We welcoming John Perlin, whose prodigious “A Forest Journey,” has just been re-published by Patagonia.
“Retaining our forests can help keep resolve climate crisis protect the integrity of many of our streams and rivers, and continue to provide food and shelter for much of the world’s land animals,” says Perlin, author of four books and former physics professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. “It is my hope that the new edition of A Forest Journey will make clear the imperative humanity faces, because losing our forests would not merely be the end of nature, it could mean the end of us.”
one of Harvard’s “One Hundred Great Books.”
John Perlin is the author of four books: A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology; A Forest Journey: A History of Trees and Civilization; From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity; and Let It Shine: The 6000-Year Story of Solar Energy. Perlin taught physics at University of California, Santa Barbara. He lives in Santa Barbara.
www.patagonia.com/aforestjourney
Go to notes section….
For teaching guide etc…
For truly this dedicated work should be included in all curriculums,
in our on-going task of becoming good earth steward Citizens….
answering Antonio Machado’s query “What have we done with the garden entrusted to us?!”
“In the new edition, Perlin cites data on how humanity has cut down half the trees on the planet in the last 12,000 years, and that deforestation continues at an alarming pace with 15 billion trees removed per year. That’s 500,000 square miles of forested land lost since the first 1989 edition of A Forest Journey.
The updates also include recent research that is hopeful, too. The forest’s role as both a source and sink for CO2; findings on how trees produce 40 percent or more of the world’s precipitation; and changes in the field of forestry like the growing significance of old-growth trees. Perlin emphasizes the importance of forests in the (xxxxfight againstxxx) task of resolving global climate crisis and the urgency to protect what remains of the great trees and forests of the world.
“Old-growth forest systems now and in the future take on equally significant roles as they did in the past,” says Perlin. “This time it is their protection, rather than extraction, that will allow civilization to flourish.”