Wilson urges alliance to save species

Edward O. Wilson sees a future in which science and religion join forces to save the natural world.

Without such an alliance, said the legendary Harvard biologist and author, an alternative future is in store for the human race: one of accelerating environmental cataclysm fueled by overpopulation, deforestation, declining fisheries, and climate change.

If nothing is done, by the end of the century one-half of all species will be gone, or nearly gone, said Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus. In the next 50 years, a quarter of those species will become extinct because of climate change alone. That's a fast blow to Earth's biodiversity, which took 3.5 billion years to evolve.

"The defense of nature is the universal value," said the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in a Feb. 8 lecture to an audience of 250 at Harvard Divinity School's Andover Hall.

That defense naturally falls to both science and religion, "the two most powerful social influences in the world today," said the Alabama-born Wilson, who was raised a Baptist.

His latest book - one of three written in 2006 - is "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth." It's cast as an open letter, "a plea for help," to a Southern Baptist pastor.

The Divinity School seemed a good place for such a plea. Wilson's lecture was the eighth in the School's three-year series of talks on the "Evolution and Theology of Cooperation."