Dancing At The Dead Sea: Journey To The Heart Of Environmental Crisis - Softcover

Mitchell, Alanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903919630 ISBN 13: 9781903919637

Publisher: Eden Project Books, 2005

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.

About this title

About the Author

Alanna Mitchell is the internationally recognized senior features writer for THE GLOBE AND MAIL in Canada. Winner of the prestigious Reuters-IUCN award for North America and Oceania for excellence in environmental reporting, she also won the global award presented at the World Conservation Congress 2000. Alanna currently lives with her two children in Toronto.

From the Back Cover

Dancing at the Dead Sea is a powerful narrative on the critically important topic of the world's environmental hotspots. This is not a pessimistic tirade, but instead a factual commentary that will convince many, written by a gifted writer with an independent mind. I recommend this book without reservation.
Richard Leakey

Does the human race have a death wish? One hundred and fifty years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, award-winning writer Alana Mitchell sets out on a journey to the world s hotspots those places where the environment has been all but destroyed to pick up where Darwin left off and examine not the origin but the ultimate fate of the human species and the world we inhabit. Grappling with Richard Leakey s contention that a massive sixth extinction is well under way, she travels from Madagascar, the last living Eden to the Galapagos, Darwin s natural laboratory, from the Azraq Oasis in Jordan to the Arctic desert of Banks Island, from the rainforests of Suriname to Iceland s volcanic crust. And she shows how, against the odds, individuals have convinced governments to create protected areas, even to transform government policy to seek out new energy sources before it is too late.
Dancing at the Dead Sea intertwines scientific theory with travel adventure and history. Here is a dramatic, and refreshingly optimistic, narrative voice.

Edition details

• Publisher: Eden Project Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1903919630
• ISBN 13: 9781903919637
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304