With Us or Without Us. The Natural History of the Future

When envisioning the future, we usually imagine ourselves embedded in a mechanized ecosystem populated by robots, devices, and virtual realities. The future is bright and technological, and we, humans, are the only actors in this beautiful world. However, this notion is a great mistake, says biologist and ecologist Rob Dunn. No matter how much we try to subdue nature, we remain a part of it and depend on it. This dependence does not mean that nature depends on us: it will cope with any attempts by humans to ignore, fight, or dominate it, and the laws of life will continue to operate even after our species goes extinct. In the book "With Us or Without Us," Dunn discusses biological laws that are as unchangeable as the laws of physics, how the world around us is changing, what fate awaits the species we know, and where and how new ones will emerge. Throughout its long history on the planet, humanity has inadvertently exterminated wild species it depended on or could have depended on, while simultaneously contributing to the emergence of species that create troubles for us.
Now, if we want to survive, we must learn to understand and comply with biological laws. Then, our chances of living another 100, 1,000, or even a million years will significantly increase. Well, if not – what can we say, ecologists and evolutionary biologists have quite a persuasive vision of how life on Earth will evolve without us…