'Tim Flannery is one of the world’s great thinkers, environmental scientists and writers. Sir David Attenborough once described him as being ‘in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone.’
'This definitive collection of his work brings together thirty years of essays, speeches and occasional writing on palaeontology, mammology, environmental science and history, including the science of climate change and the challenges and opportunities we face in addressing this issue, so critical for all of us.' (Publication summary)
'The proliferation goes on. The amount of new words being coined to name the reality and effects of our current era of natural and cultural crisis seems at times to be some kind of teeming linguistic correction to species extinction on a heating planet. I’ve listed them before in essays and reviews — anthropocene, capitalocene, ecocene, symbiocene, gynocene, chthulucene, etc. I’ve added moolacene, which employs the Wadawurrung word moola from my local region, meaning “shadow”. Moola is, of course, also the US-derived slang word for money, which many think is at the heart of the issue.' (Introduction)
'One of the pleasures of reviewing a book is reading it slowly, paying attention to the rhythms and its author’s intentions, impulses, and indulgences. Reading is always a conversation between writer and reader. A major collection like Life: Selected writings takes this experience to a new level. This is not just a conversation between a writer now and a reader now, but a writer then, his choices now, the sum of those choices as arrayed in a substantial blue volume, and the reader with a ‘long now’ to luxuriate in the exchange.' (Introduction)
'One of the pleasures of reviewing a book is reading it slowly, paying attention to the rhythms and its author’s intentions, impulses, and indulgences. Reading is always a conversation between writer and reader. A major collection like Life: Selected writings takes this experience to a new level. This is not just a conversation between a writer now and a reader now, but a writer then, his choices now, the sum of those choices as arrayed in a substantial blue volume, and the reader with a ‘long now’ to luxuriate in the exchange.' (Introduction)
'The proliferation goes on. The amount of new words being coined to name the reality and effects of our current era of natural and cultural crisis seems at times to be some kind of teeming linguistic correction to species extinction on a heating planet. I’ve listed them before in essays and reviews — anthropocene, capitalocene, ecocene, symbiocene, gynocene, chthulucene, etc. I’ve added moolacene, which employs the Wadawurrung word moola from my local region, meaning “shadow”. Moola is, of course, also the US-derived slang word for money, which many think is at the heart of the issue.' (Introduction)