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Human Nature by James Trefil, Times Books/Henry Holt, $26, ISBN 0805072489 Reviewed by Ehsan Masood

THE cover of Human Nature claims it is a blueprint for managing the Earth. It is not. Nevertheless it is an important work, and part of a small but growing body of literature that offers an alternative to the environmentalist approach to safeguarding our planet鈥檚 future.

James Trefil, professor of physics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, has a thesis. It is that any credible environmental management plan must have humans at its centre. This might mean in practice that Trefil would oppose a scheme that denied farmers irrigation water so that it could be diverted to conserve an endangered species of fish. He would support a plan to improve air quality in a smog-filled city on the grounds that it would improve human health along with the natural environment.

Trefil knows his thesis is controversial. His list of people to thank is cut short because 鈥渟everal colleagues鈥� became so dismayed by the heretical nature of some of my conclusions that they asked not to be recognised by name.鈥�

But will he be allowed to debate his thesis? Environmental scientists worry that contrarian books will be used by politicians to delay action to protect the environment. This is partly why they took such strong exception to the last attempt to convey an alternative vision 鈥� The Skeptical Environmentalist by Danish statistician Bj酶rn Lomborg.

Lomborg did not deserve to be derided in the way that he was, and neither does Trefil. Not everyone will agree with his main thesis. Others will take issue with his dismissal of global climate models. But the reading public has a right to a diversity of opinions, and Human Nature deserves to be read by all those who understand the value of difference 鈥� and those who don鈥檛.