . a daring one-man show in which Emmott desperately strives to pull together into one grand and devastating portrait the many ways we are impacting the planet.\" --\u003ci\u003eNew Scientist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eStephen Emmott\u003c\/b\u003e is head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research. He leads a broad scientific research program, at the center of which is an interdisciplinary team of new kinds of scientists, and a new kind of laboratory, in Cambridge, England, pioneering new approaches to tackle fundamental problems in science. His lab’s research spans from molecular biology, immunology, and neuroscience, to plant biology, climatology, biogeochemistry, terrestrial and marine ecology, and conversation biology, as well as the new fields of programming life and artificial photosynthesis. Stephen is also Visiting Professor of Computational Science, University of Oxford; Visiting Professor of Biological Computation, University College London; and Distinguished Fellow of the UK National Endowment of Science, Technology and the Arts.This is a book about us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It’s a book about you, your children, your parents, your friends. It’s about every one of us. It’s about our failure: failure as individuals, the failure of business, and the failure of our politicians.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It’s about the unprecedented planetary emergency we’ve created.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It’s about the future of us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Earth is home to millions of species.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Just one dominates it. Us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Our cleverness, our inventiveness, and our activities have modified almost every part of our planet. In fact, we are having a profound impact on it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Indeed, our cleverness, our inventiveness, and our activities are now the drivers of every global problem we face.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And every one of these problems is accelerating as we continue to grow toward a population of ten billion.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In fact, I believe we can rightly call the situation we’re in right now an emergency—an unprecedented planetary emergency.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This is the reason I have written this book.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I am a scientist.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I lead a lab, in Cambridge, England, which is home to a unique collection of amazing young scientists. We conduct research into complex systems, including the climate system and ecosystems, as well as the impact of us humans on the earth.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Science is ultimately about \u003ci\u003eunderstanding\u003c\/i\u003e. And this is what we try to do: to understand the earth’s climate, and the behavior of the earth’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems—from its microbial communities to its forests—and to predict how these vital planetary systems will respond to change.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Change caused by us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e We humans emerged as a species about 200,000 years ago. In geological time, that is really incredibly recent.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Just over 10,000 years ago, there were one million of us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e By 1800, just over two hundred years ago, there were one billion of us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e By 1960, fifty years ago, there were three billion of us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e There are now over seven billion of us.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e By 2050, your children, or your children’s children, will be living on a planet with at least nine billion other people.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Sometime toward the end of this century, there will be at least ten billion of us. Possibly more.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eHow did we get to where we are now?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We got to where we are now through a number of civilization- and society-shaping “events”; most notably, the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution, and—in the West—the public-health revolution.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e These events have fundamentally shaped how we live, and have fundamentally shaped our planet. Their legacy will continue to shape our future. So we need to look at our growth and activities through the lens of these developments.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eBy 1800 the global population had reached one billion.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One of the principal reasons for this growth was the invention of agriculture. The “agricultural revolution” enabled us to go from being hunter-gatherers to highly organized producers of food, and allowed our population to grow.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A useful way to think of the development and importance of agriculture is in terms of at least three agricultural “revolutions.” The first took place over 10,000 years ago. This was the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plant types.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The second agricultural revolution was between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was a revolution in agricultural productivity and the mechanization of food production.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The third happened between the 1950s and 2000s; the so-called “green revolution.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But there’s another story here: the start of a fundamental transformation—of land use—by humans.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eOne hundred and thirty years later, we had grown to two billion.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was 1930. The impact of another revolution—the industrial revolution—was being felt. The world was being transformed by manufacturing, technological innovation, new industrial processes, and transportation.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The continuing expansion of agriculture and the revolution in public health enabled us to continue to grow—rapidly.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But there’s another story here too: the start of our lethal addiction to coal, oil, and gas as our principal sources of energy.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThirty years later, we had grown to three billion.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was 1960, and we were in the middle of a food revolution. There were more of us. Far more of us. We needed more food. Far more food. More than the established agricultural system could provide.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What became known as the green revolution provided this extra food.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It did so through:\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The industrial-scale use of chemical pesticides, chemical herbicides, and chemical fertilizers;\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e an unprecedented expansion of land use;\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e and the wholesale industrialization of the entire food production system. This included the industrialization of raising and harvesting animals for food, from the rise of industrial-scale “factory fishing” fleets to battery farming of pigs, poultry, and beef.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This revolution came at a huge cost to the environment, in terms of:\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e loss of habitat; \u003cbr\u003e pollution; \u003cbr\u003e overfishing.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It also set in motion an unprecedented decline of species and the start of the degradation of entire ecosystems.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eBy 1980, twenty years later, there were four billion of us on the planet.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The green revolution had produced much more food. That made food cheaper.\u003cbr\u003e In turn, that meant we had more money to spend. And we had started to spend it on “stuff”: televisions, video recorders, Walkmans, hair dryers, cars, and clothes. And we also started to spend it on vacations. Far more vacations.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e At the center of this spending spree was the astonishing growth of transportation.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In 1960 there were 100 million cars on the world’s roads—by 1980 there were 300 million.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e With this came a massive expansion of road net- works—carving up entire countries, further increasing loss of habitat for other species.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In 1960 we flew 62 billion passenger miles. In 1980 we flew 620 billion passenger miles.\u003cbr\u003e Global shipping grew at a similarly astonishing rate. All of the stuff we were buying, plus all of the food we were consuming, plus all the raw materials and resources required to make everything was being shipped around the world.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJust ten years later, in 1990, there were five billion of us.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By this point, initial signs of the consequences of our growth were starting to show.\u003cbr\u003e Not the least of these was on water.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Our demand for water—not just the water we drank, but the water we needed for food production and to make all the stuff we were consuming— was going through the roof.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But something was starting to happen to water. Back in 1984, journalists reported from Ethiopia about a famine of biblical proportions caused by widespread drought.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e That, it seemed, was “over there,” in Africa. Except that it wasn’t just happening “over there,” in Africa. Unusual drought, and unusual flooding, was increasing everywhere: Australia, Asia, Europe, the United States.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Water, a vital resource we had thought of as abundant, was now suddenly something that had the potential to be scarce.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eBy the year 2000, there were six billion of us.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By this point it was becoming clear to the world’s scientific community that the accumulation of CO2, methane, and other green- house gases in the atmosphere—as a result of agriculture, land use, and the production, processing, and transportation of everything we were consuming—was changing the climate. And that, as a result, we had a serious problem on our hands.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304896712933,"sku":"NP9780345806475","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345806475.jpg?v=1767737891","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/ten-billion-isbn-9780345806475","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}