The Earth Only Endures

* Readable, moving essays on our relationship to the earth and the other creatures in it * A reminder of just how much we consume and what effect this has on our world For most of human history, we have lived our daily lives in a close relationship with the land. Yet now, for the first time, more people are living in urban rather than rural areas and thus an estrangement grows. Our modern lifestyles and economies, sought after as the most desirable in the world, are precisely those that would need six to eight earths to provision if the entire world's population adopted them. Jules Pretty has written a moving collection of essays which explores humanity's relationship with the land, with animals and with food. He describes how our consumption eats up the earth's bounty without replacing it. He discusses the obesity crisis. He explores hunting and fishing as opposed to raising animals for food. He reviews all the ways in which man interacts--and interferes with--the living and non-living world around him. The Earth Only Endures is about our relations with nature, animals and places. Focusing on themes of connections and estrangement, it offers directions for an optimistic future. We are rendering our own world inhospitable, and in the process risk losing what it means to be human. This book reminds us of our connectedness to that world, and so inspires us to reclaim that relationship.

Jules Pretty OBE is Professor of Environment and Society in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Essex, UK, and Chief Editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.