我们的星球以前是什么样子？未来又会变怎样？这几年，该下雪的地方不下雪，不该下雪的地方下了雪。有些地方老是犯洪灾，有些地方干旱的土地都裂开了，还引发了蝗灾。
 
讲到环保运动，不免要悲观。这也是无可厚非的：这个星球面临了这么多复杂、看似棘手的问题，再加上我们还要努力说服人们相信眼前正在发生的危机，困难重重，实在很难让人不负面。
 
但这样的负面情感言过其实了，和目前正在进行的环境管理是不平衡的，似乎沮丧过头了。还是有值得高兴的成功故事，《地球的过去与未来》提出了当前环境实验与创新领域中，其中一个非常值得进行且吸引人的方式：生态恢复。资深调查记者Paddy Woodworth花了好几年的时间到世界各个角落，和人们对谈，包括科学家、政治家和市井小民，和他谈话的都是环境恶化这场战争的前线战士。 走访墨西哥、纽西兰、芝加哥、开普敦等地的Woodworth 让我们看到振奋人心的成功案例（当然也有震撼人心的惨痛失败），成功的团队正试图用尖端科学恢复已经受到破坏、污染或其他问题影响的生态健康，在其中一些备受争议的案例中，这些团队还试图要让生态回到人类开始介入并产生影响以前的样貌。作者第一手的实地考察报告与访问参与环保运动人士的内容，让我们看见人们在恢复生态这块的承诺，所拥有及投入的力量与所遇到的限制。
 
光只有恢复生态无法解决环境所面临到各种问题。但《地球的过去与未来》说明了这种作法所扮演的角色，还有我们可以如何从这个成功的方法看见希望、获得灵感及新的知识，或许这个已经拯救一小块地球的方法，可以拯救整个星球。
 
好评
“Woodworth gives a stirring portrait of the hardworking environmentalists who are trying to restore landscapes to their former, untouched glory, but he also captures the dark side of the enterprise: it sometimes requires the brutal destruction of very large numbers of invasive species to make room for long-departed native ones. Restoration is also basically guesswork, Woodworth notes, because most of us have never actually experienced nature at its most pristine. Ultimately, he ends up wondering whether we can ever hope to restore ‘degraded ecosystems, and our own damaged relationship to the environment.’(Scientific American)
 
"Clear and thoughtful. . . . His descriptions of the people he meets are often charming and revealing. . . . I commend Woodworth for immersing himself in the field of restoration ecology so completely."(Science)
 
"Woodworth provides his readers with valuable access to the central topics, key developments, and contentious issues bound up in the young and evolving field of ecological restoration. . . . This book is not a naive appraisal of the promise of ecological restoration, but, rather, a clear-eyed assessment of its present state, including its limitations. . . . Our Once and Future Planet is a useful platform for anyone pondering where ecological restoration stands in the future environmental movement--or for anyone intending to shape its future."(Bioscience)
 
"Over the past few years there have been several attempts at a more popular treatment . . . but Paddy Woodworth's is certainly the best, and acclaimed as such by many of the most important theoreticians and practitioners in the field of restoration ecology. The book could hardly be more timely. . . . There is a freshness and clarity to Woodworth's approach. . . . Every project described here is wonderful and ground for hope, and taken together they weave a canvas of extraordinarily varied technique and approach."(Dublin Review of Books)
 
"An incisive analysis of the ethics and philosophy behind restoration ventures around the world. . . . A comprehensively researched and eloquently written work."(Irish Examiner)
 
"A scholarly and most informed account of the current state of restoration ecology. . . . Essentially the book is an excellent critique of science at work."(South African Journal of Science)
 
"Woodworth provides delightful descriptive passages about his travels, which balance the theory-heavy sections. An important text for scientists and policy makers as well as laypersons with an interest in supporting biodiversity on our planet."(Publishers Weekly)
 
"Outstanding: Paddy Woodworth has opened a broad and major window to the world of ecosystem restoration and its restoration biologists, for those of us who do it, know it, and the public who needs it.  He does this by actually taking the time to meet the practitioners, users and evaluators of restoration projects and their aftermaths, and cast a reporter's unjaundiced commentary about them. Woodworth understands, documents, and dissects the mandatory integration of the restoration project with its users, its producers and its likely future fate. He does this not by counting how many species of birds or trees are present or absent, but through unveiling the normal synergies—and antagonisms—that exist among any array of humans focused on a particular 'solution' to a biologically destructive assault on the wild world. The single largest problem with restoration, and Woodworth knows and portrays this problem very well, is persuading some significant portion of society to stop the assault that generated the need for restoration, let nature take possession again of the site and its processes, and stimulate the next generation to allow the continuity of that non-human possession. Sure, this is the world through Woodworth’s glasses, but that is what writing is all about . . . marvelous prose."(Daniel Janzen, University of Pennsylvania)
 
"Restoration ecology is a new science and a new human endeavour. Everyone can agree on the importance of its mission: to understand ecosystems well enough to heal wounds inflicted by a flawed but well-meaning species (us).  But not everyone agrees on how this can best be done. In this book Paddy Woodworth beautifully describes the earliest successes and failures, the fundamental arguments of theory and practice, of what may be the most important discipline on earth--reconciling people to nature through positive and thoughtful interaction. Only a journalist could navigate the technical arguments, the philosophical contradictions, the strong personalities and the political polarities that now define and affect restoration ecology. He may well be a Herodotus chronicling the birth of a hopeful new world."(Bruce Pavlik, head of restoration ecology, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
 
“This is a great piece of investigative journalism, based on extensive research in many countries, on a topic vital to the future of people and biodiversity on Earth. Paddy Woodworth has captured the spirit and detail of contemporary ecological restoration, its strengths, weaknesses, controversies, and especially its message of hope. I would commend this book to all interested in the challenge of devising new ways of sustainably living with biodiversity in a rapidly changing world.”(Stephen D. Hopper, University of Western Australia)
 
"In framing a new contract with nature, restoration ecology is evolving, diverse and often fraught with human tensions. On American prairies, in South African bush, on the peatlands of Ireland, it must wrestle with shifting cultural, political and economic mores. With his wide and robust reportage and analysis, Paddy Woodworth gives a superb overview of how this great new ambition is working out on the ground."(Michael Viney, author of Ireland: A Smithsonian Natural History)
 
"From ultralight pilots teaching young whooping cranes how to migrate the length of a continent through to ecologists using truckloads of waste orange pulp to reinstate tropical dry forest, Woodworth takes us on a global odyssey of efforts to heal what Aldo Leopold termed our world of wounds. An informative, balanced, and ultimately uplifting dissection of the promise, the politics and the prospects of ecological restoration."(Andrew Balmford, author of Wild Hope: On the Front Lines of Conservation Success)
 
关于作者
Paddy Woodworth，1988至2002年间是《Irish Times》的记者。他是《Dirty War, Clean Hands and The Basque Country》一书的作者。目前住在都柏林。