No one has the full picture of the damage we're doing to our planet,
says Debora MacKenzie. But we've never needed it more.
Everyone knows about the three blind men who investigated an elephant.
Each came back sure the entire beast must be like the bit he had felt:
the tail, the trunk, the leg. No one had the whole picture.
Humanity is now faced with an elephantine crisis of its own making made
of bits that aren't
always obviously related. Our physical domination of this planet is altering
all our fundamental life-support systems. These are the processes that give us
our food and water and air, our social stability, and ultimately our health. It's happening so
fast and on such a scale that comprehending the whole process is almost impossible.
Scientists deal with this elephant in their methodical, piecemeal way,
feeling their way around a collapsing fishery here, an emerging disease there, epidemics
of obesity and starvation, climate change and population growth. And with each discovery
comes yet another warning that something else that we do threatens us all, from driving
cars to eating meat.
It's become fashionable to mock all this doom and destruction. If you
don't realise that most of the problems are bits of the same enormous, onrushing elephant, it
can seem as though the doomsayers are merely competing for attention and grant money.
But they aren't, as Tony McMichael's book tries to show us. There is enough
in Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease to show that all these diverse warnings
are not merely a trick to upset the optimists. They all stem from the same, huge fact:
that having taken over the planet, we aren't running it in our collective best interests.
Perhaps we don't know what our best interests are. McMichael says we need
to understand human ecology our relationships with nature and the way we evolved
before we can know what makes for a healthy population.
To reach this comprehension, McMichael attempts to bring into focus
a vast range of subjects, from hunter and gatherer diets to the history
of germ theory. He even includes topics such as workplace safety and income
distribution, social factors that can be crucial to health and to a global
economy.
This brings into welcome perspective our obsession with free trade. Under
current trade agreements, industries can compete by spending so little
on wages and infrastructure, such as decent sewerage, that their labourers
end up in very poor health. The result: Guatemalan farm workers inadvertently
contaminate New Yorkers' strawberries with a nasty intestinal pathogen.
This should turn the battle for minimum work conditions in trade agreements
into intelligent self-interest. But this is a fact even epidemiologists
usually forget.
Sometimes McMichael manages to pull things together how trade, migration,
poverty and dirty water spread cholera, for instance. And he knows a lot.
The book is worth reading if only to learn more about these important,
yet little taught subjects.
PART ONE: READING COMPREHENSION
1. Answer the following questions according to the information in
the text.
1. Copy two sentences that reflect opposite attitudes towards
the damage problems to our planet.
2. What are the two basic factors responsible for environmental
problems we are facing?
3. Write two measures McMichael suggests to be necessary if we
want to solve this crisis.
4. One of these three sentences is true. Which one?
People have created the environmental crisis we are dealing with.
Elephantine population is decreasing due to bits that aren't
always obviously related.
Germ theory and diet description alone can explain natural disasters.
5. One of these three sentences is true. Which one?
According to the book, linking factors from different fields may
help understand human ecology better.
Comprehending the whole process is impossible and McMichael, as
a good scientist, deals with it in a methodical, piecemeal way.
Our obsession with free trade is a big concern constantly voiced
by epidemiologists.
PART TWO: WRITING
Choose ONE. Write about either 1 or 2.
1.- Write about present-day natural disasters. Describe them and
/ or suggest causes, effects and possible solutions.
2.- Describe a piece of news you have read or heard on the media
that has to do with damage to our planet.
3. Vocabulary
Explain next words in English, write the phonetics and also an example:
damage, starvation, warning, huge, nasty, wage, worth.
|