Harvesting the Biosphere

Vaclav Smil offers an interdisciplinary and quantitative account of the human-caused changes to the biosphere, from prehistory to the present day. The biosphere―the Earth's thin layer of life―dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapiens. Without harvesting of the biomass, Smil points out, there would be no story of human evolution and advancing civilization.