Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (2007) discusses his new book, Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth, as part of the 10th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Environmental Imagination at Iowa State University. Weisman explores four questions: 1) how many people can fit on the planet?; 2) how much nature must we preserve in order to ensure our own survival? 3) since the Chinese "one child" policy is so unpopular a means of slowing population growth, is there any other precedent in history or present-day societies worldwide? 4) is there a way to design an economy that doesn't depend on perpetual growth to prosper so that we might gradually bring our numbers back to a healthy level and keep them there?
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Information resources:
- Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
- Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Environmental Imagination
Heart of Iowa program originally broadcast 03/04/2014
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