Our Current Situation As A Species

The four books listed in the right sidebar under "Amazon Associate" are insightful analyses of our current situation as a species. I am a huge fan of all four of these books, and view them as foundational in my own process of trying to figure out how best to respond to what comes next. I have previously posted on each of the authors (see Gary Snyder at 83, Earth Consciousness, Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis, The Dream of the Earth, Distant Neighbors, and Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry), and what I would like to do now is to offer a brief selection from each book, each day, for the next four days. Like food for thought. Or tapas. And, of course, if you would actually like to purchase any of these seminal works, the links in the right sidebar work really well for this (thx).  

[NOTE: True-color image shown above from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument abourd NASA's Terra satellite collected the land-surface data over 16 days, while NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth's clouds. Just so you know.].