COUNTDOWN

As long into the night I read Alan Weisman's urgent, eloquent, harrowing and yet hopeful, story-packed Countdown, I paused often. How did he do this? He trekked the globe in an all-consuming effort to see if we, humanity, will survive the twin knock out clobbers of population explosion and climate change. He writes of saints, heroes, and the self-consuming madness of greed. Everywhere, he finds the most fascinating person in a thousand miles, and makes a story out of what they tell us.

Somehow, after writing The World Without Us, an elegant thought experiment that imagined how earth would look without humanity, he has written an even better book.

Weisman poses questions upon which the survival of our species hinges: How many people can our planet reasonably support? Since we've already passed that number, how do we humanely reduce our numbers? Because we can't reduce our numbers quickly enough to stop eradicating other species, what species can't we absolutely live without? And lastly, how do we design a stable world and economy for a shrinking population?

Countdown answers these questions with whirling energy. We meet mountain gorilla stewards and a San Diego teacher who teaches the answers to the questions above by describing an Iranian carpet. We meet the great Indian poet Sugathakumari, who despairs of the rampant development of India's model state, Kerala. Most important of all, Weisman comes up with a single thoughtful answer to all four of the questions he poses.

The fate of our species depends on how quickly and thoroughly women become educated. Period. Knock out answer. Read the book and find out why.

Spoiler alert -- the book ends at Lake of the Isles, only blocks from Birchbark Books.

Yours for Alan Weisman's world changing outlook. Please read this book. Take your time. You will weep and yet be cheered. As Alan said when he was here in Minneapolis, "there are saints out there" so let's support what they are doing and gain a little grace, each one of us.

Louise