Full Description
Home Ecophagus by Warren M. Hern is a wide-ranging look at the major problems for the survival of not just the human species, but all other species on Earth due to human activities over the past tens of thousands years. The title of the book indicates Hern's new name for the human species: "The man who devours the ecosystem." Over the course of its evolution, Hern observes, humans have evolved cultures and adaptations that have now become malignant and that the human species, at the global level, has all the major characteristics of a malignant neoplasm - converting all plant, animal, organic, and inorganic material into human biomass or its adaptive adjuncts and support systems. Hern contends that this process is incompatible with continued survival of the human species and most other species on the planet, offering a diagnosis and prognosis of the current environmental impasse.
Contents
PART ONEOverview - what's the problem?
"Save that. We might need it someday"
Public health and politics in West Africa
Medical school and the Amazon: "You are very keen in your diagnosis"
Brazil, Chile, and abortion
Public health; research; and revelation
A new calling
Threat to the Holy Cross Wilderness
Family planning, Amazon style
"You may not ask that question"
"As you know, the human population has just doubled for the first time"
PART TWO
Manifestations of malignancy
What the fractal is this?
Malignant expansion and retroactive heterotrophicity in modern urbanizations
Effects of malignant human activity on small, local ecosystems
Human contact and island ecosystems
Effects of human activities on regional ecosystems
Effects of human activity on continental ecosystems
The oceans
Toxic trash, oncometabolites, and cow farts
Effects of human activity on biodiversity
Effects of human activity on the global ecosystem
PART THREE
Analysis and policy choices
Humans as cancer: Metaphor, model, analogy, hypothesis, or diagnosis?
Human activities and malignant entropy
Human culture and the ecophagic imperative
"What will be the limiting factor for the human population?"
"We have met the enemy, and he is us"
Epilogue: "Great Bringer of Death to Paradise"
