Tim Flannery is one of the country's leading thinkers and writers...an internationally-acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, not to mention former Australian of the Year. Here on Earth is Flannery's first major book since The Weather Makers.
In it, he takes a big-picture look at where we are as a species, and what we need to do in order to survive into the future. Flannery draws on Darwin, Wallace and Lovelock to discuss evolution, co-evolution and the issue of sustainability, in the broadest sense.
And, as he tells the National Press Club, it's ultimately a message of hope.
In this address, Flannery expounds on why he won't vote Labor, how London fixed its sewerage pollution problem in the 1880s, how the Chinese are ahead of the curve on major sustainable technology infrastructure, and how they helped derail the Copenhagen climate agreement.
Bio
Tim Flannery
Tim Flannery has written such books as the definitive ecological histories of Australia (The Future Eaters) and North America (The Eternal Frontier). He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.
As a field zoologist he has discovered and named more than thirty new species of mammals (including two tree-kangaroos) and at 34 he was awarded the Edgeworth David Medal for Outstanding Research.
He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement and has edited and introduced many historical works, including The Birth of Sydney, The Diaries of William Buckley and The Explorers. He received a Centenary of Federation Medal for his service to science and in 2002 he became the first environmentalist to deliver the Australia Day address to the nation.
Tim Flannery spent a year as professor of Australian studies at Harvard, where he taught in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. In Australia he is a leading member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, which reports independently to government on sustainability issues.
Tim Flannery was named Australian of the Year the day before Australia Day on 25th January 2007.
Increase in the global average surface temperature resulting from enhancement of the greenhouse effect, primarily by air pollution. In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures would increase 3.2–7.2 °F (1.8–4.0 °C), depending on a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, and stated that it was now 90 percent certain that most of the warming observed over the previous half century could be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities (i.e., industrial processes and transportation). Many scientists predict that such an increase in temperature would cause polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt rapidly, significantly raising the levels of coastal waters, and would produce new patterns and extremes of drought and rainfall, seriously disrupting food production in certain regions. Other scientists maintain that such predictions are overstated. The 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change attempted to address the issue of global warming, but in both cases the efforts were hindered by conflicting national economic agendas and disputes between developed and developing nations over the cost and consequences of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Guess Tim didn't hear the recent news from "International Program on the State of the Ocean" our Earth's oceans face an imminent mass extinction of epic proportions because of pollution, dead zones, overfishing, global warming, and CO2 ACIDIFICATION.
Ocean acidification is already up +30% the last 100 years because of dissolved CO2.
CO2 is rising more than 2ppm per year and at atmospheric CO2 levels of 450ppm in 25 years oceanographers warn ocean acidification may STOP or severely slow the growth of many CaCO3 forming corals & plankton at the base of our ocean's food chain.
Oops!
Otherwise, no problem.
member. 
