Michael Charles Tobias

Petrus van Stijn’s world is besieged by two prime engines of destruction: massive geomagnetic storms caused by unprecedented solar storms – protracted coronal mass ejections (CME), and climate change wreaking unprecedented, but predictable collapse of the Antarctic ice shelves. Petrus has other problems to contend with, like surviving on a floating archipelago of ice, and then walking 2200 kilometers through a post-Apocalyptic world. At the same time, Petrus will discover something of a true social and biological paradise. Herein lies the paradox of a world where one species – ours – is facing extinction, while others – many genetically re-engineered – are enjoying a biodiversity renaissance. With a Foreword by William Shatner, this provocative, lyrical, deeply philosophical work of fiction explores the ethical limits of science and technology, and the future of all life on earth.

This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological–and from an insular perspective, successful–struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience. With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.

Petrus van Stijn’s world is besieged by two prime engines of destruction: massive geomagnetic storms caused by unprecedented solar storms – protracted coronal mass ejections (CME), and climate change wreaking unprecedented, but predictable collapse of the Antarctic ice shelves. Petrus has other problems to contend with, like surviving on a floating archipelago of ice, and then walking 2200 kilometers through a post-Apocalyptic world. At the same time, Petrus will discover something of a true social and biological paradise. Herein lies the paradox of a world where one species – ours – is facing extinction, while others – many genetically re-engineered – are enjoying a biodiversity renaissance. With a Foreword by William Shatner, this provocative, lyrical, deeply philosophical work of fiction explores the ethical limits of science and technology, and the future of all life on earth.

Located in the heart of the Eastern Himalayas, Bhutan practices the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (“GNH”) that embraces environmental conservation as one of the main building blocks for its sustainable development goals. Bhutan’s conservation strategies and success are largely driven by the strong political will and visionary leadership of His Majesty the King of Bhutan The nation’s Buddhist perspectives regarding a deep and abiding respect for nature; and the strategic enforcement of a wide-ranging stringent set of internal regulations and controls have helped ensure ecological gold standards in Bhutan. Moreover, the country is an active member of the international conservation community by fulfilling its implementation of various Multilateral Environment Agreements. While it emerged into the 21st century as one of the 36 global terrestrial “hotspots” in biological diversity conservation ranks, Bhutan’s sheer commitment with more than 51% of its territory being managed under the explicit status of a protected area network, and more than 70% of the land under forest cover, represents Bhutan’s exemplary dedication to protect the planet despite its smallness in size and economy, and the biological fragility exemplified by its hotspot situation. In the face of imminent severe threats of global warming, Bhutan nonetheless exemplifies the truth that “a small country with a big conservation commitment” can make an enormous contribution to the global community. At the regional level, Bhutan is intent upon protecting the Water Towers of Asia (that glacial expanse of the Himalayas) which is a critical resource bulwark for about one-fifth of the global population downstream in South Asia. Such protections invariably help mitigate climate change by acting as a nation-wide carbon sink through its carbon neutral policies. In short, Bhutan has long represented one of the world’s foremost national guardians of biodiversity conservation, ecological good governance, and societal sustainability at a period when the world has entered the Anthropocene – an epoch of mass extinctions. We envision this publication to be ecologically and ethically provocative and revealing for the concerned scientific communities, and governments. Through an extensive review of the scientific and anthropological literature, as well as the research team's own data, the Author's have set forth timely recommendations for conservation policies, strategies and actions. This book provides technical and deeply considered assessments of the state of Bhutan’s environment, its multiple, human-induced stressors and pressures; as well as extremely sound, practical techniques that would address conservation strategies in the Himalayas and, by implication, worldwide.

This elegant treatise examines the nature of kindness through the fascinating lenses and contexts of ancient, medieval and contemporary philosophy, natural history, theories of mind, of natural selection, eco-psychology and sociobiology. It challenges the reader to consider the myriad potential consequences of human behaviour, examining various iconographic moments from the history of art and science as a precursor to the concept and vital potentials for ecological conversion. Focusing on the fundamental mechanisms of reciprocity among humans, other species, communities and nations, Tobias and Morrison lead readers on a remarkable journey whose itinerary, and the provocative questions explored, seek to affirm a pattern in evolution and in human thought that is emphatically oriented towards benevolence, not tyranny. Prosociality in all species - making others happy, kind gestures at any and every juncture of life - has, as a discipline of enquiry, enjoyed a social scientific renaissance during the last decade. Can natural selection move rapidly enough to meet that ultimate challenge? Can our species re-evolve in real time, moving from the ideas, to the ideals, to their applied engineering in a real world that is ecologically haemorrhaging? Which all the critical moral and cognitive changes in social communion such new human nature, as the Authors suggest, clearly requires? This ground-breaking work of ecological philosophy, with its roots in ancient Greek thought, represents a radical break with nearly every traditional scientific paradigm, in exploring the intuitive geography and dramatic questions of ourselves -- each and every one of us -- that will prove crucial to the survival of our species, and all those we co-habit this miraculous planet with.

This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological–and from an insular perspective, successful–struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience. With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.

Located in the heart of the Eastern Himalayas, Bhutan practices the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (“GNH”) that embraces environmental conservation as one of the main building blocks for its sustainable development goals. Bhutan’s conservation strategies and success are largely driven by the strong political will and visionary leadership of His Majesty the King of Bhutan The nation’s Buddhist perspectives regarding a deep and abiding respect for nature; and the strategic enforcement of a wide-ranging stringent set of internal regulations and controls have helped ensure ecological gold standards in Bhutan. Moreover, the country is an active member of the international conservation community by fulfilling its implementation of various Multilateral Environment Agreements. While it emerged into the 21st century as one of the 36 global terrestrial “hotspots” in biological diversity conservation ranks, Bhutan’s sheer commitment with more than 51% of its territory being managed under the explicit status of a protected area network, and more than 70% of the land under forest cover, represents Bhutan’s exemplary dedication to protect the planet despite its smallness in size and economy, and the biological fragility exemplified by its hotspot situation. In the face of imminent severe threats of global warming, Bhutan nonetheless exemplifies the truth that “a small country with a big conservation commitment” can make an enormous contribution to the global community. At the regional level, Bhutan is intent upon protecting the Water Towers of Asia (that glacial expanse of the Himalayas) which is a critical resource bulwark for about one-fifth of the global population downstream in South Asia. Such protections invariably help mitigate climate change by acting as a nation-wide carbon sink through its carbon neutral policies. In short, Bhutan has long represented one of the world’s foremost national guardians of biodiversity conservation, ecological good governance, and societal sustainability at a period when the world has entered the Anthropocene – an epoch of mass extinctions. We envision this publication to be ecologically and ethically provocative and revealing for the concerned scientific communities, and governments. Through an extensive review of the scientific and anthropological literature, as well as the research team's own data, the Author's have set forth timely recommendations for conservation policies, strategies and actions. This book provides technical and deeply considered assessments of the state of Bhutan’s environment, its multiple, human-induced stressors and pressures; as well as extremely sound, practical techniques that would address conservation strategies in the Himalayas and, by implication, worldwide.

As a child, Michael Charles Tobias encountered a wolf caged in a zoo. Gazing upon the pacing, desperate animal, Tobias asked his Father, "Why is he in jail?" For over half a century, Tobias has roamed the earth in search of an answer. This memoir is a testimony to Tobias' field research, expeditions, deliberations, and some answers to that haunting question. Systems ecologist, philosopher, historian of ideas, anthropologist, ethicist and philanthropist, Tobias has emerged as one of the most influential and far-reaching ecological philosophers of this generation. The Earth in Fragments: A Memoir by Michael Charles Tobias chronicles many of his most incisive areas of research, activism and philosophical inflections. Much of the data, conveyed in a personal and enlightening series of recollections, lends incisive clarity to the emergence and escalating challenges of the environmental and life sciences fields. Tobias shares glimpses into many of the often ethically-harrowing research conundrums confronting him and his wife, Jane Gray Morrison, as they have effectively endeavoured throughout the globe, focusing upon animal rights and conservation biology initiatives. Their more than 50 books and 75 films have shed a powerful spotlight on many of the most pressing issues of our time. The anecdotes pour forth, from an ancient monastery in the Sinai, across the Himalayas, to the Arctic and Antarctic, where Tobias was among the first to draw global attention to the crises mounting across the Last Continent. We see him behind the scenes, directing the ambitious ten-hour drama, "Voice of the Planet" in two-dozen countries, examining the Gaia Hypothesis; conducting a project in the heart of the 1989 catastrophic oil spill in Alaska; his irrepressible quest to understand the runaway train of human overpopulation across the planet in his book and accompanying PBS film "World War III." We follow his probing philosophical meditations-in-action as an animal liberationist from California, Mali, Kenya, China, Greece and Russia. We see his appeal for a "new human nature" in cutting-edge scientific research calling for an interspecies revolution that is at once pantheistic, ethically holistic, and as imaginative and ecologically paradoxical as it is pragmatic. The reader is led through a dazzling and provocative labyrinth of deeply moving eco-science in countries like New Zealand, Madagascar, Brazil, Chile's Rapa Nui, and throughout Europe, West Africa and Asia. From the Ecuadorian Amazon to Haiti; from Mozambique, Yemen, and Namibia to Borneo, Tobias and Morrison have worked to bring critical conservation strategies and policy priorities to government leaders and scientists throughout the world. With insights from palaeontology, Renaissance art history, deep demography, and the most recent advances in biodiversity conservation and biosemiotics, Tobias leads readers on an exquisite and uplifting journey that, while describing much devastation, provides hopeful glimpses into a near future that is not only possible, but essential for the well-being of the world, as viewed, lived and chronicled by one man at the heart of the Anthropocene.

How can the one influence the many? From posing seminal questions about what comprises a human individual, to asking whether human evolution is alive and well, favoring individuals or the species, this work is a daring, up-to-the-minute overview of an urgent, multidisciplinary premise. It explores the extent to which human history provides empirical evidence for the capacity of an individual to exert meaningful suasion over their species, and asks: Can an individual influence the survival of the human species and the planet? If there are to be cultures of transformation dedicated to seeing us all through the Sixth Extinction Spasm, the Anthropocene, inflicting as little biological havoc as possible, what might such orientations—a collective, widespread biophilia, or reverence for nature—look like? In this powerful work, with a combination of data and direct observation, the authors invite readers to explore how such transformations might resonate throughout the human community; in what ways a person might overcome the seemingly insurmountable environmental tumult our species has unleashed; the clear and salient motives, ethics, aspirations and pragmatic idealism he/she might mirror and embrace in order to effect a profound difference—at the individual level—for all of life and life’s myriad habitats. Chapters illuminate an ambitiously broad digest of research from two-dozen disciplines. Those include ecodynamics, biosemiotics, neural plasticity, anthropology, paleontology and the history of science, among others. All converge upon a set of ethics-based scenarios for mitigating ecological damage to ourselves and other life forms. This highly readable and tightly woven treatise speaks to scientists, students and all those who are concerned about ethical activism and the future of the biosphere. Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison are ecological philosophers and animal liberation activists who have worked for decades to help enrich our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and humanity’s ambiguous presence amid that great orchestra that is nature.

This book is a provocative and invigorating real-time exploration of the future of human evolution by two of the world’s leading interdisciplinary ecologists – Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison. Steeped in a rich multitude of the sciences and humanities, the book enshrines an elegant narrative that is highly empathetic, personal, scientifically wide-ranging and original. It focuses on the geo-positioning of the human Self and its corresponding species. The book's overarching viewpoints and poignant through-story examine and powerfully challenge concepts associated historically with assertions of human superiority over all other life forms. Ultimately, The Hypothetical Species: Variables of Human Evolution is a deeply considered treatise on the ecological and psychological state of humanity and her options – both within, and outside the rubrics of evolutionary research – for survival. This important work is beautifully presented with nearly 200 diverse illustrations, and is introduced with a foreword by famed paleobiologist, Dr. Melanie DeVore.

This compact and elegant work (equally fitting for both academic as well as the trade audiences) provides a readily accessible and highly readable overview of Bhutan’s unique opportunities and challenges; all her prominent environmental legislation, regulatory statutes, ecological customs and practices, both in historic and contemporary terms. At the same time, Bionomics places the ecological context, including a section on animal rights in Bhutan, within the nation’s Buddhist spiritual and ethical setting. Historic contextualization accents the book’s rich accounting of every national park and scientific reserve, as well as providing up-to-the-minute climate-change related hurdles for the country. Merging the interdisciplinary sciences, engineering and humanities data in a compelling up-to-date portrait of the country, the authors have presented this dramatic compendium against the backdrop of an urgent, global ecological time-frame. It thus becomes clearthat the articulated stakes for Bhutan, like her neighboring Himalayan and Indian sub-continental countries (China, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) are immense, as the Anthropocene epoch unfolds, affecting every living being across the planet. Because Bhutan’s two most rewarding revenue streams derive from the sale of hydro-electric power and from tourism, the complexities of modern pressures facing a nation that prides herself on maintaining traditional customs in what has been a uniquely isolated nation are acute.

This groundbreaking work of both theoretical and experiential thought by two leading ecological philosophers and animal liberation scientists ventures into a new frontier of applied ethical anthrozoological studies. Through lean and elegant text, readers will learn that human interconnections with other species and ecosystems are severely endangered precisely because we lack - by our evolutionary self-confidence - the very coherence that is everywhere around us abundantly demonstrated. What our species has deemed to be superior is, according to Tobias and Morrison, the cumulative result of a tragically tenuous argument predicated on the brink of our species’ self-destruction, giving rise to a most unique proposition: We either recognize the miracle of other sentient intelligence, sophistication, and genius, or risk enshrining the shortest lived epitaph of any known vertebrate in earth’s 4.1 billion years of life. Tobias and Morrison drawon 45 years of research in fields ranging from ecological anthropology, animal protection and comparative ethics to literature and spirituality - and beyond. They deploy research in animal and plant behavior, biocultural heritage contexts from every continent and they bring to bear a deeply metaphysical array of perspectives that set this book apart from any other. The book departs from most work in such fields as animal rights, ecological aesthetics, comparative ethology or traditional animal and plant behaviorist work, and yet it speaks to readers with an interest in those fields. A deeply provocative book of philosophical premises and hypotheses from two of the world’s most influential ecological philosophers, this text is likely to stir uneasiness and debate for many decades to come.

Explore shattering ethical, political and practical quagmires in this gripping ecological thriller. A tense plot deals with devastating scientific, secret intelligence and geopolitical issues. “You alright, Professor?” Mal asked in a whisper.“Yeah, I’ll be alright.” World renowned ecologist, UCLA Professor David Lev, aged 84, has just begun a contemporary odyssey. From delivering a plenary address on climate change at the Rio+20 UN Summit, he must prevail on a journey through sub-zero hurricane-force gales, impenetrable bogs and twelve foot drifts of ice in the forests of Belarus. Along the way, Lev’s journey directs us to consider such profound questions as: Are we our Brother’s Keeper? What are the ethical limits of science? And, finally, at what price, glory? It is not only Lev’s story that is the key to this page-turner but also an account from the days of World War IIand the Holocaust, which hinges on survival. A constellation of richly nuanced, deeply drawn characters whose enmeshed lives and unique circumstances speak with resonance, melancholy, inspiration and unrelenting drama are all part of this complex and thought-provoking novel - including cutting-edge biochemist Dr Taman Chernichevsky. What has he discovered?

How can the one influence the many? From posing seminal questions about what comprises a human individual, to asking whether human evolution is alive and well, favoring individuals or the species, this work is a daring, up-to-the-minute overview of an urgent, multidisciplinary premise. It explores the extent to which human history provides empirical evidence for the capacity of an individual to exert meaningful suasion over their species, and asks: Can an individual influence the survival of the human species and the planet? If there are to be cultures of transformation dedicated to seeing us all through the Sixth Extinction Spasm, the Anthropocene, inflicting as little biological havoc as possible, what might such orientations—a collective, widespread biophilia, or reverence for nature—look like? In this powerful work, with a combination of data and direct observation, the authors invite readers to explore how such transformations might resonate throughout the human community; in what ways a person might overcome the seemingly insurmountable environmental tumult our species has unleashed; the clear and salient motives, ethics, aspirations and pragmatic idealism he/she might mirror and embrace in order to effect a profound difference—at the individual level—for all of life and life’s myriad habitats. Chapters illuminate an ambitiously broad digest of research from two-dozen disciplines. Those include ecodynamics, biosemiotics, neural plasticity, anthropology, paleontology and the history of science, among others. All converge upon a set of ethics-based scenarios for mitigating ecological damage to ourselves and other life forms. This highly readable and tightly woven treatise speaks to scientists, students and all those who are concerned about ethical activism and the future of the biosphere. Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison are ecological philosophers and animal liberation activists who have worked for decades to help enrich our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and humanity’s ambiguous presence amid that great orchestra that is nature.

This groundbreaking work of both theoretical and experiential thought by two leading ecological philosophers and animal liberation scientists ventures into a new frontier of applied ethical anthrozoological studies. Through lean and elegant text, readers will learn that human interconnections with other species and ecosystems are severely endangered precisely because we lack - by our evolutionary self-confidence - the very coherence that is everywhere around us abundantly demonstrated. What our species has deemed to be superior is, according to Tobias and Morrison, the cumulative result of a tragically tenuous argument predicated on the brink of our species’ self-destruction, giving rise to a most unique proposition: We either recognize the miracle of other sentient intelligence, sophistication, and genius, or risk enshrining the shortest lived epitaph of any known vertebrate in earth’s 4.1 billion years of life. Tobias and Morrison drawon 45 years of research in fields ranging from ecological anthropology, animal protection and comparative ethics to literature and spirituality - and beyond. They deploy research in animal and plant behavior, biocultural heritage contexts from every continent and they bring to bear a deeply metaphysical array of perspectives that set this book apart from any other. The book departs from most work in such fields as animal rights, ecological aesthetics, comparative ethology or traditional animal and plant behaviorist work, and yet it speaks to readers with an interest in those fields. A deeply provocative book of philosophical premises and hypotheses from two of the world’s most influential ecological philosophers, this text is likely to stir uneasiness and debate for many decades to come.

Dr. Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison are world-renowned ecological philosophers and activists, interdisciplinary social and environmental scientists and broad-ranging, deeply committed humanists. This collection of fifty essays and interviews comprises an invigorating, outspoken, provocative and eloquent overview of the ecological humanities in one highly accessible volume. The components of this collection were published in the authors’ "Green Conversations" blog series, and pieces in the Eco News Network from 2011 to 2013 and feature luminaries from Jane Goodall to Ted Turner to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to the former head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Stunning color photographs captured by the authors and contributors make Why Life Matters: Fifty Ecosystems of the Heart and Mind a feast for the eyes as well as the mind and soul. Ethics, science, technology, ecological literacy, grass-roots renaissance thinkers, conservation innovation from the U. S. to the U. K.; from India to Ecuador; from Bhutan to Haiti; from across Africa, the Neo-Tropics, Central Asia and Japan, to Rio, Shanghai and Manhattan – this humanistic ode to the future of life on earth is a relevant and resonating read. Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison, partners who between them have authored some 50 books and written, directed and produced some 170 films, a prolific body of work that has been read, translated and/or broadcast around the world, have been married for more than a quarter-of-a-century. Their field research across the disciplines of comparative literature, anthropology, the history of science and philosophy, ecology and ethics, in over 80 countries, has served as a telling example of what two people – deeply in love with one another – can accomplish in spreading that same unconditional love to others – of all species.

Explore shattering ethical, political and practical quagmires in this gripping ecological thriller. A tense plot deals with devastating scientific, secret intelligence and geopolitical issues. “You alright, Professor?” Mal asked in a whisper.“Yeah, I’ll be alright.” World renowned ecologist, UCLA Professor David Lev, aged 84, has just begun a contemporary odyssey. From delivering a plenary address on climate change at the Rio+20 UN Summit, he must prevail on a journey through sub-zero hurricane-force gales, impenetrable bogs and twelve foot drifts of ice in the forests of Belarus. Along the way, Lev’s journey directs us to consider such profound questions as: Are we our Brother’s Keeper? What are the ethical limits of science? And, finally, at what price, glory? It is not only Lev’s story that is the key to this page-turner but also an account from the days of World War IIand the Holocaust, which hinges on survival. A constellation of richly nuanced, deeply drawn characters whose enmeshed lives and unique circumstances speak with resonance, melancholy, inspiration and unrelenting drama are all part of this complex and thought-provoking novel - including cutting-edge biochemist Dr Taman Chernichevsky. What has he discovered?

Dr. Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison are world-renowned ecological philosophers and activists, interdisciplinary social and environmental scientists and broad-ranging, deeply committed humanists. This collection of fifty essays and interviews comprises an invigorating, outspoken, provocative and eloquent overview of the ecological humanities in one highly accessible volume. The components of this collection were published in the authors’ "Green Conversations" blog series, and pieces in the Eco News Network from 2011 to 2013 and feature luminaries from Jane Goodall to Ted Turner to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to the former head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Stunning color photographs captured by the authors and contributors make Why Life Matters: Fifty Ecosystems of the Heart and Mind a feast for the eyes as well as the mind and soul. Ethics, science, technology, ecological literacy, grass-roots renaissance thinkers, conservation innovation from the U. S. to the U. K.; from India to Ecuador; from Bhutan to Haiti; from across Africa, the Neo-Tropics, Central Asia and Japan, to Rio, Shanghai and Manhattan – this humanistic ode to the future of life on earth is a relevant and resonating read. Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison, partners who between them have authored some 50 books and written, directed and produced some 170 films, a prolific body of work that has been read, translated and/or broadcast around the world, have been married for more than a quarter-of-a-century. Their field research across the disciplines of comparative literature, anthropology, the history of science and philosophy, ecology and ethics, in over 80 countries, has served as a telling example of what two people – deeply in love with one another – can accomplish in spreading that same unconditional love to others – of all species.