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Wilson in Africa COMMENT SPRING BOOKS 1,863 metres high, catches enough moisture from Indian Ocean winds to sup- port a dripping rain- forest. In East Africa, you can move from dry grasslands to savannah woodlands to montane rainforest A Window on in the space of a few Eternity: A Biologist’s Walk kilometres, with each Through Gorongosa habitat harbouring National Park unique species. EDWARD O. WILSON Unexpectedly, Simon & Schuster: Wilson is new to sub- 2014. Saharan Africa: the book is a chronicle of his first visit there in 2011. His responses recall Darwin’s enthusi- asm on first encountering the Brazilian trop- ics, marvelling breathlessly at one fascinating ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN O’NEILL; ANT PHOTO: ANTHONY BANNISTER/NHPA/PHOTOSHOT MARTIN O’NEILL; ANT PHOTO: BY ILLUSTRATION species after another. Inevitably, ants — his speciality — take centre stage. Their social systems led to Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, his landmark 1975 study on animal socie- ties. Gorongosa’s ants are new to Wilson, however. He picks up a Matabele ant (Pachycondyla analis), which “gnashed its ECOLOGY mandibles impressively, then … thrust a long sting into the flesh of my index finger”. (He rates the pain as slightly below that of a hornet’s sting.) These are the ant equiva- Wilson in Africa lent of “sappers and light cavalry” — heav- ily armoured and specialized for raiding Stuart Pimm enjoys a fellow naturalist’s first visit to termite communities that build hardened sub-Saharan Africa, and the global lessons drawn from it. mounds of mud that can reach the size of a bus. The termites have their own soldiers, but the ants overwhelm them by sheer force peeding northwards, I luxuriated in were we there? of numbers and ferocity. the smooth South African highway: For the same reason as Edward Wilson also delights in driver ants, whose soon we would cross into Mozam- O. Wilson — the region’s exceptional bio- colonies can number 20 million workers. Sbique, where I could expect a rutted dirt diversity. As he explains in A Window on They are blind, but sensitive to smell and road. But there wasn’t even that. Beyond Eternity, “Anywhere I am in the world I movement. Their leaderless swarms engulf the border-post’s single hut, a braid of nar- love it when the air is warm and moist the ground and low vegetation, seizing row, indistinct tracks headed in all direc- and heat bounces off the sunlit earth, and almost any live animal in their path. Use- tions. We picked the travelled paths; there insects swarm in the air and alight on flow- ful things, driver ants: nothing quite like a might be land mines along unbeaten ones. ers.” In the book, Wilson explores and rev- visit from them to clean out vermin-infested Mozambique had suffered a brutal war of els in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National tropical homes. independence and subsequent upheavals Park, where the wet heat makes for a riot There is a world of sound, too, although between 1964 and 1992. An estimated one of what the eminent biologist calls “the lit- it is mostly hidden. Entomologist and million Mozambicans died, wildlife was tle things that run the world” — insects photo­grapher Piotr Naskrecki, who slaughtered and forests burned. So why and other invertebrates. At the heart of accompanied Wilson, gathers the audio. the park is Mount Gorongosa, which, at He brings special equipment to record NEW IN Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves PAPERBACK George Church and Ed Regis (Basic Books, 2014) In this visionary account of humankind’s soaring capabilities in bioengineering, Highlights of this geneticist George Church and science writer Ed Regis redraw the frontier of synthetic season’s releases biology — and, potentially, some ethical boundaries. Starting with ‘simple’ bioplastic cups made entirely from plants, they go on to discuss genomic alterations that could spawn virus-resistant humans and resurrect Neanderthals. This is the first book to be translated into a DNA sequence (see go.nature.com/gcgfqa). 178 | NATURE | VOL 508 | 10 APRIL 2014 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved SPRING BOOKS COMMENT sounds of up to 250 kilohertz, well CLIMATE ECONOMICS above our human limit of 20 kHz. “The unaided ears of a human walking through the forest at night are assaulted by a riot of unheard katydid cross-talk,” A strained relationship Wilson recounts. We humans — and, presumably, potential predators — hear Scott Barrett examines a study probing the nexus warning sounds, but not other, still vital between climate change and energy. communications. A Window on Eternity revels in biodi- versity and nature’s inventiveness. Wil- ichael Grubb’s provocative Plan- to cut emissions. son damns “the corporate priesthood” etary Economics claims to be about What is the solu- that views “restructuring … Earth to the “grand challenges of energy and tion? Grubb’s thesis is accommodate vast numbers of peo- Menvironment”, but is really about the relation- that reducing energy ple” as progress. There may be those to ship between energy and climate change. consumption and its whom species do not matter, to whom Grubb briefly notes the scale of the problem: associated emissions extinction is an abstraction. To Wilson, for atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases to requires policy changes species are our “phylogenetic kind” and be stabilized, net emissions must fall to zero. in three domains: sat- individual species matter to him. He His focus, however, is on reducing energy isficing, optimizing indicts those for whom ‘Anthropocene’ consumption and carbon emissions, irre- Planetary and transforming. In is a term that carries the political bag- spective of the need to meet any particular Economics: satisficing, people and Energy, Climate gage of acquiescence to human domi- target for greenhouse-gas concentrations. It Change and the firms overlook cost- nation of landscapes. The world cannot is unclear how much emissions would fall if Three Domains effective ways to save dwindle into a vast garden, he urges. To the book’s ideas were actually implemented. of Sustainable energy, such as invest- him, wildlands are “our birthplace”; a Written with input from fellow climate- Development ing in insulation that further “slide into extinction will turn policy researchers Jean-Charles Hourcade MICHAEL GRUBB promises a reduction the Anthropocene into the Eremocene, and Karsten Neuhoff, this is a long and at WITH JEAN-CHARLES in energy bills. Policy HOURCADE AND the Age of Loneliness”. times repetitive book; but there is something KARSTEN NEUHOFF can help by nudging an His choosing Gorongosa is surely interesting on every page. It reflects a wealth Routledge: 2014. economy closer to the no accident. In common with much of accumulated wisdom: Grubb has engaged energy-use efficiency of Mozambique, it lost almost all of its with these issues for more than two decades. frontier, for example by introducing standards large animals during its wars: by 2001, He is critical of dominant theories, such for appliances, production processes, build- buffalo had dropped from 13,000 to 15; as the assumption that economic agents are ings and cars. In the second domain, optimiz- wildebeest from 6,400 to 1; and hyenas rational and optimize every decision. He says ing, people and firms respond to price signals; and rhinos had become locally extinct. that this approach fails to capture the com- this ushers in an argument in favour of car- Entrepreneur and philanthropist Greg plexities, overestimating the costs of reducing bon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes, which Carr drove across the area in 2004, going emissions and underestimating the benefits. allow participants to trade emissions allow- days without seeing large mammals. He rejects the cost–benefit framing and its ances under an overall cap. Transforming He initiated the Gorongosa Restora- estimates of the “social cost of carbon” — a involves revolutionizing technology through tion Project to plant trees, reintroduce concept that puts a monetary value on the innovation and investment in infrastructure large mammals, and create a tourist damage associated with a 1-tonne increase such as improved electricity transmission. centre to make the park self-sustaining. in carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, Grubb Grubb argues that advancement demands Wilson plants his defiant flag defend- seems to endorse the political target of keep- progress in all of these mutually reinforcing ing biodiversity in a place once so bru- ing global temperature rise below 2 °C, as domains. This argument is compelling, but tally despoiled that its recovery is truly agreed at the 2009 meeting of the United the real questions are how far policy should go momentous. ■ Nations Framework Convention on Climate in each domain, and precisely how such pol- Change (UNFCCC). Yet the economist icy should be devised. How should decisions Stuart Pimm is professor of conservation Nicholas Stern has supported the same tar- be made about setting standards, designing at the Nicholas School of the get, in part with reference to the social cost cap-and-trade schemes and choosing strat­ Environment, Duke University, Durham, of carbon. It is true that greenhouse-gas egic investments, if not through a cost–benefit North Carolina, USA, and author of concentrations have continued to creep up, rule? How should a carbon tax be chosen if The World According to Pimm: threatening any possibility of achieving the not with reference to the social cost of car- A Scientist Audits the Earth. target. However, there is no evidence that bon? Grubb challenges the idea that the price e-mail: [email protected] economic theories are to blame for the failure of carbon should be the same every­where, Genes, Cells and Brains: The Promethean Forecast Promises of the New Biology Mark Buchanan (Bloomsbury, 2014) Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (Verso Books, 2014) Disassembling the “marvellous machine” of the In this exposé of clashes between society and free market, physicist Mark Buchanan analyses science, sociologist Hilary Rose and neurobiologist the tempestuous global economy.
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