human population of the earth will reach ten billion.
Note:NEL 2050
Yellow highlight | Location: 3
How to feed ten billion? How to provide ten billion with water?
Note:PROBLEMINI
Yellow highlight | Location: 5
two individuals who established the distinct schools
Note:RISPOSTE
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William Vogt.
Note:L ECOLOGISTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 9
bound by immutable biological limits
Note:VISIONE DEL DELLA NDO
Yellow highlight | Location: 11
Norman Borlaug,
Yellow highlight | Location: 12
the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s,
Note:PADRE
Yellow highlight | Location: 13
avert tens of millions of deaths from hunger.
Note:IMPRESA
Yellow highlight | Location: 13
the emblem of ‘techno-optimism’
Yellow highlight | Location: 15
affluence is not the problem but the solution.
Note:X GLI OTTIMISTI
Yellow highlight | Location: 49
PROLOGUE
Note:PROG@@@@@@@@@@
Yellow highlight | Location: 49
remember the moment when they first held their children—
Note:MOMENTO UNICO DEL FUTURO
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when my daughter is my age, almost 10 billion people
Note:UN PENSIERO PASSA X LA MENTE
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Ten billion mouths,
Yellow highlight | Location: 56
shod?
Yellow highlight | Location: 56
accommodated?
Yellow highlight | Location: 56
I brought my children into a time of general collapse?
Note:IL DUBBIO
Yellow highlight | Location: 58
What are those important events?
Note:VOLEVO RACCONTARE LE COSE PIÙ IMPORTANTE
Yellow highlight | Location: 61
“discoveries in science and technology.”
Note:CANDIDATI PRECEDENTI
Yellow highlight | Location: 61
curing of diseases,
Yellow highlight | Location: 62
rise of computer
Yellow highlight | Location: 62
mysteries of matter and energy.
Yellow highlight | Location: 63
less the new knowledge than what it had enabled.
Note:ALTRI CANDIDATI...COSA CONSENTE LA PRESENZA DI TANTI CERVELLI CREATIVI
Yellow highlight | Location: 63
one out of every four people
Note:I DENUTRITI NEI SETTANTA
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one out of ten.
Note:OGGI...QUATTRO DECAD DOPO
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life span has risen by more than eleven years,
Note:IN MEDIA...PRIVILEGIATI I POVERI
Yellow highlight | Location: 66
Hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Note:DALL INDIGENZA ALLA CLASSE MEDIA
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nothing like this surge of well-being has occurred before.
Note:NELLA STORIA DELL UOMO
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by the standards of the past, wealthy people.
Note:ANCHE I POVERI
Yellow highlight | Location: 71
7.3 billion inhabitants.
Note:OGGI
Yellow highlight | Location: 75
world’s 10 billion souls will be middle class. Jobs, homes, cars, fancy electronics,
Note:UN IMMENSA CLASSE MEDIA CON I SUOI COMUNI
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awed by the magnitude of the task facing our children.
Note:MSTERO
Yellow highlight | Location: 78
Can we provide these things?
Note:CONC.
Yellow highlight | Location: 79
without wrecking much else?
Yellow highlight | Location: 80
speak, from time to time, with experts
Note:LA MIA FORTUNA
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two broad categories,
Note:HO NOTATO
Yellow highlight | Location: 83
the most important person born in that century
Note:BARLUG
Yellow highlight | Location: 83
founder of the most significant cultural and intellectual movement
Note:VOGT
Yellow highlight | Location: 86
responsible for the creation of the basic intellectual blueprints
Note:I DUE...POCO NOTI MA
Yellow highlight | Location: 88
William Vogt and Norman Borlaug.
Yellow highlight | Location: 89
born in 1902,
Note:VOGT
Yellow highlight | Location: 90
“apocalyptic environmentalism”—the
Note:VOGT
Yellow highlight | Location: 91
reduces consumption
Note:LA SALVEZZA
Yellow highlight | Location: 92
affluence is not our greatest achievement but our biggest problem.
Note:X L AMBIENTALISTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 92
taking more from Earth than it can give.
Note:UNA PROSPERITÀ TEMPORANEA
Yellow highlight | Location: 94
Cut back! Cut back!
Note:MANTRA
Yellow highlight | Location: 96
Borlaug, born twelve years later,
Yellow highlight | Location: 96
“techno-optimism” or “cornucopianism”—the
Note:L EMBLEMA
Yellow highlight | Location: 98
in the 1960s created the “Green Revolution,”
Note:LA SUA IMPRESA
Yellow highlight | Location: 99
high-yielding crop varieties and agronomic techniques
Note:GREEN REV
Yellow highlight | Location: 99
avert tens of millions of deaths
Note:ESITO
Yellow highlight | Location: 100
affluence was not the problem but the solution.
Note:X I CORNUCOPIANS
Yellow highlight | Location: 100
getting richer, smarter,
Note:LA VIA
Yellow highlight | Location: 101
Innovate! Innovate!
Note | Location: 101
MANTRA
Yellow highlight | Location: 104
by using the advanced methods of the Green Revolution to increase per-acre yields, he argued, farmers would not have to plant as many acres.
Note:UN ESEMPIO DI IPOTESI BARLAUG
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“Eat lower on the food chain.” If people ate less beef and pork, valuable farmland would not have to be devoted to cattle
Note:IPOTESI PROTESI VOGT
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Wizards and Prophets—Wizards unveiling technological fixes, Prophets decrying the consequences of our heedlessness.
Note:PERCHÈ MAGO E PROFETA
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Their first meeting, in the mid-1940s, ended in disagreement.
Note:POI PIÙ INCONTRI
Yellow highlight | Location: 112
Vogt rebuked
Note:AGGRAVA IL PROB
Yellow highlight | Location: 113
Borlaug derided
Note:LUDDISTA!
Yellow highlight | Location: 115
Both men are dead now,
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intellectually dishonest, indifferent to the poor, even racist
Note:ACCUSE AL PROFETA
Yellow highlight | Location: 118
unthinking, scientifically ignorant, even driven by greed
Note:ACCUSE AL MAGO
Yellow highlight | Location: 119
at best postpones
Note:Cccccccccc
Yellow highlight | Location: 120
“ecocide.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 122
less two ideal categories than two ends of a continuum.
Note:CONTINUM
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the ship is too large to turn quickly.
Note:LA VIA ACELTA RICHIEDE TEMPO...X QS OCCORRE UNA SCELTA
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modified crops cannot be bred and tested overnight.
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planting huge numbers of trees
Note:IDEM
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backtracking is not easy,
Note:NN SI TORNA INDIETRO
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less about facts than about values.
Note:MA È ANCHE UNO SCONTRO DI VALIRI
Yellow highlight | Location: 134
implicit moral and spiritual visions:
Yellow highlight | Location: 136
Prophets look at the world as finite,
Note:UN MONDO FINITO
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Wizards see possibilities as inexhaustible,
Note:TUTTO È POSSIBILE
Yellow highlight | Location: 137
humans as wily managers of the planet.
Note:IL MONDO CREATO PER L UOMO
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growth and development
Note:W...BENEDIZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 138
stability and preservation
Note:P...QUEL CHE CONTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 139
Earth as a toolbox,
Note:W
Yellow highlight | Location: 139
world as embodying an overarching order
Note:P...NN DISTURBARE IL COSMO
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priority to personal liberty
Note:W
Yellow highlight | Location: 141
connection.
Note:P
Yellow highlight | Location: 142
capitalism, with its teeming global markets dominated by big corporations,
Note:W...ACCETTABILE
Yellow highlight | Location: 143
emphasis on personal autonomy, social and physical mobility, and the rights of the individual
Note:W
Yellow highlight | Location: 144
something fundamentally wrong with Western-style consumer
Note:P
Yellow highlight | Location: 145
smaller, more stable communities, closer to the earth,
Note:P...QUEL CHE CI VUOLE
Yellow highlight | Location: 145
freedom and flexibility
Note:P...ILLUSIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 146
atomized isolation, cut off from Nature
Note:P...IL RISCHIO
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Voltaire and Rousseau disputing
Note:UN ANTICIPO
Yellow highlight | Location: 148
Jefferson and Hamilton
Note:ALTRO ANTICIPO
Yellow highlight | Location: 148
Robert Malthus
Note:ALTRA OPPOSIZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 149
William Godwin and Nicolas de Condorcet
Yellow highlight | Location: 149
T. H. Huxley,
Note:ANCORA
Yellow highlight | Location: 150
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce
Yellow highlight | Location: 150
John Muir,
Note:ANCORA...P
Yellow highlight | Location: 151
Gifford Pinchot,
Note:W
Yellow highlight | Location: 151
Paul Ehrlich
Note:ANCORA
Yellow highlight | Location: 152
Julian Simon
Yellow highlight | Location: 160
Cut back or produce more?
Note:SINTESI
Yellow highlight | Location: 161
What this book is not: a detailed survey of our environmental dilemmas.
Note:Ttttttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 164
The Wizard and the Prophet presents no plan,
Note:NEMMENO UN PROGETTO....NELL ERA INTERNET EVITIAMO LE OPINIONI
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chapter I
Note:Ttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 167
what biology suggests about the trajectory of any species—
Note:CHE FINE FAREMO
Yellow highlight | Location: 168
all species, if given the chance, overreach, overreproduce,
Note:DESTINO COMUNE
Yellow highlight | Location: 169
Inevitably, they encounter a wall,
Note:INEVITABILE
Yellow highlight | Location: 169
Vogt and Borlaug were equally deluded.
Note:DA QS PUNTO DI VISTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 171
Long Island
Note:STORIA DI V.
Yellow highlight | Location: 171
near death from polio
Yellow highlight | Location: 171
ecological conversion
Yellow highlight | Location: 172
The Road to Survival (1948),
Note:BIBBIA DEL CATASTROFISMO
Yellow highlight | Location: 173
objective science,
Note:CONIUGA 1
Yellow highlight | Location: 174
a moral testament.
Note:E 2
Yellow highlight | Location: 175
birth into a poor Iowa
Note:STORIA DI B
Yellow highlight | Location: 175
released from what he saw as endless toil
Note:AMMIRAZIONE X I TRATTORI DI FORD
Yellow highlight | Location: 179
saved more lives than anyone in history.
Note:SECONDO IL WSJ
Yellow highlight | Location: 179
middle section of this book,
Note:Ttttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 180
four great, oncoming challenges: food, water, energy, and climate change.
Note:4 SFIDE...DA QUI PROCEDO RAPIDO...MEGLIO LEGGERE
Yellow highlight | Location: 210
The Population Bomb (1968),
Note:CLASSICO
Yellow highlight | Location: 211
The Limits to Growth (1972),
Yellow highlight | Location: 225
I became a Borlaugian, scoffing at the catastrophic scenarios
Note:NEFLI ANNI ORRANTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 227
Nowadays, though, worrying about my children, I am waffling.
Note:UN FIGLIO...TORNA LA PREOCCUP
Yellow highlight | Location: 229
Maybe my optimism is as ill-founded as my previous pessimism.
Note:?
Yellow highlight | Location: 230
Thus I oscillate
Yellow highlight | Location: 234
ONE State of the Species
Note:1@@@@@@@@@©
Yellow highlight | Location: 236
Special People
Note:Ttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 236
Begin with an image,
Note:NB TRENTENNE A CITTÀ DEL MESSICO
Yellow highlight | Location: 238
the task of coaxing something to grow on it.
Note:LA MISSIONE SUL TERRENO ARIDO
Yellow highlight | Location: 240
It is April 1946,
Yellow highlight | Location: 242
He spends his days staring at dying plants.
Yellow highlight | Location: 243
the work he began there
Note:PIÙ IMPORTANTE DELLA GUERRA A CUI PENSANO TUTTI
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on this land appears a second man.
Note:IL PROFETA DEL TITOLO
Yellow highlight | Location: 244
twelve years older,
Yellow highlight | Location: 245
legacy of polio.
Yellow highlight | Location: 246
Borlaug’s project is housed at a university in Chapingo,
Note:LA BASE
Yellow highlight | Location: 249
Vogt is on his honeymoon;
Yellow highlight | Location: 250
the head of the Conservation Division of the Pan American Union.
Note | Location: 250
LA SUA VESTE...V.
Yellow highlight | Location: 250
agriculture and its effects on the landscape.
Note:IL SUO INTERESSE
Yellow highlight | Location: 253
asks what they are doing with this 160 acres
Note:V.INCONTRA IL LAVORO DI B.
Yellow highlight | Location: 254
symbol of technical prowess
Note:QUEL CHE DIVERRÀ NB
Yellow highlight | Location: 255
Vogt will come to regard as dangerous to human survival.
Yellow highlight | Location: 256
enemy to human well-being.
Note:IL GIUDIZIO RISERVATO A WV
Yellow highlight | Location: 258
This is the beginning,
Yellow highlight | Location: 259
Things skirl out from Chapingo, they sprawl across the world
Note:ESPANSIONE DELLE IDEE
Yellow highlight | Location: 266
to use the discoveries of modern science to spare Mexico from a future of poverty and environmental degradation.
Note:LA MISSIONE DEI DUE
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challenges they see before Mexico actually confront all of humankind.
Note:MISSIONE PIÙ AMPIA
Yellow highlight | Location: 270
Vogt sees the city reaching across the dry lake bed
Note:LA MINACCIA
Yellow highlight | Location: 271
Hold it back!
Note:L ORDINE
Yellow highlight | Location: 272
Borlaug sees the pitiful scrim of wheat
Note:LA MINACCIA X B
Yellow highlight | Location: 272
How can we give people a better chance
Note:IL PENSIERO
Yellow highlight | Location: 273
the fields of maize and wheat
Note:X V UNA PIAGA
Yellow highlight | Location: 274
He calls for more sustainable, land-sparing agriculture,
Note:COSA OCCORRE X V
Yellow highlight | Location: 276
like trying to fight arson with gasoline.
Note:IL TENTATIVO DI NB X WV
Yellow highlight | Location: 277
“tree-hugger”
Note:NOMIGNOLO DI WVG
Yellow highlight | Location: 277
apostles of a new religion,
Note:ALTRI INSULTI
Yellow highlight | Location: 278
fetishizes Nature.
Yellow highlight | Location: 279
a holistic view that seeks to place humanity within a framework
Note:PIÙ OGGETTIVAMENTE
Yellow highlight | Location: 280
Borlaug, by contrast, speaks from the point of view of genetics—an
Note:GENETICA
Yellow highlight | Location: 282
Of Vogt’s natural bounds, it asks, How can we leapfrog them altogether?
Note:SUPERARE I LIMITI
Yellow highlight | Location: 282
“techno-optimism,”
Note:NOMIGNOLO
Yellow highlight | Location: 284
Nature knows best!
Note:MOTTO DI VW
Yellow highlight | Location: 284
wants the two men to have a ringing debate,
Note:MAI ACCADUTO
Yellow highlight | Location: 286
Mexican government has adopted new soil and water conservation laws.
Note:WV FA LOBBY X DISMETTERE IL PROGETTO NB
Yellow highlight | Location: 288
New York Zoological Society,
Note:FONDAZIONI A SUPPORTO DI WV..POVA ROBA
Yellow highlight | Location: 288
Committee for Bird Preservation,
Yellow highlight | Location: 289
American Wildlife Institute.
Yellow highlight | Location: 290
Rockefeller Foundation,
Note:A SUPPORTO DI NB
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he drafts and redrafts a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation.
Note:LOBBING DI V
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Rockefeller (1) is doing everything wrong and (2) should put Vogt in charge of doing it right.
Note:ACFONTENUTO
Yellow highlight | Location: 298
increase populations.
Note:SALVARE DALLE MALATTIE...UNICO OBBIETTIVO
Yellow highlight | Location: 298
feeding of those populations.”
Note:NULLA PER
Yellow highlight | Location: 299
boosting agriculture and industry is not the answer,
Note:IL POCO CHE SI FA È SBAGLIATO
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If just ten fish remain in a pond, the solution to running out of fish is not more efficient nets.
Note:ANALOGIA
Yellow highlight | Location: 302
a change in our relationship with Nature.
Note:COSA SERVE?
Yellow highlight | Location: 307
The World Is a Petri Dish
Note:Tttttttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 309
Margulis was one of the most important biologists in the last half century—she
Note:LYNN MARGULIS
Yellow highlight | Location: 310
it did not consist of two
Note:RIORDINO L ALBEROL DELLA VGITA IN 5 REGNI
Yellow highlight | Location: 310
(plants, animals, fungi, protists, and two types of bacteria).
Yellow highlight | Location: 316
greatest source of evolutionary creativity: the microworld of bacteria, fungi, and protists.
Note:LA NOSTRA FISSA SUGLI ANIMALI
Yellow highlight | Location: 317
90 percent of the living matter on Earth consists of microorganisms,
Yellow highlight | Location: 319
form giant super-colonies, reproduce either asexually or by swapping genes with others, take in genes from entirely unrelated species, merge into symbiotic beings—the
Note:COSE CHE LORO SANNO FARE E NOI NO
Yellow highlight | Location: 321
giving rise to the oxygen we breathe.
Note:UNA LORO PICCOLA IMPRESA
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pandas and polar bears were epiphenomena—interesting
Note:INTERESSANTI MA INSIGNIFICANTI
Yellow highlight | Location: 323
Homo sapiens, she once told me, is an unusually successful species.
Note:STRANISSIMO
Yellow highlight | Location: 324
fate of every successful species to wipe itself out—that
Note:MA
Yellow highlight | Location: 326
Neither conservation nor technology has anything to do with biological reality.
Note:NB E WV FUORIK STRADA
Yellow highlight | Location: 328
the Russian microbiologist Georgii Gause.
Note:UN EROE DI LM
Yellow highlight | Location: 328
Born in 1910,
Yellow highlight | Location: 329
Gause looked with envy at Rockefeller’s funds,
Note:COME V.
Yellow highlight | Location: 334
Pearl and Reed believed they were on to something.
Note:NEL 1920…STUDI SULLA CURVA DEMO DELLE POPOLAZIONI
Yellow highlight | Location: 335
parallel research with fruit flies, locking a male and female in a bottle full of food
Note:ANALOGIA DELLA MOSCA
Yellow highlight | Location: 337
convinced that he had found a universal law,
Yellow highlight | Location: 344
discovered that the flies moved around so much that they were hard to count.
Note:GG
Yellow highlight | Location: 344
Gause decided to work with microorganisms.
Yellow highlight | Location: 346
a pinch—of oatmeal
Note:IL CIBO PRESCELTO
Yellow highlight | Location: 348
Paramecium caudatum or Stylonychia mytilus, both single-celled protozoans,
Note:L ANIMALE PRESCELTO
Yellow highlight | Location: 350
The Struggle for Existence, published in 1934.
Note:I RISULTATI
Yellow highlight | Location: 355
scientists often refer to Gause’s curve as an “S-shaped curve.”
Note:ANDAMENTO POP OSSERVATO
Yellow highlight | Location: 357
the line hits an inflection
Note:CONVESSO
Yellow highlight | Location: 358
until the organism begins to run out of food, at which time there is a second inflection
Note:CONCAVO
Yellow highlight | Location: 359
Eventually the line descends, and the population falls toward zero.
Note:ESTINZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 362
Proteus vulgaris,
Note:STA NJEL NS INTESTINO
Yellow highlight | Location: 368
Twelve hours after that, the ball of living cells would be the size of Earth.
Note:SI RIPRODUCE A VVELOCITÀ PAZZESCHE
Yellow highlight | Location: 369
lack of resources prevent the vast majority of P. vulgaris from reproducing.
Note:MA MANCA IL CIBO
Yellow highlight | Location: 370
to make more of themselves,
Note:LO SCOPO DI TUTTI...DARWIN DOCET
Yellow highlight | Location: 371
creatures have a maximum reproductive rate:
Yellow highlight | Location: 372
rate is about twenty children
Note:PER NOI
Yellow highlight | Location: 373
only a few members of each generation manage to reach this rate.
Note:IL COMPITO DELLA SELEZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 375
the size of its habitat
Note:I VICOLI POSTI AL P.VULGARIS
Yellow highlight | Location: 376
supply of nourishment
Yellow highlight | Location: 376
other, competing microbes.
Yellow highlight | Location: 378
eats and divides, eats and divides.
Note:IL BATTERIO ALL INIZIO
Yellow highlight | Location: 380
P. vulgaris experiences a vest-pocket apocalypse.
Note:QUANDO FINISCE IL CIBO
Yellow highlight | Location: 381
a few species manage to escape their limits,
Note:ECCEZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 384
in New York City, zebra mussels invaded the lower Hudson River,
Note:UN ESEMPIO
Yellow highlight | Location: 385
a million eggs a year
Yellow highlight | Location: 386
The species originated in the Azov, Black, and Caspian seas
Note:ARRIVATE CON LA VGLOBALIZ
Yellow highlight | Location: 388
The Hudson first saw them in 1991.
Note:IN EUROPA DAL 1600
Yellow highlight | Location: 388
half the mass of living creatures in the river.
Note:IN UN ANNO
Yellow highlight | Location: 389
carpeted every square foot.
Yellow highlight | Location: 389
covered boat bottoms,
Yellow highlight | Location: 390
Bust followed boom; the population collapsed.
Yellow highlight | Location: 393
They did exhaust their food supply, but they also were attacked by a local predator,
Note:DUE CAUSE
Yellow highlight | Location: 395
I went to a park at the edge of the Hudson, I couldn’t step into the river—the
Note:15 ANNI FA TROPPE CINCHIGLIE SULLE SPONDE
Yellow highlight | Location: 396
Nowadays at the park the creatures are mostly gone. Children splash happily in the shallows.
Yellow highlight | Location: 397
Humans are no different, Margulis believed.
Note:UOMINI E COZZE
Yellow highlight | Location: 398
Homo sapiens is just one creature among many,
Yellow highlight | Location: 400
on the edge of the petri dish. Wizard or Prophet, it didn’t matter.
Note:SIAMO AGLI ESTREMI...NESSUNO PUÒ FARCI NULLA
Yellow highlight | Location: 401
another briefly successful species.
Yellow highlight | Location: 401
Of Lice and Men
Note:Tttttttttttttt
Yellow highlight | Location: 402
Why and how did humankind become “successful”? And what, to an evolutionary biologist, does “success” mean,
Note:IL MISTERO DEL SUCCESSO
Yellow highlight | Location: 404
Mark Stoneking
Note:UNA RISPOSTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 405
his son’s school warning of a lice outbreak in the classroom.
Note:1999
Yellow highlight | Location: 405
researcher at the Max Planck Institute
Note:LIPSIA
Yellow highlight | Location: 408
humanus capitis,
Note:DUE PIDOCCHI...UNO IN TESTA
Yellow highlight | Location: 409
humanus corporis,
Note:SULLA PELLE
Yellow highlight | Location: 413
Humanity’s great cover-up had created a new ecological niche, and some head lice had rushed to fill it.
Note:QUELLI DELLA TESTA SI SONO EVOLUTI ADATTANDOSI AI VESTITI
Yellow highlight | Location: 414
a new subspecies arose.
Note:TRASFORMAZIONE E SOPRAVVIVENZA
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a rough date for when people first wore clothing.
Note:QUANDO LA MUTAZIONE?
Yellow highlight | Location: 419
107,000 years ago.
Note:LA SEPARAZIONE
Yellow highlight | Location: 422
Clothing is ornament and symbol;
Note:IL VESTITO...TECNOLOGIA TUTT ALTRO CHE BANALE
Yellow highlight | Location: 424
a mental shift had occurred.
Note:CON L ABBIGLIAMENTO
Yellow highlight | Location: 424
a realm of complex, symbolic artifacts.
Note | Location: 424
COSA È DIVENTATO L UOMO...CULTURA
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Human beings were engraving pieces of ochre and ostrich shells in southern Africa.
Note:NASCE ANCHE L ARTE
Yellow highlight | Location: 426
carving elegant harpoons
Note:AFRICA CENTRALE
Yellow highlight | Location: 427
ornamental beads
Note:COLLANE...CORNO D AFRICA
Yellow highlight | Location: 427
burying the dead
Note:MEDIO ORIWNTE
Yellow highlight | Location: 428
becoming human.
Note:IN POCHE PAROLE
Yellow highlight | Location: 429
Homo sapiens, a bipedal primate.
Note:SIGNIFICATO DI UOMO...PRIMO
Yellow highlight | Location: 429
relating to or characteristic of our genus, Homo.
Note:SECONDO...NUOVA CLASSIFICAZ
Yellow highlight | Location: 432
Several species of Homo—the
Note:UN TEMPO
Yellow highlight | Location: 433
Homo sapiens (us), Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), Homo denisova (Denisovans), Homo naledi, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo floriensis
Note:ESEMPI
Yellow highlight | Location: 436
ancient types of humans bred with each other—
Note:SICURAMENTE SAP E NED
Yellow highlight | Location: 437
only one species of human now walks the planet.
Note:OGGI
Yellow highlight | Location: 439
Human-ness is the quality—a mix of creativity, drive, and moral awareness—that transforms humans into persons.
Note:TERZO
Yellow highlight | Location: 440
spark or spirit,
Yellow highlight | Location: 440
unique
Note:UNICITÀ
Yellow highlight | Location: 441
Homo sapiens want to believe they are special,
Yellow highlight | Location: 442
Homo sapiens seems not to have created art, played music, invented new tools, worked out the motions of the planets, or worshiped gods
Note:NON DA SUBITO...RICHIESTE DECINE DI MIGLIAIA DI ANNI
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long, skinny, string-shaped molecules.
Note:IL DNA...SIMILE X TUTTI
Yellow highlight | Location: 449
molecule is composed of two chains
Yellow highlight | Location: 450
links in the chains are called “bases” or “nucleotides.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 451
links—segments of the DNA chain,
Note:GENE
Yellow highlight | Location: 451
The totality of the genetic information
Note:GENOMA...INDIVIDUALE O DI SPECIE
Yellow highlight | Location: 454
two peoples’ genomes differ in only about one out of every thousand bases.
Note:DIFFERENZE
Yellow highlight | Location: 455
Escherichia coli,
Note:UN PARAGONE CON...
Yellow highlight | Location: 455
one out of fifty.
Note:DIVERSITÀ
Yellow highlight | Location: 456
twenty times more diverse than their hosts.
Yellow highlight | Location: 457
organisms also vary in terms of duplicated or deleted segments of DNA.
Note:MA C È UN ALTRA DIFFERENZA
Yellow highlight | Location: 463
humans are less diverse than almost all apes.
Note:OMOGENEI
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differences between one chimpanzee
Note:ES...PIÙ GRANDE
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humans are at the bottom, along with endangered species like wolverines and lynxes.
Note:PIÙ UNIFORMI...PIÙ IN XICOLO
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a legacy of small population
Note:UNIFORMITÀ
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at some point our numbers must have fallen dramatically,
Note:SPECULAZIONE SULLA NS STORIA
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ten thousand people—the
Note:FORZSE
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chance can alter its genetic makeup with astonishing rapidity. New mutations can arise and spread;
Note:IN PICHI SI MUTA PIÙ IN FRETTA
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a single gene in a single member of the small group that populated Ice Age Europe
Note:ES...OCCHI AZZURRI
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something special, something that made us human.
Note:DURANTE UNA DI QS CRISI...SPECULAZIONE
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Solenopsis invicta, the red imported fire ant.
Note:ANALOGIA
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originated in southern Brazil,
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frequent floods.
Note:HABITAT
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furiously active creatures
Note:RISPONDONO SUBITO AI DISASTRI DELLE ALLUVIONI
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knitting their bodies
Note:LA TECNICA USATA
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Like criminal gangs, fire ants thrive on chaos.
Note:UNA VELOCITÀ CHE LE RENDE DOMINANTI
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In the 1930s
Note:IMPORTATA CASUALMENTE NEGLI USA
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in the port of Mobile, Alabama.
Note:SCOPERTE DA EDWARD O WILSON
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just a few thousand individuals—a
Note:UN PICCOLO NUMERO...PIÙ SOGGETTO A MUTAZIONI
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In its homeland, fire ant colonies constantly fight each other, reducing their numbers
Note:SOTTO CONTROLLO
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cooperative super-colonies,
Note:IN AMERICA
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wiping out competitors
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Linepithema humile, the Argentine ant.
Note:PRIMO OSTACOLO ALA COLONIZZ
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now the most populous society on Earth.
Note:FORMICA ARGENTINA
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Homo sapiens did something similar as it became human.
Note:ANALOGIA
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300,000 years ago
Note:APOARIZIONE DELLA NS SPECIE
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Until about 75,000 years ago—that
Note:RISTRETTI IN AFRICA
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People raced across the continents like so many imported fire ants.
Note:DOPO
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ten thousand years,
Note:IN AUSTRALIA
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Stay-at-home Homo sapiens 1.0,
Note:PRIMA VERSIONE
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aggressively expansive Homo sapiens 2.0.
Note:SECONDA VERSIONE DOPO IL RESTRINGIMENTO
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No more than a few hundred people initially left Africa,
Note:PRIMI COLONI
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species swung around the first inflection point, with the invention of agriculture.
Note:10000 ANNI FA
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Only when an unknown genius discovered naturally mutated grain plants that did not shatter—and
Note:PRIMA IL GRANO SI DISPERDEVA E NN CONVEGNO VA COLTIVARLO
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first in southern Turkey,
Note:CULTURE
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landscapes that, so to speak, waited for hands to harvest them.
Note:SCHIAVISMO
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Foragers manipulated their environment with fire,
Note:CAMBIA LA NS RELAZIONE CON LA NATURA
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Before agriculture, the Middle West, Ukraine, and the lower Yangzi Valley had been sparsely populated domains of insects and grass; they became breadbaskets,
Note:DALLA VARIETÀ ALL UNICITÀ
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a petri dish is a uniform expanse of nutrients, all ready for the taking.
Note:UCRAINA IN PROVETTA
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Homo sapiens 2.0A—A for agriculture—took
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subdue the planet.
Note:SUCCESSO
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two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, discovered the key steps to making synthetic fertilizer.
Note:PRIMO 900
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literally changed the chemical composition of the earth.
Note:DUE PERSONAGGI CHE DOVREMMO CONOSCERE MEGLIO
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soil and groundwater nitrogen levels have risen worldwide.
Note:USO MASSICCIO DI FERTILIZZANTI
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Haber and Bosch enabled our species to extract an additional 3 billion people’s worth of food
Note:EFFETTI
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The improved wheat, rice, and (to a lesser extent) maize varieties developed by Borlaug
Note:ALTRA INNOVAZIONE ANNI 50
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Antibiotics, vaccines, disinfectants, and water-treatment plants pushed back humankind’s bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoan enemies.
Note:SUCCESSI E NUMERO
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Rocketing up the growth curve,
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humans grab “about 40% of the present net primary production in terrestrial ecosystems”—40
Note:BIOLOGI DI STANFORD NEL 1986
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figure had risen to “39 to 50%.”
Note:10 ANNI DOPO
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In 2000, the chemist Paul Crutzen and the biologist Eugene Stoermer awarded a name to our time: the Anthropocene,
Note:ANTROPOCENE AGIAMO SU SCALA MNDIALE
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If we follow Gause’s pattern, growth will continue at delirious speed until the second inflection point, when we have exhausted the global petri dish.
Note:LA PARABOLA
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It would be foolish to expect anything else, Margulis thought.
Note:PER BIOLOGI È UNA LEGGE
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To avoid destroying itself, the human race would have to do something deeply unnatural,
Note:INNATURAL
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constrain its own growth
Note:MAI VISTO
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Brown tree snakes in Guam, water hyacinth in African rivers, rabbits in Australia, Burmese pythons in Florida—all
Note:TUTTE SPECIE DI SUCCESSO COLLASSATE
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Not one has voluntarily turned back.
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zebra mussels in the Hudson
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Why should we expect Homo sapiens to fence
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“discount rate,”
Note:MISURA IL VALORE DEL FUTURI X GLI ECONOMISTI
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broken stoplight up the street now
Note:CI INTERESSA QUESTO... NN IL MALCONTENTO IN CONGO CHE POTREBBE SFOCIARE
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here we are asking governments to focus on potential planetary boundaries that may not be reached for decades or even centuries.
Note:FINTA PREOCCUPAZIONE
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From this perspective, is there any reason to imagine that Homo sapiens, unlike mussels, snakes, and moths, can exempt itself from the fate of all successful species?
Note:POCO CRWDIBILE UN SUCCESSO...LO STOP E LO SVILUPPO INDEFINITO NN SI SONO MAI VISTI
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humans are simply part of evolution’s handiwork,
Note:PER UNO SCIENZIATO
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the answer to the question “Are we doomed to destroy ourselves?” is “Yes.”
Note:X IL BIOLOGO
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magical exception—it
Note:L UNICA SPERANZA
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Why should we be different?
NN RESTA CHE CHIEDERSI
