While the twentieth century stands out in history for two world wars, numerous local wars, genocides, and political revolutions, there were little-considered developments that present us in the twenty-first century with even more menace. Because they have crept up on us slowly, instead of with the instant and obvious catastrophic effects of war and revolution, most of us tend not to notice them or to discount their effects. I refer to the environmental consequences of global warming, deforestation, soil erosion, the degradation of ocean fisheries, expanding populations, and inflated economies.

Renée Hetherington confronts us with these present, if not clear, dangers, as well as with the risks of living beyond our means. She ranges from an intimate subjective point of view to a scholarly analysis backed with solid evidence. Her two-pronged approach to these problems arises from her knowledge of climatological history and from her belief that because economics and business are devoted to Darwinism and survival of the fi ttest , they are partly to blame for the failure to meet the growing hazards that are going to make the world a more dismal place in which to live.

Following her argument that the dynamic stabilities of biological, political, and economic systems , which fi t into the Darwinist mold, tend to resist progressive change, she points out that they can only be disequilibrated by unpredictable natural catastrophe or by objective analysis and resolute action on the part of humankind. She tells us how natural disasters shaped the future of evolution, and she provides the objective analysis required for resolute action.