Life Changing: How Humans Are Altering Life on Earth

"Yes, our impact on this world, the way we have changed the world. This is really interesting. She talks about her genetically-modified wolf, her domesticated wolf – which is her dog. And you think: ‘oh yeah!’ Get the weekly Five Books newsletter She goes right back to the invention of farming, and how that changed everything. I learned almost an embarrassing amount from this book, given what I do for a living. Pilcher has a really light touch as well. It could be boring, this kind of book, but it’s actually really funny. It has really wry comments that just make you laugh, while discussing the huge impact of what she describes as “a bolshy bi-pedal primate.” Exactly. The law of unintended consequences runs through this book, in that I’m sure when people started doing whatever they started doing, they didn’t think about the knock-on effects. That’s a theme running through it. But, again, it doesn’t say, ‘abandon hope.’ We’ve been clever enough to do all of this; we should be clever enough to sort out some of the problems we’ve created. She’s optimistic that this bolshy primate will be able to find a way out."