On Extinction How We Became Estranged from Nature

by Challenger, Melanie

• ISBN13: 9781640094635
• ISBN10: 1640094636
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2021-03-16
• Publisher: Counterpoint

Summary

Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award–winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine "why" and "what's next."

Author Biography

MELANIE CHALLENGER publishes and presents ideas that bring together environmental philosophy, bioethics, and natural history. She is the author of How to Be Animal and Galatea, an award-winning first collection of poems, and is co-author, with Zlata Filipovic, of Stolen Voices, a history of twentieth-century conflict compiled through war diaries. She has received a Darwin Now Award for her research in the Canadian Arctic and the Arts Council International Fellowship with British Antarctic Survey for her work on the history of whaling.