The Future of Life Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

1. In his prologue, Wilson addresses Henry David Thoreau, the nineteenth-century naturalist: "I came because of all your contemporaries you are the one I most need to understand" (pp. xi-xii). If you have read Thoreau's Walden, what do you think Thoreau would make of the present state of the earth as described in Wilson's The Future of Life? Why is it important to Wilson to make personal connections between himself and Darwin, Huxley and Thoreau (see p. xii)? Why does Wilson begin his book with this homage to Thoreau? What specifically about Thoreau's approach to life does Wilson wish people would begin to emulate?
   


2. Many organisms and ecosystems unfamiliar to nonscientists are described in these pages, particularly chapter 1, "To the Ends of Earth." What is the effect of reading about extremophiles, radiation-resistant bacteria, the deeps of the Mariana Trench, the environment of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the bacteria and fungi of Antarctica's Lake Vostok? Why is it necessary for people to familiarize themselves with the complexity of the Earth's organisms and its enormous variety of ecosystems? (See pp. 3-6, 9.)
   


3. What is the problem, as Wilson sees it, with the economic approach to environmental policy? What is lost if everything is translated into monetary value? What would be accomplished if governments adopted the GPI (genuine progress indicator) instead of the GNP (gross national product), which Wilson discusses on page 28? What is indicated, in terms of the American approach to environmental responsibility, by the fact that the United States refuses for economic reasons to adopt the Kyoto Climate Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases?
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.