Books
Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization
University of Chicago Press; First edition (February, 2019)
Abundant earthIn Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism?
About Eileen
Eileen taught in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech for 22 years, retiring in 2020. Her work focuses on the biodiversity crisis and destruction of wild places, pathways to halt these trends, and ways forward toward creating an ecological civilization. She is coeditor of a number of books, including Keeping the Wild (2014), Protecting the Wild (2015), and Cohabiting Earth (2025). She has authored and coauthored numerous academic papers as well as popular writings, and served as associate editor of the online journal The Ecological Citizen (2017-2026). Her most recent book, Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2019.
