Download or read book To Save Humanity written by Julio Frenk and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell." --Dag Hammarskjöld, United Nations Secretary-General 1953-1961 The turn of the 21st century was an objective low point in the history of human health: AIDS was scourging Africa, millions of women died each year in child birth, and billions suffered under malnourishment and poverty. In response, the United Nations launched its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an ambitious charter that since 2000 has measurably reduced the worldwide burdens of poverty, hunger, and disease. With the MDGs set to expire in 2015, continued progress on these fronts is anything but certain. In addition to the persisting threats of the 20th century, globalization has sped the development of new threats--pandemics, climate change, chronic disease--that now threaten rich and poor countries equally. "To Save Humanity" is a collection of short, honest essays on what single issue matters most for the future of global health. Authored by the world's leading voices from science, politics, and social advocacy, this collection is both a primer on the major issues of our time and a potential blueprint for post-2015 health and development. This unparalleled collection will provide illuminating and thought-provoking reading for anyone invested in our collective future and well-being.
Download or read book To Preserve Humanity written by Suzann Dodd and published by BookRix. This book was released on 2021-12-11 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just before Earth is Invaded, those deemed worth saving are contacted, placed on Arks, and sent off into unexplored Sectors. These are the lives and thoughts of those on the Ark.
Download or read book The Preserve written by Ariel S. Winter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critically acclaimed author of the “bold, innovating, and thrilling” (Stephen King) novel The Twenty-Year Death and the “brilliant” (Booklist, starred review) novel Barren Cove returns with a dark and compelling mystery set in the near future. Decimated by plague, the human population is now a minority. Robots—complex AIs almost indistinguishable from humans—are the ruling majority. Nine months ago, in a controversial move, the robot government opened a series of preserves, designated areas where humans can choose to live without robot interference. Now the preserves face their first challenge: someone has been murdered. Chief of Police Jesse Laughton on the SoCar Preserve is assigned to the case. He fears the factions that were opposed to the preserves will use the crime as evidence that the new system does not work. As he digs for information, robots in the outside world start turning up dead from bad drug-like programs that may have originated on SoCar land. And when Laughton learns his murder victim was a hacker who wrote drug-programs, it appears that the two cases might be linked. Soon, it’s clear that the entire preserve system is in danger of collapsing. Laughton’s former partner, a robot named Kir, arrives to assist on the case, and they soon uncover shocking secrets revealing that life on the preserve is not as peaceful as its human residents claim. But in order to protect humanity’s new way of life, Laughton must solve this murder before it’s too late. The Preserve is a fresh and futuristic mystery that is perfect for fans of Westworld and Blade Runner.
Download or read book Storms of My Grandchildren written by James Hansen and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________ 'When the history of the climate crisis is written, Hansen will be seen as the scientist with the most powerful and consistent voice calling for intelligent action to preserve our planet's environment' - Al Gore 'Few people know more about climate change than James Hansen ... This unnerving and fluently written book is the definitive one to read' - BBC Wildlife 'Anyone concerned about the world our children and grandchildren must inherit owes it to themselves to read this book' - Irish Times _______________ An urgent and provocative call to action from the world's leading climate scientist Dr James Hansen, the world's leading scientist on climate issues, speaks out with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling to a climatic point of no return. Hansen - whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned US Congress about global warming - is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide. He paints a devastating but all-too-realistic picture of what will happen if we continue to follow the course we're on. But he is also a hard-headed optimist, and shows that there is still time to take the urgent, strong action needed to save humanity. _______________ 'James Hansen gives us the opportunity to watch a scientist who is sick of silence and compromise; a scientist at the breaking point - the point at which he is willing to sacrifice his credibility to make a stand to avert disaster' - LA Times
Download or read book Half Earth Our Planet s Fight for Life written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New Republic In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet" (Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. Identifying actual regions of the planet that can still be reclaimed—such as the California redwood forest, the Amazon River basin, and grasslands of the Serengeti, among others—Wilson puts aside the prevailing pessimism of our times and "speaks with a humane eloquence which calls to us all" (Oliver Sacks).
Download or read book The Meaning of Human Existence written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the National Book Award (Nonfiction) How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham.
Download or read book Save the Humans written by Rob Stewart and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned and inspiring story from the creator of the award-winning documentary Sharkwater. Beginning with a childhood spent catching poisonous snakes and chasing after alligators, Rob Stewart, the award-winning documentary filmmaker behind Sharkwater, charts his development into one of the world's leading environmental activists. Risking arrest and mafia reprisal in Costa Rica, nearly losing a leg in Panama and getting lost at sea in the remote Galapagos Islands, Stewart is living proof that the best way to create change in the world is to dive in over your head. With his efforts to save sharks leading to tangible policy change in countries around the world, Stewart sets his sights on a slightly bigger goal: saving humanity. Criss-crossing the globe to meet with the visionaries, entrepreneurs, scientists and children working to solve our environmental crises, Stewart's message is clear: the revolution to save humanity has started, the only thing missing is you!
Download or read book A Significant Life written by Todd May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A tour de force. It is a thoughtful, subtle, beautifully written discussion of what it takes to live a meaningful life.” —Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice Throughout history most of us have looked to faith, relationships, or deeds to give our lives purpose. But in A Significant Life, philosopher Todd May offers an exhilarating new way of thinking about meaning, one deeply attuned to life as it actually is: a work in progress, a journey—and often a narrative. Offering moving accounts of his own life alongside rich engagements with philosophers from Aristotle to Heidegger, he shows us where to find the significance of our lives: in the way we live them. May starts by looking at the fundamental fact that life unfolds over time, and as it does so, it begins to develop certain qualities, certain themes. Our lives can be marked by intensity, curiosity, perseverance, or many other qualities that become guiding narrative values. These values lend meanings to our lives that are distinct from—but also interact with—the universal values we are taught to cultivate, such as goodness or happiness. Offering a fascinating examination of a broad range of figures—from music icon Jimi Hendrix to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, from cyclist Lance Armstrong to The Portrait of a Lady’s Ralph Touchett to Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who tried to assassinate Hitler—May shows that narrative values offer a rich variety of criteria by which to assess a life, specific to each of us and yet widely available. They offer us a way of reading ourselves, who we are, and who we might like to be.
Download or read book Protecting Humanity written by Chile Eboe-Osuji and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navi Pillay is a modern icon in the world’s efforts to protect humanity through international law and policy. She played a leading role in the multi-national operation to clean up the humanitarian dross left on the essence of modern civilization by the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Her contributions in that effort were in virtue of her role as a judge—and, eventually, as the President—of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. From there, she went on to serve as one of the first appeal judges at the newly established International Criminal Court—another international endeavour aimed at protecting humanity through law. In time, she was fittingly appointed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, just ahead of a call to honour her with a book of essays in international law and policy, for the contributions that she had already made in the international enterprise of protecting humanity. Inspired by Pillay, some of the modern legends and experts in international law and policy have, in this volume, shared their experiences and thoughts on how better to protect humanity in our time. In the book, we read the wise words of Nobel laureates and other envoys of peace, renowned international judges and famous scholars, as well as those of energetic younger minds with great promise. Some chapters are in French.
Download or read book Recapture the Rapture written by Jamie Wheal and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A highly personal, richly informed and culturally wide-ranging meditation on the loss of meaning in our times and on pathways to rediscovering it.” —Gabor Maté, MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction A neuroanthropologist maps out a revolutionary new practice—Hedonic Engineering—that combines the best of neuroscience and optimal psychology. It’s an intensive program of breathing, movement, and sexuality that mends trauma, heightens inspiration and tightens connections—helping us wake up, grow up, and show up for a world that needs us all. This is a book about a big idea. And the idea is this: Slowly over the past few decades, and now suddenly, all at once, we’re suffering from a collapse in Meaning. Fundamentalism and nihilism are filling that vacuum, with consequences that affect us all. In a world that needs us at our best, diseases of despair, tribalism, and disaster fatigue are leaving us at our worst. It’s vital that we regain control of the stories we’re telling because they are shaping the future we’re creating. To do that, we have to remember our deepest inspiration, heal our pain and apathy, and connect to each other like never before. If we can do that, we’ve got a shot at solving the big problems we face. And if we can’t? Well, the dustbin of history has swallowed civilizations older and fancier than ours. This book is divided into three parts. The first, Choose Your Own Apocalypse, takes a look at our current Meaning Crisis--where we are today, why it’s so hard to make sense of the world, what might be coming next, and what to do about it. It also makes a case that many of our efforts to cope, whether anxiety and denial, or tribalism and identity politics, are likely making things worse. The middle section, The Alchemist Cookbook, applies the creative firm IDEO’s design thinking to the Meaning Crisis. This is where the book gets hands on--taking a look at the strongest evolutionary drivers that can bring about inspiration, healing, and connection. From breathing, to movement, sexuality, music, and substances--these are the everyday tools to help us wake up, grow up, and show up. AKA--how to blow yourself sky high with household materials. And the best part? They’re accessible, by anyone anywhere, no middleman required. Transcendence democratized. The final third of the book, Ethical Cult Building, focuses on the tricky nature of putting these kinds of experiences into gear and into culture—because, anytime in the past when we’ve figured out combinations of peak states and deep healing, we’ve almost always ended up with problematic culty communities. Playing with fire has left a lot of people burned. This section lays out a roadmap for sparking a thousand fires around the world--each one unique and tailored to the needs and values of its participants. Think of it as an open-source toolkit for building ethical culture. In Recapture the Rapture, we’re taking radical research out of the extremes and applying it to the mainstream--to the broader social problem of healing, believing, and belonging. It’s providing answers to the questions we face: how to replace blind faith with direct experience, how to move from broken to whole, and how to cure isolation with connection. Said even more plainly, it shows us how to revitalize our bodies, boost our creativity, rekindle our relationships, and answer once and for all the questions of why we are here and what do we do now? In a world that needs the best of us from the rest of us, this is a book that shows us how to get it done.
Download or read book The World Without Us written by Alan Weisman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence
Download or read book Global Environmental Change written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human sideâ€"human causes of and responses to environmental changeâ€"has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us. The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet. The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.
Download or read book Save the People written by Stacy McAnulty and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Save the People is engaging, funny, affecting and delightful. You’ll never have more fun learning science." --Stuart Gibbs, bestselling author of the Spy School series "Serious science and great gags, with a bit of hope thrown in.” --Steven Sheinkin, bestselling author of Bomb and Fallout An action-packed look at past, present, and future threats to humanity’s survival—with an ultimately reassuring message that humans probably have a few more millennia in us. Scientists estimate that 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. Whoa. So, it's not unreasonable to predict humans are doomed to become fossil records as well. But what could lead to our demise? Supervolcanos? Asteroids? The sun going dark? Climate change? All the above?! Humans—with our big brains, opposable thumbs, and speedy Wi-Fi—may be capable of avoiding most of these nightmares. (The T. rex would be super jealous of our satellites.) But we're also capable of triggering world-ending events. Learning from past catastrophes may be the best way to avoid future disasters. Packed with science, jokes, and black and white illustrations, Save the People! examines the worst-case scenarios that could (but hopefully won’t) cause the greatest mass extinction—our own!
Download or read book THE Interview That Solves The Human Condition And Saves The World written by Jeremy Griffith and published by WTM Publishing and Communications PTY Limited. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best introduction to biologist Jeremy Griffith’s world-saving explanation of the human condition! The transcript of acclaimed British actor and broadcaster Craig Conway’s astonishing, world-changing and world-saving 2020 interview with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith about his book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition which presents the completely redeeming, uplifting and healing understanding of the core mystery and problem about human behaviour of our so-called good and evil -stricken human condition thus ending all the conflict and suffering in human life at its source, and providing the now urgently needed road map for the complete rehabilitation and transformation of our lives and world! In fact, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Professor Harry Prosen, has described it as the most important interview of all time! This world-saving interview was broadcast across the UK in 2020 and is being replayed on radio & TV stations around the world. This book is supported by a very informative website at www.humancondition.com, where you can watch the video of the interview.
Download or read book The Precipice written by Toby Ord and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes - those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late. Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity. An Oxford philosopher committed to putting ideas into action, Toby Ord has advised the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Minister's Office, and the World Bank on the biggest questions facing humanity. In The Precipice, he offers a startling reassessment of human history, the future we are failing to protect, and the steps we must take to ensure that our generation is not the last. "A book that seems made for the present moment." —New Yorker
Download or read book Welcome to the Universe written by Neil deGrasse Tyson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling tour of the cosmos from three of today's leading astrophysicists Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all—from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel. Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the informative and entertaining narrative propels you from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space. How do stars live and die? Why did Pluto lose its planetary status? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding and why is its expansion accelerating? Is our universe alone or part of an infinite multiverse? Answering these and many other questions, the authors open your eyes to the wonders of the cosmos, sharing their knowledge of how the universe works. Breathtaking in scope and stunningly illustrated throughout, Welcome to the Universe is for those who hunger for insights into our evolving universe that only world-class astrophysicists can provide.
Download or read book The Good in Nature and Humanity written by Stephen R. Kellert and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists, theologians, and the spiritually inclined, as well as all those concerned with humanity's increasingly widespread environmental impact, are beginning to recognize that our ongoing abuse of the earth diminishes our moral as well as our material condition. Many people are coming to believe that strengthening the bonds among spirituality, science, and the natural world offers an important key to addressing the pervasive environmental problems we face. The Good in Nature and Humanity brings together 20 leading thinkers and writers -- including Ursula Goodenough, Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Carl Safina, David Petersen, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barry Lopez -- to examine the divide between faith and reason, and to seek a means for developing an environmental ethic that will help us confront two of our most imperiling crises: global environmental destruction and an impoverished spirituality. The book explores the ways in which science, spirit, and religion can guide the experience and understanding of our ongoing relationship with the natural world and examines how the integration of science and spirituality can equip us to make wiser choices in using and managing the natural environment. The book also provides compelling stories that offer a narrative understanding of the relations among science, spirit, and nature. Grounded in the premise that neither science nor religion can by itself resolve the prevailing malaise of environmental and moral decline, contributors seek viable approaches to averting environmental catastrophe and, more positively, to achieving a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. By bridging the gap between the rational and the religious through the concern of each for understanding the human relation to creation, The Good in Nature and Humanity offers an important means for pursuing the quest for a more secure and meaningful world.
