(I hope that Mr Morrison, with the profits from this book, will buy himself a keyboard whose comma key works more than half the time.)
Foreword by Lynn Margulis:

If DNA is the underlying source of all animal behavior, then these "Qs are raised:
1: How are human genetic imperatives translated into neuronal activity & incorporated into our behavior without the rational brain becoming aware that it has been bypassed?
2: If genes are the source of all behavior, what part, if any, does culture play?"

"...curious perception that... each of us exists as two separate entities--one physical, the other spiritual... continues to provide humanity w most of its triumphs and tragedies and all of its moral dilemmas. ...is both our pleasure & grief. The human brain is more like an old farmhouse--a crude patchwork of lean-tos... that conceal the ancient amphibian-reptilian toolshed at its core. 'We' conveniently contend that we alone of all earth's species are not normal animals, an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof. And none exists."

P11: The energy we take, directly or indirectly, to feed, clothe, & house ourselves, amounts to somewhere between 20% - 40% of all the solar energy trapped on the earth's surface. ...then we draw on previous solar income... "in the form of coal, oil, & gas. Our survival depends on the wholesale extinction of other species."

P15: Edmund Wilson...the 'normal' backgrnd extinction-rate is about one species per million/year. Human activity increased it to 1,000 to 10,000 times that much in the rainforest, by area-reduction alone. 74 a day! Clearly we are in the midst of one of the great extinction spasms of geological history.

16: "...globally, 30,000 species a year. 3.4/hour! according to Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin (book: The Sixth Ectinction: Biodiversity & its Survival. Estimates range from 13,000 to 100,000." (out of about 1.75 million)

12 Indicators of Global Warming:

1. Polar drill cores show that CO2 & methane levels rose sharply in the 20th century.
2. The mean global temp increased about 0.6 C in the past 100 years, & is now rising faster than ever.
3. The anomalous pattern of equatorial wind & water currents known as ENSO, has reappeared with increasing freq'cy in the last 30 years.
4. Average air temps over Antarctica have risen by 2.5 C during the last 50 years. average wtr temp in southern ocean (nr Macquarie Island) risen 1 C this century. [no doubt accelerating]
5. w polar warming, the Ross & Wordie ice shelves that once attached to the coast, have largely disintegrated. Now, the huge Larsen ice shelf...
6. Analysis of whaling records shows that Antarctica's vast apron of sea ice shrank by 25% in the 20th century. Now 1.4%/decade. ...even faster in the Arctic. (surprisingly thinner North polar ice cap.)
7. Alpine glaciers on all continents lost over half their volume since 1850,& snowlines have retreated ~200 meters. ...equatorial glaciers may disappear entirely within a few decades.
8. Sea levels are now more than 15 centimeters higher than 1900. ...current increase: 2 mm/yr suggests the process is accelerating.
9. w warmer Pacific wtr, 80% decline in zooplankton, posing a threat to the ocean's carbon sink. It absorbs 20-40% of human CO2. Warming stratefies wtr, prevents nutrient-rich abyssal currents from enriching surface photo-plankton--the basis of the food-chain!
10. Large areas of shallow-wtr coral-reefs r bleaching & dying as sea-temps climb past tolerance of their symbiotic algae. 10% of reefs affected already.
11. w unprecedented drought, record temps, & accumulation of forest litter, "more tropical forest burned than at any other time in recorded history" ('97). It's been worse since.

[The news] defines how we live; it's the envi that ultimately decides whether we live.

As geologist Wallace S. Broeker (Columbia U) remarked: "Climate is an angry beast, & we're poking it w sticks!"

China's efforts to feed 1/5 of the world pop, w 1/15 the world's arable land, has produced a rate of cropland destruction dbl the world average.

29: Soil Exhaustion: In the '50s, each ton of fertilizer added average 45 tons of grain. By 1965, that had halved; by the 80s, halved again. "Wonder-crops" only accelerated the problem.

Erosion: A '94 Austrailian dust storm contained 20 million metric tons of topsoil! ...most dumped into the Tasman Sea.
The average Aussie, American, or W European consumes more energy & resources than 120 people in (like) Bangladesh. [therefor] Austrailia'd fare no worse were it occupied by 2 billion Bangladeshies! Under-popped it is not!

Salinization: 400,000 sq Km of ag land is under-used or abandoned. The rate of loss is increasing. [Irrigation makes it worse] ( great details of Aral Sea disaster.)

Waterlogging. A hard clay pan builds up just below plow level. V expensive to drain land properly.

"Had the much vaunted GR of the 60s-70s not come to our rescue, the pop explosion wud likely V come to an abrupt halt 30yrs ago." ...11th-hour reprieve.... high-yield also meant high-cost. ...price: degraded land ... a debt to be paid by our children.

Vaclav Smil, U of Manitoba: "At least 2 billion people are alive because the proteins in their bodies are built with nitrogen that came ... from a factory.... In just one human lifetime, humanity has indeed developed a profound chemical dependence."
Over-fertilizing acidifies the soil & wtr & allows nitrogen out to the atmo as nitrous oxide. ...contribs to g-house warming & ozone destruction. ... ferts rivers/lakes, eutrophies.

... final arbiter of carrying capacity: freshwtr. Humans siphon off 54% of the world's. 70% by 2025. 1Kg of beef takes 50 to 150 tons of wtr!

OZONE
[The hole isn't just over the S pole]... '94-5, the levels over Hawaii had fallen 13%! loss continues... about 3%/decade.

FINAL EQUATION ...no such thing as a tech solution.... envir'l impact of humans depends on 3 factors: 1: population. 2: per-capita level of activity. 3: level of tech. We won't change any, so in effect, we are at minimum value right now.

"Thru the rest of the book, I shall attempt to show that despite charges... leveled vs our species, the mountain of ... evidence vs us is nevertheless thoroughly misleading. ... because it is entirely based on the false assumption that we are primarily rational beings & not only have the capacity to modify our behavior but bear the responsibility to do so."

These are species that readily achieve exponential growth, & include rabbits, lemmings, mice, and rats. They share four crucial characteristics:

1. essentially herbiverous & non-predatory (tho some become omni)
2. social animals whose territorial claims are small.
3. become plague-prone only in unstable environs where food & predator #s fluctuate dramatically.
4. small, highly mobile, promiscuous... w very fast reproductive cycle.

A drought-flood sequence can be the trigger.
Humans seem not to be one, because:

1. omnivores / part-time predator-scavengers.
2. tribal & highly territorial.
3. food resources stable, no bad predators.
4. large, semi-monogamous, slow repro cycle.

But, 10,000 yrs ago, that changed 'cause of:

1. farming, farm animals, storing surplus... we got a new option on all the world's food chains!
2. By exchanging a rigid social structure for the less regulated agrarian community, we became more like the mouse, not the primate.
3. villages/cities eliminated our predator problem. w clever farming, we got great crops. These released both safety catches on our fertility.
4. The bomb's fuse lit by mod medicine. [eliminating our microscopic predators] ...& the birth/death ratio went haywire.

3 million ago, a woman may've had no more'n 10 [chances of conceiving] over 30 yrs --as chimps still do. Now, she has up to 400! ...out of primate territory --3-5 offspring/female --into rodent range --up to 30. P103: As Stephen Jay Gould says: evolution is Darwinian, and culture is Lamarkian. (vastly faster.) Some species are "cornerstones; pull 'em out and it may lead to the demise of a whole suite of others. A few cornerstone species, & a whole ecological structure may collapse.

105: Forecasters of the future face 3 handicaps: brevity of human lifetime, anthro bias of the historical record, & that some bio processes take more than a human lifetime to respond to our assaults. (Global warming, i.e.)

107: one large Siberian power-plant emits more sulphur dioxide than all the plants in the U.S. combined. Nitrous oxide, produced in a car's catalytic converter, is 300 X more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

108: Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan: "There is no life w/o waste, exudate, pollution. In the prodigality of its spreading, life inevitably threatens itself w potentially fatal messes that prompt further evolution."

Lovelock: Darwin was insufficient. All organisms, by their chemistry, behavior, & interactions, tend to modify the environment to increase the chances of their continued existence.

120: Margulis & Dorion Sagan: "Taken at its greatest physiological extent, life is the planetary surface. Earth is no more a planet-sized chunk of rock inhabited with life than your body is a skeleton infested with cells."

123: Living bacteria have been found 3.5 Km down in solid rock. Methanogens. So many that some argue that all the earth's oil & gas come from them. Some evidence that it's true. Their biomass may exceed that of all surface life.

125: lil doubt that temp reversals (ice ages & back) occur with astonishing abruptness. some as low as a decade or two!

We have dallied too long at the banquet of natural resources, only to discover that the only way out is past the cashier. ...[the public] consensus [still] seems to be that, with the aid of a lil [more] technological tap-dancing, we may yet make our escape w/o paying the full price.

130: See the details here on how other plague-species have a hormonal mechanism to curtail their pop, where in stressful conditions! Do we?

143: "Where a powerful culture threatens to overwhelm its natural resources, the magical potion of mysticism comes to the biosphere's rescue, intoxicating & immobilizing the offenders so that the environment can step in & deliver the coup de grace."

DNA RULES!
P175: The presence of emotion is a clear signal that one or more of our genetic imperatives has been triggered and the old mammalian-reptilian structures of the brain have taken control. ...whenever that old fraud "morality" strides onto the stage ...dressed in duty, honor, loyalty, patriotism, justice... Once sex, tribal status, or territoriality have been aroused, it's very difficult to smuggle new facts into the argument.

I have more notes, but you'll hafta read the book. Just a few more things:
Visionary leaders (gd&bad) win the people over w the primal fairy tale, which must contain these 2 ingredients:
1: A Monster --preferably w an alien tongue (etc) & w diff-colored skin.
2: A Miracle --earned by sacrifice, but ending in a win for the home-team & a nasty end for the monster.

Our gene-driven behavior is as complex as Earth's weather patterns--better understood by chaos theory than by cause-&-effect.