"Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals. From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process of voracious extinction that has continued to the present.
Headlines today are made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing about a hundred species every day.
This relentless extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a whole.
This attack has its genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs this task with both brio and brilliance."
Free Copy of the Book online: https://rampages.us/goldstein/wp-content/uploads/sites/7807/2016/08/Dawson-Extinction-A-Radical-History.pdf
Review:
Los Angles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-extinction-and-capitalism/#!
Publisher Site: OR: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/extinction-by-ashley-dawson/
Video from Smithsonian Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXShU9Zp2c
Princeton Environmental Institute - Author:
https://environment.princeton.edu/directory/ashley-dawson
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/extinction2016/
Discussion Questions:
1. What are some of the causes of extinction, that the
author mentions, stating that “about 100 species are lost a day”?
2. What is the Anthropocene
(p. 19) and when did it start, in your opinion? How does the formation of
language and food surpluses and subsequent famines play a role?
3. Discuss the ecocide and the demise of the Sumerian and
Roman empires. What were the causes and what forms continue today?
4. What are some of the same and different concept threads
and conclusions between Klein’s, This
Changes Everything and this book?
5. What are some of the changes humans need to make,
according to the author, in order to stop the pattern of resource- and
bio-predation?
6. What are some of the opportunities and limitations that
re-speciation and re-introduction of some extinct species provide for the
environment? (p. 72)
7. Discuss the economic basis for reversing some of the
habitat and species losses in hot spots? (p. 92)
