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In 1990, the Worldwatch Institute in Washington estimated that humankind has about forty years to make the transition to ‘an environmentally stable society’. If we have not succeeded by then, it concluded, ‘environmental deterioration and economic decline are likely to be feeding on each other, pulling us into a downward spiral of social disintegration’. Worldwatch is no millenarian cult, but a sober and careful organization whose annual summaries of world affairs have become the planet’s unofficial environmental health reports. Its pronouncements are cautiously worded, influential, and worth attending to, even if the timing is hard to predict.
Carolyn M. King completed a DPhil on the ecology of British weasels in 1971, then moved to New Zealand to join the Department of Scientific and Industrial Researchs Ecology Division as a scientist specialising in introduced predators. She edited the first edition of The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals in 1990, and the second in 2005. She taught zoology and conservation biology at Waikato University until 2018, where she continues writing full time as an Adjunct Professor.
