The Once and Future World

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1. fractallyteJul 2025
   “So, the first inhabitants in this land would have been encountering the giant beaver.”

   ...and killing them.

   It's curious how megafauna extinctions coincide with human arrival... Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and other "First Peoples" were just as deadly as later European settlers.

   The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon eloquently describes our disastrous impact on Nature: https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world

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2. sriachaJan 2025
   Along these veins I recommend the book "The Once and Future World" by Mackinnon.
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3. fractallyteSep 2024
   An equivalent book, which covers the same topic, and which I consider to be one of the most influential books I've ever read: The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon (https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world)

   Unfortunately, the ebook version is rather difficult to buy outside of the US, but if you contact the author, he may be able to provide a copy.

   The part I found most haunting was what he termed 'the forgetting' - how, as we lose swaths of Nature, each new generation accepts it as normal, until we've forgotten what was lost.

   I also learned about the megafauna: giant animals that vanished in prehistory, coinciding with the arrival of humans to their habitats. Africans, Europeans, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines - it made no difference. Every tribe of humans wiped out the competition, in every continent.

   Highly recommended!

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4. codexjourneysSep 2022
   I'm reading The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon, and I'm reading extra slowly because I'm enjoying it so much.

   It's about nature, how we're wired to think the wild landscapes we grew up with were pristine, how it's truly evolved through history in response to humans' presence and it's hard to really pinpoint a baseline, and how much wildlife and plant life has vanished so far in the last two hundred years (from whatever fuzzy baseline we can arrive at).

   Earlier this year, I read Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows and on almost every page I was taking notes! A huge eye-opener and felt like a missing link across sciences and social sciences. Also extremely readable and engaging.

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5. spodekDec 2021
   > Life is teeming nearly everywhere in the oceans

   Historically, this was true but no longer. There is a fraction of the life that the ocean used to support. A great source is the book Once and Future World, which describes captains' logs before steamship. They reported that ships at sea would be stopped in the middle of the ocean, far from land, by schools of fish that densely packed. Today, people are happy to see a whale if they visit the coast. Not long ago, people could see whales as far as the eye could see all day long some times of year.

   Also, to call the waters "oxygen-starved" in response to climate change misses the cause and effect. Specifically, human behavior is causing these things. They aren't just happening. If we change our behavior, we can change the results.

   Clarifying the cause and effect helps clarify what to do about it besides passively watch it happen.

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6. spodekNov 2021
   However much life has returned, it's nothing compared to before the Industrial Revolution. The wonderful book The Once and Future World by JB MacKinnon changed my understanding of how much more wildlife there was, everywhere. The Thames, for example, had walruses. Captain's logs of ships before steam wrote of being stopped in the middle of the ocean because the sea was so dense with fish.

   Today, visitors to Maine feel lucky and pleased if they see a whale. Ships used to see whales as far as the eye could see all day long.

   I recorded a couple video essays of the book for a bit more:

   - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLAvBiols2Y

   - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NZdciDozI

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