About this item
From John Muir to David Brower, from the creation of Yellowstone National Park to the Endangered Species Act, environmentalism in America has always had close to its core a preservationist ideal. Generations have been inspired by its ethosmdashto encircle nature with our protection, to keep it apart, pristine, walled against the march of human development. But we have to face the facts. Accelerating climate change, rapid urbanization, agricultural and industrial devastation, metastasizing fire regimes, and other quickening anthropogenic forces all attest to the same truth the earth is now spinning through the age of humans. After Preservation takes stock of the ways we have tried to both preserve and exploit nature to ask a direct but profound question what is the role of preservationism in an era of seemingly unstoppable human development, in what some have called the Anthropocene? Ben A.
About the Author
Ben A. Minteer is an environmental ethicist and conservation scholar at Arizona State University in Tempe. His work grapples with two big questions: What obligations do we have toward wildlife and wilderness in a rapidly changing and increasingly human-shaped environment? And how can a better understanding of the American conservation tradition enhance our efforts to secure a biologically rich and equitable environmental future? Minteer's writing is grounded in the tradition of American Pragmatism, especially its moral, scientific, and civic traditions. He holds the Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Chair at ASU, a position originally established by the Maytag family at the time it made possible the founding of the Phoenix Zoo. For more information see www.benaminteer.com.
