September 1, 2013

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Book Review: Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

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By Lee Billings

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Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
Alan Weisman
Little, Brown, 2013 ($28)

After penning his best seller The World Without Us, Weisman spent two years traveling the globe, investigating how we can survive in a world with entirely too many of us, set to brim with 10 billion humans later this century. The result is a frenzied barnstormer of a book. From Minneapolis to Mexico, from the Holy Land to Vatican City, Weisman presents the intermingled stories of the scientists, religious leaders and humble aid workers all striving for or against a sustainable human future. Ultimately, he finds few easy solutions. What emerges is a dismal picture of looming resource scarcities and rampant ecological destruction, brightened only by occasional success stories of countries and individuals mastering their fate. Countdown is a chaotic stew of big stories, bold ideas and conflicted characters, punctuated by moments of quiet grace—just like our people-packed planet.

Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight and is senior desk editor for physical science at Scientific American. He is author of a critically acclaimed book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, which in 2014 won a Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science and many other publications. Billings joined Scientific American in 2014 and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

More by Lee Billings
Scientific American Magazine Vol 309 Issue 3This article was published with the title “Countdown” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 309 No. 3 (), p. 90
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0913-90b
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