With a new introduction by the author
Some thousands of
years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals.
From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths
and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures
roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down
the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process
of voracious extinction that has continued to the present.
Headlines today are
made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals
such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans
extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and
butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction
rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing
about a hundred species every day.
This relentless
extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast
scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on
the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as
well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that
have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a
whole.
This attack has its
genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all
spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in
isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we
need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism
and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs
this task with both brio and brilliance.