Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie: Australia, America, and the Environment

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“Though separated by thousands of miles, the United States and Australia have much in common. Geographically both countries are expansive—the United States is the fourth largest in land mass and Australia the sixth—and both possess a vast amount of natural biodiversity. At the same time, both nations are on a crash course toward environmental destruction. Highly developed super consumers with enormous energy footprints and high rates of greenhouse-gas emissions, they are two of the biggest drivers of climate change per capita. As renowned ecologists Corey J. A. Bradshaw and Paul R. Ehrlich make clear in Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie, both of these countries must confront the urgent question of how to stem this devastation and turn back from the brink.”

In Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie, two renowned scientists from opposite ends of the Earth, deadly serious even when being drolly funny, pull no punches about the fact that the most critical decisions on our planet are currently being made by people least qualified to do so: politicians who have scant understanding of the intricate interdependencies of global ecology (including human ecology) and who increasingly and blatantly do the bidding of an elite few. Scientists rarely are so frank about that in public, or in such detail, and it’s high time that some took off the gloves because their deniers have no qualms about going to great, expensive lengths to try to discredit them. Bradshaw and Ehrlich’s clarity about that is refreshing, irresistibly readable, and long overdue.

–Alan Weisman

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Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie can be purchased online via: Amazon.com, University of Chicago Press, IndieBound.org, or Barnes&Noble.com