Whether we live in a golden age of scientific dispute is disputed, not least by Professor Steve Jones, but we certainly have lived through a golden age of science writing. Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, E O Wilson, Steven Pinker and Jones himself have taken evolution out of academia and engaged the educated public. Yet, for all their skill, watching them has been like watching a concert party for the troops in a war zone: an interesting diversion from the main event. They have been arguing about selfish genes, punctuated equilibrium, sociobiology and atheism, while barely noticing the biological catastrophe around them. The “Holocene extinction event”, a destruction of flora and fauna by the human race so extensive that it is comparable with the five other mass extinctions in the 550-million-year history of complex life on earth, is ravishing the planet, but great writers on evolution have stayed silent as man destroys their raw material.
Jones makes ample amends in his new study of the poisoning of the coral reefs, but I put it to him that, for most of their careers, he and his contemporaries have missed the dying elephant in the room.
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