Cav's Place

This was such a nice read overall. The first part uses key moments from Attenborough‘s professional life to portray how humans have changed the planet during one lifetime, starting from listing the population, atmospheric CO2 and remaining wild areas at the beginning of each chapter. And I was obviously very pleased with the fact that population was the first listed value, and that a chapter from part three is dedicated to the population problem. But the overall focus is on nature, on the fact that humanity’s guiding compass should be restoring the natural balance, admittedly while also taking human welfare into account, so striving to improve living standards for the poor without their environmental footprint becoming unsustainable and preserving them for the rest of us while significantly lowering it, but having the environmental impact, and the need to improve biodiversity in particular, as the main objective. And it mainly advocates for nature-based solutions and approaches, and on thriving without growing, clearly opposing the magical thinking of endless growth, including the so-called “sustainable” one, and in most cases mentioning technological “fixes” rather in passing and pointing out the potential problems and the fact that they got us into this situation and the limits of this approach will be reached, and sooner rather than later.
On the other hand, the brief second part, with the estimates about the future, may be necessary but seemed somewhat dry and unremarkable. And, while I generally wasn’t as bothered by it as I usually am, I will point out that the presented solutions are existing and soft ones, which does serve to maintain the hopeful outlook, making it clear that the only thing lacking is the will to implement them, but tends to ignore why that’s not happening, and that they may be too little, too late, considering how bad the situation already is. I was obviously particularly bothered when only soft solutions were recommended for the population problem, but I also disliked the fact that many other solutions remain within the existing economic model instead of advocating for an entirely new one.

Rating: 4/5