Homo Ecophagus by Warren M. Hern is a wide-ranging look at the major problems for the survival of not just the human species, but all other species on Earth due to human activities over the past tens of thousands of years. The title of the book indicates Hern’s new name for the human species: “The man who devours the ecosystem.” Over the course of its evolution, Hern observes, humans have evolved cultures and adaptations that have now become malignant and that the human species, at the global level, has all the major characteristics of a malignant neoplasm ・ converting all plant, animal, organic, and inorganic material into human biomass or its adaptive adjuncts and support systems. Hern contends that this process is incompatible with continued survival of the human species and most other species on the planet, offering a diagnosis and prognosis of the current environmental impasse.
Author(s): Warren M. Hern
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 336
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Author biography
Introduction
PART ONE Overview – what’s the problem?
1 “Save that. We might need it someday”
2 Public health and politics in West Africa
3 Medical school and the Amazon: “You are very keen in your diagnosis”
4 Brazil, Chile, and abortion
5 Public health; research; and revelation
6 A new calling
7 Threat to the Holy Cross Wilderness
8 Family planning, Amazon style
9 “You may not ask that question”
10 “As you know, the human population has just doubled for the first time”
PART TWO Manifestations of malignancy
11 What the fractal is this?
12 Malignant expansion and retroactive heterotrophicity in modern urbanizations
13 Effects of malignant human activity on small, local ecosystems: “It’s only eels!”
14 Human contact and island ecosystems
15 Effects of human activities on regional ecosystems
16 Effects of human activity on continental ecosystems
17 The oceans
18 Toxic trash, oncometabolites, and cow farts
19 Effects of human activity on biodiversity
20 Effects of human activity on the global ecosystem
PART THREE Analysis and policy choices
21 Humans as cancer: metaphor, model, analogy, hypothesis, or diagnosis?
22 Human activities and malignant entropy
23 Human culture and the ecophagic imperative
24 “What will be the limiting factor for the human population?”
25 “We have met the enemy, and he is us”
Epilogue: great bringer of death to paradise
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
