Silent Earth Review

Posted on January 4, 2025 by GarryRogers

“Silent Earth” has received a five-star “must read🏆” review on Reedsy. Blending scientific depth and practical foresight, this book is both a wake-up call and a guide for navigating environmental collapse.

Synopsis

Silent Earth is a technical reference for civil engineers, land-use and urban planners, and city administrators. It covers a broad range of topics and should serve as a springboard for specialists wishing to learn more about adapting to climate change and biosphere decline.

As the Earth’s living systems deteriorate at an unprecedented rate, human societies face the urgent challenge of adapting to an increasingly unstable environment. Physical Geographer Garry Rogers offers a clear-eyed examination of our options, arguing that while complete restoration of the biosphere is no longer feasible, strategic adaptation remains possible. Drawing on extensive research, Rogers outlines practical approaches for communities to maintain essential functions as ecosystem services decline. While large-scale adaptation efforts face significant barriers, this groundbreaking work shows how planners and administrators can implement effective strategies to enhance resilience in a transforming world. Essential reading for navigating our environmental future. Ideal for policymakers, scholars, environmentalists, and engaged citizens, Silent Earth challenges readers to envision a future where, even amidst biosphere decline, adaptation and innovation can pave the way for survival.

Garry Rogers’ Silent Earth: Adaptations for Life in a Devastated Biosphere explores the escalating degradation of Earth’s biosphere, offering strategies for human adaptation. It points to the realistic inevitability of this need to adjust, as humanity is facing the consequences of irreversible damage already done. Rogers goes beyond the simple dialogue of climate change, expanding and examining the interconnected impact of the entire biosphere, from current impacts such loss of biodiversity to coral reef bleaching.

In Section IV, Rogers draws upon research to emphasize that as soon as 2030 we are on the brink, and that we urgently need to act not only to prevent further destruction, but also to prepare for survival:

The cumulative and synergistic effects of human impacts are pushing ecosystems closer to tipping points. Feedback loops and shifting ecosystem boundaries are accelerating environmental change, while these effects interact in complex ways, amplifying their individual impacts. As we approach 2030, addressing these interconnected challenges will require an integrated approach to conservation and climate action to mitigate the far-reaching impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem stability.

The strength of Silent Earth lies in Section V, which presents a blueprint for adaptation. Rogers proposes various strategies from water management to cultural and governance reforms. His emphasis on grassroots action and local resilience is both pragmatic and empowering, especially given his acknowledgment of the political and societal inertia that is likely to hinder adaptation on a wider scale.

Silent Earth is thoroughly researched, intellectually stimulating, and well-cited. Rogers excels in synthesizing vast amounts of ecological, social, and technological data into a cohesive narrative.

Silent Earth is a valuable resource for those interested in interdisciplinary approaches to global challenges. It’s an important and thought-provoking read for anyone seeking to understand and address the complex realities of ecological decline.

Reviewed by: Brittney Banning

Latest Posts

Truth on the Ground: Destructive Post-Fire “Salvage” Logging–In Pictures

Posted on June 8, 2016 by GarryRogers

Source: Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) » Westside Truth on the Ground

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Northern California National Forests on Fire

Posted on August 10, 2015 by GarryRogers

Last month’s storms in the North Coast resulted in hundreds of lightning strikes igniting forest fires across the region and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Now a combined total of approximately 102,755 acres are burning on the Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers National Forests. Thousands of fire fighters are on the ground, some in an effort to protect life and property and others are in the wilderness and backcountry. Fire suppression and the military style of firefighting can be more environmentally destructive than wildfire itself. Crews typically construct ridge top fire lines with bulldozers, dump fire retardant, ignite high severity back burns, fell trees and open up decommissioned roads to access and suppress the fires. These damaging efforts are often ineffective, for example yesterday a burning tree fell across a containment line on the Route complex, causing the fire to escape. Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wildcalifornia.org

GR: The human damage fighting fires and logging burned areas may be more destructive than the fires.

Misconceptions about disruption of fire cycles

Posted on July 25, 2015 by GarryRogers

“I would like to point out a typical bias that I see and hear all the time. The Forest Service often promotes the idea that lodgepole pine stands are “overstocked”. Actually lodgepole and many other species always grow that way after a disturbance. There is frequently a significant amount of natural regeneration that is gradually whittled down by natural thinning agents like beetles or fire.

“It baffles me that the FS tries to prevent beetles from “thinning” the forest when indeed, they believe they are “overstocked”. Beetles, disease and fire will thin them naturally, and these agents are much better at selecting which trees should live and die than any forester.” —George Wuerthner Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.thewildlifenews.com

GR: Many excuses for logging are offered as scientific justifications just as hunting is said to be good wildlife management. This article offers several solid counterpoints to the Forest Service’s effort to justify logging as forest management. Recommended.

Groundtruthing the Westside Timber Sale

Posted on May 22, 2015 by GarryRogers

While the Klamath National Forest finalizes its Environmental Impact Statement, and prepares to auction off our public forestlands to the highest bidder, citizens are beginning to organize and get out on the ground to explore the land that is targeted for what could be the largest timber sale in Klamath National Forest history. The Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion is rich with biodiversity, hosting more conifer species than any other temperate forest in the world. The region is considered an area of Global Botanical Significance, and is proposed as an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site.

Most of the timber units proposed in the Westside project include Late Successional Reserves that are set aside for the development of old growth forests, and many of the units are within riparian reserves, and Wild and Scenic river corridors which are intended to protect water quality. The Klamath National Forest admits that the Westside project would negatively affect water quality and cause more sedimentation in the Klamath River, and with recent data foreshadowing that a major fish kill in the Klamath River is likely, this is no time to inflict additional impacts to these watersheds.

Source: www.wildcalifornia.org

GR: Private citizens must oppose this proposal. Like all significant U.S. Forest Service management actions, the plan benefits corporations and politicians, not the forest.

See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers NatCon News

‘Urgent’ crowdfunding campaign hopes to help save three native Australian birds

Posted on April 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

“An international campaign begins to help save three native parrots at risk of extinction.

“The swift parrot, forty-spotted pardalote and orange-bellied parrot are all Australian native birds under threat from predatory sugar gliders.

“The swift parrot breeds in Tasmania during spring and summer, nesting in old trees with hollows.

“They migrate to south-eastern Australia during the cooler months, but many are not surviving long enough to make the journey.

“Logging in Tasmania has meant the tiny birds share their breeding habitat with sugar gliders.”

Source: www.abc.net.au

GR: Logging and consequent habitat loss have forced competition among bird species that is driving these three toward extinction. Money is needed to erect nest boxes on offshore islands so numbers can climb.

Does salvage logging make things better or worse?

Posted on January 14, 2015 by GarryRogers

When a serious wildfire rips through a forest, it has a tendency to kill nearly all the trees in its path. Then come the logging companies. On one hand, to log a burned forest makes a good deal of sense. Source: conservationmagazine.org

GR: Logging is bad for forests. It removes large trees that provide essential wildlife habitat, it destroys soil microorganisms, it spreads invasive species, and it decreases water absorption. Forest stability and biodiversity decline. Logging after fires is an even greater insult to the Earth as it further reduces forest recovery rates and accelerates erosion and flooding. President Theodore Roosevelt established the U. S. Forest Service to control the impacts, but special interests working through Congress, quickly turned the agency into a tool of the harvesters. Like our other public land agencies, the U. S. Forest Service is primarily a benefactor of the commercial logging industry. Forestry is another of the sciences that are causing the massive decline in Earth’s wildlife.

Following ‘Rim Fire,’ what should be done with the trees left behind?

Posted on August 3, 2014 by GarryRogers

BY Xander Landen August 3, 2014 at 4:24 PM EDT

“A year after a California wildfire known as the “Rim Fire” burnt through over 250,000 acres of Sierra Nevada forests, environmentalists and loggers are debating what to do with the blackened woodland it left behind. The timber industry believes that chopping down and selling the trees that remain will not only restore Sierra Nevada forestland, but also create jobs.”

Source: www.pbs.org

Chinas Hunger For Timber Is Wrecking Mozambique

Posted on August 2, 2014 by GarryRogers

China’s hunger for timber is wrecking Mozambique

By Jeanne Kim @jeannesjkim July 23, 2014

Reblogged from: Havehest

A worker loads harvested timber on a truck at a timber processing site on the outskirts of Hefei

China’s taking it all Reuters/Jianan Yu

“China, with its rapidly urbanizing population, is the world’s biggest importer of wood products. And in its dealings with Mozambique, it is increasingly buying timber that is illegally harvested, according to a new report (pdf). The nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency compared Mozambique’s official harvest numbers to global import numbers and calculated that 93% of Mozambique’s timber was illegally harvested in 2013, up from 76% in 2007—and most of that goes to China.

“That’s perhaps no surprise; Mozambique is poor and timber is a good source of income. But the level of illegal logging and timber smuggling for the Chinese market is way beyond sustainable levels, despite claims to the contrary by Mozambican officials, according to the EIA. If the excessive focus on just a handful of commercial timber species continues, the country’s commercial stocks will be largely depleted in the next 15 years.

“The figures are complicated by some rather murky Mozambican government accounting. In 2013, China reported imports of some 516,000 cubic meters of timber from Mozambique, while the Mozambican government reported only 281,000 cubic meters of exports. In theory, then, just under half of the timber China imported was illegally exported. But in that year the Mozambican government also registered only 66,000 cubic meters of legal timber harvest—far less than it said it licensed for export. Hence, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reckons, the vast majority of the wood going to China is illegally harvested.

The illegal exports mean that Mozambique suffered losses of $146 million in potential export and exploration taxes from 2007-2013, the EIA says. That could have covered the 2014 state budget for poverty-alleviation programs more than twice over. It could, alternatively, have covered 30 years of law enforcement for Mozambique’s National Forest Program, according to the report from the EIA.

“What’s worse, if illegal logging continues in order to meet China’s demand, the number of “first” and “precious class” woods—the species of woods China imports—will be completely depleted by 2029. “China wants the timber as raw in form as possible,” said Jago Wadley, Senior Forest Campaigner at the EIA. “They don’t want to invest in manufacturing or invest in the country they’re operating in.”