Publisher's Synopsis
After winning the Global Reuters IUCN media award for excellence in environmental reporting, Alanna Mitchell launches herself on an odyssey that takes her around the world, zeroing in on it's environmental hotspots. Travelling from Madagascar to the Middle East, from the Arctic to the Galapagos Islands, her goal is to explore how humanity can flourish without destroying the planet. She begins with a term of study at Oxford University where she studies Darwin's theories. Darwin challenged the idea that the earth and its species were created for man's benefit and succeeded in overturning the accepted view. Today, we are at a similar crossroads, one where we need to come to terms with the fact that all creation is not here for us, that we are but one species dependent on other species and planetary life-support systems for our own existence. As his theories of evolution changed the whole way of Victorian thinking, so Alanna sets out to persuade us that we can accept a similar seismic change and learn to treat our environment in a way that will prolong, rather than shorten its shelf life.
