Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
Thich Nhat Hanh
Rider: 2021
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By now everyone knows how likely it is that human-caused global warming and its attendant environmental degradation will spell the annihilation of most forms of life inhabiting the planet.

But this has all happened before. At the end of the Permian Period, 252 million years ago, it was volcanoes in Siberia that were polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Palaeontologists call it ‘the Great Dying,’ because temperatures rose by 8°C, killing off up to 96 per cent of all species on Earth. That’s not 100 per cent, though, and the surviving plants and creatures adapted themselves to whatever misshapen niches were still available. Eventually a vast new ecosystem grew up, very different to the last one, but just as rich and complex.

• Tags: Issue 28, Rupert Arrowsmith, Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam