ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how our species' environmental impact exacerbates our economic, social, and medical problems, in ways not generally appreciated. It discusses how evolutionary research on human behavior is helping to synthesize the badly fragmented fields of human knowledge, which is necessary to effectively address our environmental problems. The modern environmental movement was partly based on the realization that technological innovations, such as DDT and other pesticides, provide a double-edged sword: they fix some problems, but they often have undesirable side-effects on humans and the environment. The environmental sciences and medicine have both resisted applying evolutionary biology to humans. The proponents of multilevel selection argue that humans may be an exception among mammals in that group selection has been important in our evolutionary history.
