Silent Earth

Averting the Insect Apocalypse

By: Dave Goulson

Narrated by: Dave Goulson

Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Insects are essential for life as we know it. As they become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt; we simply cannot function without them. Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research and a lifetime's study, Dave Goulson reveals the shocking decline of insect populations that has taken place in recent decades, with potentially catastrophic consequences. He passionately argues that we must all learn to love, respect and care for our six-legged friends.

Eye-opening, inspiring and riveting, Silent Earth is part love letter to the insect world, part elegy, part rousing manifesto for a greener planet. It is a call to arms for profound change at every level - in government policy, agriculture, industry and in our own homes and gardens. Although time is running out, it is not yet too late for insect populations to recover. We may feel helpless in the face of many of the environmental issues that loom on our horizon, but Goulson shows us that we can all take simple steps to encourage insects and counter their destruction.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Dave Goulson (P)2021 Penguin Audio

A mandatory listen

This is for me the most important book of the year. A mandatory listen for everyone. If the insects thrive, the world thrive. This book shows you how to make the world thrive.

Starring Goulson As Noah The Entomologist

Silent Earth, like The Insect Crisis, another title on Audible on the exact same theme, makes for an informative, depressing, and somewhat inspiring/somewhat dictatorial account of the decline of insect biota in a post-industrial world. Goulson's style of writing and reading is back yard and sometimes back alley. The first half of the book presents a chapter-by-chapter investigation into the causes behind the current global decline in invertebrate life. Its good fodder for the aspiring bugspert and the author is authoritative when it comes to knowledge about the current entomological crisis. The author does a marvelous job in connecting the current predicament insects are facing to our own predicament. The evidence presented is substantial, but one cannot help but see the author lobbying for more research funding by weaponizing the narrative doom and gloom, and why do all these professors feel compelled to spend half of the time in their books talking about all the lovely female students they have supervised? Why cannot we get some books about this stuff by them, and not just the same crusty only white man scientist trying to write a Carson best seller and talking about urinals instead?

The second half of the book is not so flash. Sorry, but it tends to morph into a little bit of a cynical rich old white man (listen to me I went to Oxford) master-plan to save the world by living on a two-acre block in Sussex, growing organic vegetables, and transforming Britain's swarming undesirables into an army of natural historians and permaculture experts who have been saved from being fat and stupid in their commission flats by eating organic fruit and vegetables and building bee hotels. It is more myopic than idiotic. And there is also a foray into fiction in which Goulson presents himself as a type of Noah figure and fantasizes about shooting poor people as the creep onto his property to try and steal his organic vegetables. Oh, when will their insolence stop!

Criticism aside, if you have to choose between Silent Earth and The Insect Crisis, Silent Earth is a better listen,