William Collins (2023)
ISBN 978-0008507206
Reviewed by Piers Warren
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This book is awesome in many ways – and that’s not a word I use often! It accompanies the 2023 BBC series Earth (five, one-hour programmes) presented by Chris Packham and, at first glance, comes across as a big, heavy, coffee-table style book that the BBC usually produces to go with major new TV series of this kind. It does, however, merit detailed examination from start to finish.
The book follows the evolution of the Earth from its initial creation as a planet to the current day. It focusses on the evolution of life and the five previous mass extinction events, yet doesn’t shy away from numerous mentions of the sixth mass extinction event that we humans are causing, largely through climate change through the burning of fossil fuels. It is packed with the latest science, geological findings and evidence which makes it hard to understand why today between 40 and 50% of people still do not believe in the evolution of life but in some form of divine creation.
One attraction of this book is that it is not too text-heavy; over half of it is taken up with useful charts and graphs and many stunning photographs. Even if you, like myself, have already watched the TV series, the advantage of a book like this is that you can take your time exploring the images in detail and taking in the enormity of it all. It really does drum home the unlikelihood that life was sparked at all some four billion years ago and how slowly it initially evolved (for the first couple of billion years life on Earth was basically just single-celled organisms). Furthermore, the fact that life has already been nearly wiped out five times in the last few hundred million years – the last being the asteroid collision 66 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs, reminds us that the chance of us being here at all is mind-boggling.
Another thing about the book that I appreciated was that it follows the evolution of Earth chronologically, unlike the TV series which hopped about in time in the sequence of each programme, which I found a bit confusing. In fact, having finished the book, I now feel like going back and watching the series again on iPlayer and feel I will get more from it the next time; will find it even more awesome!
As I’ve mentioned, Chris Packham refers to the sixth mass extinction we are now in the midst of a number of times throughout the book, and, comparing it to previous extinction events, shows how rapidly it is now happening. He points out how, if we do not rapidly turn things around, that the Earth of course will survive; it’s us (and most other life forms on the planet) that will perish and he asks if we really want all that suffering and loss on our conscience.
Every so often in the book there is a double-page spread of an exquisite photo along with a text box containing a piece of the narration that features in the TV series. It’s a great opportunity to absorb those carefully chosen words more slowly and fully. The book ends, as does the last TV episode, with such a snippet of the narration that tries to offer some hope in the form of the power of humanity to offer inspiration. We have achieved amazing things as a species in the past, maybe our finest achievement will be the curtailing of this sixth mass extinction. It’s up to us.