Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right / Arlie Russell Hochschild -- London: The New Press, 2016

It is common for political commentators to lament the political divide that has become a chasm in our country.  In 2004, the divide was the subject of Barak Obama's breakthrough speech at the Democratic National Nominating Convention, but since then the divide has only become worse.  Among liberals, the main question the divide poses is, "why are so many people in the working class voting against their economic interests?"  This question was made popular by Thomas Frank's 2004 book, What's the Matter with Kansas?  Frank's explanation was that clever deception by establishment Republicans -- supported by right wing media -- has duped many working class people into betraying their economic interests, and all they get in exchange are empty promises to enact a socially conservative agenda.  Other authors have picked up on this theme.  Upon closer examination, though, this explanation appears too shallow and demeaning to account for the long-standing allegiance to the Republican Party among many working class voters.  Indeed, the explanation seemed too facile to UC-Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, especially as she spent five years in southwest Louisiana getting to know citizens on the other side of the divide.  Her book Strangers in Their Own Land is Hochschild's report on her "journey to the heart of our political divide."  It is an admirable contribution to the attempt to communicate across that divide.

Hochschild's contact with conservatives in and around the town of Lake Charles, Louisiana was facilitated by the liberal mother-in-law of one of her former graduate students.  Hochschild's Louisiana contact was able to introduce her to what was to Hochschild a warm and welcoming community of conservatives with whom she became friendly in the course of numerous formal and informal interviews.  These interviews were conducted over the course of five years.  Hochschild's project might be considered a classic anthropological study in which the anthropologist embeds herself in an alien community in an attempt to understand that community from the inside -- that is, from the perspective of the community members.  This requires a concerted effort to discard as much as possible the previous, external perspective and social assumptions the anthropologist brings to the study.  Hochschild describes this as overcoming "the empathy wall."  In doing so, Hochschild claims to have understood the "deep story" of conservatives living in and around Lake Charles.

By "deep story," she means a perspective that is not necessarily based on simple facts of the world, but on the what seems true emotionally.  Some deep story or another, in this sense, predicates everyone's sense of and explanation of the world.  One's deep story will predispose one to either be credulous or skeptical of the many dubious claims we routinely encounter.  The deep story is critical in constructing our system of beliefs.  By discovering the deep story of the conservatives in Lake Charles, Hochschild believes she is better able to understand the motives the people on the other side of the political divide.  By doing so, she was able to open up avenues of communication heretofore closed to her.  It is clear that her work encourages us not only to appreciate her own effort, but to follow in her footsteps -- to seek a more charitable understanding of those with whom we disagree.  We'll look at the deep story that lies behind the conservative worldview a little later.

To begin to understand the perspective of conservatives, Hochschild investigates what she calls a "keyhole issue:" environmental destruction.  Hochschild seeks to understand why people who have been severely harmed by pollution from Louisiana's the petrochemical industry would be so hostile to government regulation.  She calls this "the great paradox."  Curiously, the solution to the great paradox is one that environmentalists understand all too well.  Hochschilds interviewees recognize the damage done to their communities by industry.  The first portion of her book recounts the horrific effects she heard described.  In one instance, the 700 acres of Bayou d'Inde became so saturated with contaminants from illegal dumping by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company that the property value of the residents crashed and their livelihood from fishing was destroyed.  In another, a subterranean salt dome was punctured by the drill from a mining company, Texas Brine, causing a 37 acre sink hole to form which devoured the entirety of Bayou Corne, home to 350 residents.

While this is not part of the region of Louisiana known as "cancer alley," Hochschild heard story after story of cancer deaths.  Everyone in the area knew or was related to someone who had developed cancer.  In one instance a man recounts eleven people in his family and close neighbors (including himself and his wife) who died from or were fighting cancer.  Hochschild recounts so many tribulations faced by the residents of Lake Charles and its environs that it is bewildering to read of the general hostility to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality; but their hostility is not without some foundation.  These residents see government regulatory bodies failing to protect their land and health.

Indeed, the primary role of these regulatory bodies has been to permit the destruction of people's lives and communities in the interest of the petrochemical industry.  Among environmentalists this is said to be a consequence of "regulatory capture" by industry.  Due to the revolving door between industry and agency executives, regulations designed to protect people and the environment are merely one consideration balanced against business and economic interests.  The role of the regulator is to determine the extent to which exemptions can be made to "balance" these interests.  The agencies are reduced to exemption-granting bureaucracies.  Hochschild reports that "according to [Louisiana's] own website, 89,787 permits to deposit waste or do anything that affected the environment were submitted between 1967 and July 2015.  Of these, only sixty -- or .07 percent -- were denied."  In light of this, it is understandable that the residents would see the regulatory agencies as aiding and abetting their suffering.  (For an excellent examination of how regulatory agencies function and their failure to protect the environment, see Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age by Mary Christina Wood -- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.)

This plays directly into the hostility to taxes that is prominent among working class conservatives.  Far from providing value for the cost, government merely appropriates the workers' limited income for useless bureaucracies or for welfare programs that they believe go mostly to people other than themselves, including unproductive government bureaucrats.  Many of Hochschild's interviewees acknowledge that they or their family and neighbors take advantage of some of these programs, but they do so with some embarrassment and with the attitude that as long as its available and necessary, they might as well take advantage of it.  In many cases, they claimed to be willing to forego the assistance, if the entire program were abolished and attendant tax burden were removed.

The deep story behind these and other attitudes that Hochschild believes she has discovered was confirmed by her interviewees.  They imagine themselves in a long line in a open field.  The line is moving slowly toward a distant hill.  Over the hill is the American Dream.  They are patiently waiting their turn, when after a while, people who had been behind them, begin cutting in line in front of them.  They are expected to allow this because of the disadvantages these line-cutters (or their ancestors) experienced.  Of course, they see themselves as responsible and hard working, and that the line-cutters are getting something for nothing.  In this analogy, they are white and Christian, while the line cutters are members of minority groups: black, Latino, immigrants, Muslims, women, and government bureaucrats, often no more disadvantaged than they are.  To add insult to injustice, many in the line in front of them turn around to hurl unkind epithets at them: racist, homophobic, ignorant, cracker, redneck, hick, white trash, etc. and criticize them for a lack of empathy.  Recently, the President of the United States is actively facilitating the line cutting.  He himself is a line cutter.

Given this deep story and the tribulations faced by a clearly marginalized population, it is easy to understand why working class conservatives feel "anger and mourning" over their fallen status and why they might choose different means to rectify their loss than the means chosen by historically marginalized groups.  It is also understandable why they might resent a media that ridicules them, a liberal elite that ignores them in preference to people they see as their competition, and even a Republican establishment that works in tandem with the corporations in a system of crony capitalism.  Their condition, while possibly slightly better than minorities and recent immigrants, is not markedly different when compared to the owners and managers of our society who are clearly beyond their reach.  Consequently, their dignity requires an even playing field, not vis-a-vis the corporate and government elite, but vis-a-vis their ordinary fellow citizens.

While Hochschild does not mention meritocracy, her observations support the idea that working class conservatives ardently support the values implicit in a meritocracy.  They do not want what they have not earned and they find it morally objectionable that anyone would be required to sacrifice (in taxes) their hard earned money for the benefit of others.  Charity must be voluntary or it is little better than theft.  This also provides the basis for excusing the excesses of the most well-off and defending them against high tax rates.  For the conservative working class, work and business is the essence of social life, and those who have become successful deserve admiration and respect, not envy and disdain.  Government intrusion in the market merely interferes with the working of a meritocracy.   It is just another obstacle in their path to someday joining the wealthy class.  One need not have a highly developed defense of laissez faire capitalism to recognize the relative value of hard work and frugality in markets dominated by small business and service sector employment.  In much of the country, particularly in rural areas, this is business environment.  Large corporations, even with their downsides, can be believed to be beneficial engines in an otherwise stagnant economy.  In the words of one of Hochschild's interviewees, "pollution is the price we pay for capitalism."

Perhaps the most admirable features of Strangers in Their Own Land are the effort to overcome the "empathy wall" and the goal of seeing those on the other side not as simple cardboard cut outs described in political polemics, but as real people living difficult lives with a genuine sense of dignity and morality.  In many ways, this morality is different from people on the other side of the wall, but in other ways it is similar.  Indeed, this was the message that Barak Obama attempted to communicate in his 2004 speech before the Democratic National Nominating Convention.

Furthermore, Hochschild is able to distinguish species of thought within the people she interviewed.  In Part 3, Hochschild describes "the team player," "the worshiper," and "the cowboy."  One can see these personalities in wider political discourse.  The team player is a loyal member of the Republican establishment, well-acquainted with the ideology of conservative politics, particularly deregulation and reduced taxation.  The team player places trust in the party and its allied institutions in its contest against the Democrats and their allied institutions.  The worshiper places his or her faith in God and the Church above any other social or political institution and is in common cause with the conservative (read Republican) movement insofar as he or she believes God, the Church, and Christian morality is under attack from a secular (read Democratic) society which has largely dominated government and our main cultural institutions.  Finally, the cowboy is the classic rugged individual, willing to resist social forces larger than himself or herself in defense of his or her dignity.  Team players might be just as familiar to many as Democratic Party team players, differing only in that they are motivated by a different ideology, while worshipers and cowboys cut an honorable figure, if one accepts the values that they accept.  But clearly, liberals must scale the empathy wall before allowing themselves to adopt this point of view.  Hochschild's work should help liberals understand that conservatives must not be treated as a monolith, but that they are as various as any political grouping and as people, they have legitimate interests and are deserving of basic respect.

This, however, introduces one of two criticisms that I have of the work.  Hochschild consciously sought to study "the geographic heart of the right."  For her, this turned out to be Louisiana which cast only 14% of its votes for Obama in 2012, has 50% of its residents supporting the Tea Party, and is second only to South Carolina in Tea Party state and federal legislators.  Furthermore, she studied only people in a particularly, environmentally hard hit parish, Calcasieu Parish.  While this admittedly would provide her a clear picture of people on the other side of the political divide, it is also a rather rare -- perhaps unique -- corner of the other side.  Hochschild wondered if her subjects were "odd-balls," not representative of conservatives in other locales, but she was reassured to find that the same relationship between environmental damage and politic ideology held across the country.  In an appendix she writes, "The Louisiana story is an extreme example of the politics-and-environment paradox seen across the nation."  But this is precisely what should concern her.  An extreme example is by definition an odd-ball.  Working class conservatives, Tea Party supporters, and Trump supporters live in communities all across the country, each with their own local history:  Peoria, Illinois; Manchester, New Hampshire; Grand Junction, Colorado; even Seattle, Washington and New York City.  So her exploration of "the heart of the right" may not tell us as much about the right as she suggests.

My second criticism of her work is its relative neglect of the elephant in the room: race relations.  The deep story that was being told to her studiously avoided discussions of race.  When it did arise, her interviewees reported not being racist.  After all, they rejected David Duke, did not use "the N-word," and did not hate black people; however, the deep story of a lot of other southerners would include a long history of slavery at the hands of white people, followed by apartheid, Jim Crow, and now the incarceration state.   Granted, Hochschild was acting in the fine tradition of anthropology in attempting to understand her subjects from their own perspective, but the family legacies of racism, particularly in the South, and the barely disguised (and sometimes undisguised) racial animosity among Tea Party members, the Alt-right, and Donald Trump's campaign seems to demand that the question of race be seriously dissected.  Hochschild's subjects may not consider themselves racist and they may not be racist on their own understanding of the concept, but they also might be simply disingenuous or in denial about their own subconscious motivations.  It seems that Hochschild was simply too polite to really explore this hot topic, possibly because she might lose access to her subjects.

Nonetheless, Strangers in Their Own Land is a remarkably valuable look into a world that academic authors seldom approach dispassionately, much less with sympathy.  A dispassionate approach is necessary to understand and address the political divide that has paralyzed nearly every attempt to address important social, political, and economic problems.  Additionally, a sympathetic approach is necessary in order to demonstrate respect for a population that objectively speaking has suffered grievous harm from our social, political, and economic order.  Hopefully, Hochschild's work will initiate a new phase of social and political analysis that will bridge the chasm that separates us and bring us greater understanding, peace, harmony, and justice.

The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans / Mark Lynas -- London: Fourth Estate, 2011.

In 2007, Mark Lynas published a brilliant book entitled Six Degrees (reviewed in this blog).  In it, he presented in a clear and readable format, the consequences of a warming planet.  Each chapter described the scientific research that predicted the effects of an additional centigrade degree of global warming, up to a six degree warming.  Currently, there is a debate in the scientific community about whether we can prevent the planet from warming more than two degrees centigrade.  It is likely that we will not be able to keep the increase below two degrees and four degrees is frighteningly possible.  Lynas's book provides a clear picture of what is at stake.  While we may have to suffer a two degree increase, a concerted effort to curb our greenhouse gas emissions can prevent a four degree increase which will make a huge difference to the well-being of future generations.

Based on the strength of Lynas's Six Degrees, I had high hopes for his 2011 book, The God Species.  I also understood that he had joined a faction of environmentalists that has parted ways with the mainstream opinion among environmentalists.  So I hoped his work would offer constructive challenges to how I thought about the strategies for mitigating our unfolding environmental crises.  To a limited extent, I was not disappointed, but Lynas's main thesis is not generally well-established.  Lynas attempts to argue that because our species has fundamentally changed the planet's ecology, we must now accept responsibility for "our new task of consciously managing the planet."  This involves a number of traditional conservation measures, but more to his point, it involves embracing a number of technological solutions to environmental threats or "geo-engineering."  It also endorses a strategy of continued economic growth which Lynas believes is important both to developing the necessary mitigating technologies and to persuading a growth-hungry public to support mitigating efforts.

The work is organized around nine "planetary boundaries," a term coined by Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center.  The boundaries are natural limits which we must not cross, lest we push the planet into a state which will not support life.  Specifically, they are (1) the biodiversity boundary, (2) the climate change boundary, (3) the nitrogen boundary, (4) the land use boundary, (5) the fresh water boundary, (6) the toxics boundary, (7) the aerosols boundary, (8) the ocean acidification boundary, and (9) the ozone layer boundary.  According to Lynas's research, we have already passed the first three boundaries and must find ways to quickly return to within these boundaries.  Two of the boundaries -- the toxics boundary and the aerosols boundary -- cannot be sufficiently quantified at this point to know whether we have crossed them.  Encouragingly, Lynas believes that we have not yet crossed the others, but that we are in danger of doing so. 

To better understand the notion of a planetary boundary, consider the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.  Currently there are approximately 390 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.  It is now well-understood that we must reduce this figure to at least 350 parts per million if we are to avoid a change to the ecosystem that will spell disaster for human civilization and possibly life on the planet.  350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is the planetary climate change boundary.

Each of Lynas's descriptions of the nine boundaries are replete with sobering scientific research, emphasizing what is at stake.  In that respect, The God Species is a lot like Six Degrees, but Lynas's main purpose in writing this book is not so much to alert us to these dangers, but to suggest what we might do to remain on the safe side of the boundaries, and as I a mentioned earlier, the solutions involve embracing technological advances.  He discusses four at some length:  nuclear power, genetically modifying crops, injecting sulfates into the upper stratosphere, and pouring alkaline substances into the ocean.  

Lynas stongly and repeatedly promotes making a quick transition to nuclear power.  He argues that the "Greens" opposition to nuclear power is unjustified and is as misguided and anti-scientific as the attitudes of climate change deniers.  This is perhaps the most useful contribution he makes in The God Species.  While his arguments may not be completely convincing, they are strong enough to unsettle settled opinion on the topic of nuclear energy.  Given the enormous and growing threat of carbon pollution, it may be wise to re-examine the role of nuclear power in the planet's energy future.  Certainly many responsible scientists and environmentalists are coming around to this opinion, most notably James Hansen and George Monbiot, but also James Lovelock, Barry Brook, Gwyneth Cravens, and Patrick Moore.

His advocacy of genetically modified crops (and genetic engineering generally) is less persuasive.  Lynas believes genetic engineering will help solve the problem of feeding our growing human population, while not contaminating the planet's water with excess nitrogen.  Unfortunately, the track record of genetically modified crops is not long enough to really understand its dangers, and while significant dangers might not have become apparent yet, the very notion of making drastic and quick changes in the genes of long-evolved organisms (or creating new organisms from scratch) invites disaster from the law of unintended consequences.    The same is true for Lynas's two other geo-engineering fixes.  Lynas is correct in noting that we have already been engaged in accidental geo-engineering with the massive release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.  Indeed, the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution threaten to ruin us, but it borders on the reckless to suggest that we understand the complexities of Earth systems sufficiently to avoid equally or even more disastrous unintended consequences that might result from an intentional and concerted effort to change Earth systems.

To a large extent, Lynas's prescription for mitigation is in line with the views of Bjorn Lomborg who has advocated continued, even accelerated, economic growth on the theory that a richer future society will be better equipped to solve environmental (particularly climate change) problems.  His argument depends on the claims that economic growth will increase faster than our emerging environmental problems.  This seems highly dubious.  First, it disregards the likely phenomenon of "tipping points" that would quickly launch the Earth into a new and drastically different physical state -- one to which we or our civilization will not be adapted.  Second, it relies upon continuing economic growth that is similar to what we have seen in the past.  Given that we are reaching the limits of our natural resources and given that we will be seeing increased economic disruption due to resource scarcity and climate change, the likelihood that economic growth will continue as it has is doubtful.  All that is necessary is for the climate change to slightly out pace economic growth for our current crisis to become soon unsolvable.  Lomborg misunderstands that "growth" must be replaced by "sustainability" as the supreme economic value as we approach planetary boundaries.

Lynas appears to follow Lomborg on this score.  He is an unapologetic booster of expensive technological fixes and he emphasizes the importance of economic growth in finding solutions.  Lynas is a critic of socialism and endorses "market solutions."  Most of all, he believes that pretty much any mitigation strategy that requires social or cultural transformations will fail.  He appears to believe that certain market forces act, in effect, like laws of nature, and that we must recognize this in our mitigation plans. 

So for example, to remain on the safe side of the water boundary, Lynas recommends privatizing water resources.  He claims that public water systems are corrupt and inefficient, and that private systems provide water to populations more effectively.  He provides little support for these claims.  Corruption in the public sector is, of course, problematic.  Many public officials will use their position for personal gain, but the use of resources for private gain is the very essence of the private sector.  Simply because the legal system accords private actors the license to personally gain from the distribution of resources does not make it morally legitimate, particularly when these resources are essential for human survival.  Private sector business as usual is effectively the legitimization of public corruption.  See post-soviet Russia as an undisguised exmple of this. 

Regarding the inefficiency of public utilities, one must look into the goals of the utility.  Fred Pearce reiterates a well-established point in his excellent book When Rivers Run Dry (reviewed in this blog), when he notes that "water flows uphill to money."  That is, in an unregulated market, water resources will be trucked, flown, sailed, and piped to the whatever wealthy market will purchase them, leaving the poor without.  If the point of the water utility is to deliver water resources to those who can best cover the cost of delivery, then a private system is more efficient.  If the point is to ensure water-sufficiency to all sectors of a population, then a regulated system is necessary.

Lynas's enthusiasm for technological fixes is born of his appreciation for science.  His desire to make sure that mitigation strategies are firmly rooted in the best science available is extremely laudable.  Indeed sound science is essential to successful mitigation strategies.  No serious observer would disagree.  Where Lynas goes astray is in limiting the options for mitigation strategies to those which he believes the public will accept.  Once he has done that -- once he has assumed that cultural and social norms are like laws of nature -- he is driven to seek drastic and potentially very dangerous technological solutions.  To make his case, he must downplay their risks

Nothing makes this point more clearly than his dismissal of vegetarianism.  In a ten page section entitled, "Meat and Energy," Lynas devotes less than a single paragraph to reducing our meat consumption.  He writes, "campaigners are on to a loser if they try to convince people...to convert en masse to vegetarianism....People's desire to eat more meat as they grow more wealthy is so deeply embedded in most cultures...that it is not something that is amendable to outside influence."  Lynas's appreciation for science doesn't seem to extend to the social sciences.  Changes to cultural and social norms and to social, political, and economic institutions are commonplace.  Lynas is perhaps too young to remember the days when vegetarianism was so unheard of in the U.S. and Europe that virtually no restaurant offered a vegetarian entree.  Today, it is rare to find such restaurants and many wholly vegetarian restaurants are flourishing.  Just a couple decades ago, catered business lunches and conferences would not include a vegetarian entree and airlines would offer only meat on their flights.  Now, vegetarians are accommodated.  These changes have taken place despite significant government subsides for the meat industry and vigorous marketing efforts by that industry.  No similar support has ever existed for vegetarianism and yet vegetarianism is becoming more and more common in the U.S. and Europe.

Just as there are tipping points in the progress of natural phenomena, there are tipping points in social, economic, and political phenomena -- perhaps even more so.  Consider, for example, the French and Russian revolutions, the Arab Spring, the reaction to the Tet Offensive in the U.S. during the Vietnam War, and fads and fashions of all sorts. If the 100 most prominent environmentalist (including Lynas) came out forcefully in favor of vegetarianism and made clear the extent to which meat consumption is pushing us toward trespassing the biodiversity, climate change, nitrogen, water, land use, and toxics boundaries, it could easily make vegetarianism a de rigueur practice among environmentalists.  This might well push us over a cultural tipping point that would dramatically reduce meat consumption; but given the significant impact that meat eating has on the environment, it would not take an "en masse" conversion of the population to yield important benefits.  Furthermore, our diet is central to our daily lives.  So becoming vegetarian for the sake of environmental concerns will transform many people's self-image and the importance they place on othr environmentally beneficial actions.

Government support for vegetarianism would also be made easier to institute.  For many years (particularly beginning with policy put in place by Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz), the federal Farm Bill has privileged big agribusiness.  Butz's mantra was "get big or get out."  The result of this was a huge expansion of land devoted to animal feed crop, making meat production artificially inexpensive.  Increased recognition of the damage that meat eating does will make removing these feed production subsidies and instituting financial disincentives much easier, resulting in rising meat prices and a further shift toward vegetarianism.  Given what's at stake, it's hard to understand why Lynas does not advocate this.  In contrast, he does advocate a law banning palm oil biofuels that are produced on Malaysian and Indonesian plantations that wer formerly rain forests.  Why such laws should protect Malaysia and Indonesia and not Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska is left unexplained.

Vegetarianism is not the only opportunity that Lynas misses.  He is surprisingly dismissive of efforts to control our population, claiming that the only measures that have successfully curbed population growth are economic progress and authoritarian prohibitions.  None of this is clear.  There is certainly a correlation between economic progress and birth rate reductions in Europe and North America, but many other factors might be involved in the trend.  Ready availability to birth control, the presence of a social safety net, and the education and liberation of women come immediately to mind.  Only the social safety net depends in part on economic development, but even there, with a more egalitarian, less plutocratic society, a basic social safety net can be established.  Lynas asserts that the number of children that one chooses to have is "an intensely personal" matter.  This may well be true, but so too is the habitability of one's planet intensely personal. 

Lynas's The God Species is an important work in that it publicizes important "planetary boundaries" that we have either crossed or appear to be about to cross.  While each of these boundaries has been describe in greater detail in other works, bringing them all together in a single volume ensures that we do not get too fixated on one and neglect the others.  Furthermore, it highlights the importance of understanding their interrelationships.  Lynas's advocacy of mitigating strategies that have been more or less taboo among environmentalists is also a welcome addition to the debate.  Unfortunately, his views are much too limited.  He fails to recognize the flexibility of cultural and social norms and the role that they can and must play in addressing the our environmental challenges.  Consequently, he reaches for a number of potentially dangerous technical "solutions" to our crises.  Geo-engineering programs may well be something we will need to implement, but we need to understand that some are certainly harmless, while others are desparate throws of the dice.  Much can and must be done before we toss those dice. 

Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face / Peter F. Sale -- Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 2011

When one reads the title of Peter Sale's book -- Our Dying Planet -- one immediately thinks of the paramount environmental problem of the day: global warming, but the subject is much broader than this. Sale admirably connects a host of environmental problems to provide a stark picture of the planet's peril. The title is, in all likelihood, an overstatement. Our Declining Planet might be a better title, but given the gravity of our situation, Sale's hyperbole is excusable.

Sale is first of all a marine biologist, specializing in coral reefs. So global warming certainly plays an important part in his analysis of our environmental plight; but more than anything, Sale emphasizes the striking loss of biodiversity that is being caused by more than just climate change. His first chapter is an account of the collapse of fisheries, due mainly to overfishing. Much of this is rather well known, but the extent of the collapse would, perhaps, surprise many. Industrial fishing techniques used in the Northwest Atlantic have decimated the cod population there. In 1968, 1.9 million metric tons of cod were caught, but just 22 years later, in 1990, only 80,000 metric tons of cod were caught. This led the Canadian government to close the northern cod fishery in 1992.

One might expect that with a ban on fishing, the cod population would recover, but it has not. This is perhaps the most sobering message that Sale delivers. During the first 100 years of research into ecosystems, the paradigm of a "balance of nature" was dominant. Populations were seen to be regulated naturally by homeostatic mechanisms. When a population declined, its predators declined and its food sources thrived, creating the conditions for recovery; however, by the later half of the twentieth century, ecologists began to recognize the "patchiness" of nature. Species inhabit a constantly changing patchwork of habitats that are tenuously connected to create metapopulations. Inside these patches, the success of individual organisms in surviving and reproducing is more significant than was previously appreciated. The result is that populations are not "resilient" due to homeostatic mechanisms, but instead, exhibit a kind of "inertia." Large populations will continue until a powerful external force depletes them and once depleted, they will tend to remain in their depleted state. The consequence of this dynamic is that the numerous assaults that we have committed against populations are causing damages that are not repairing themselves, leading to an unprecedented rate of species extinctions. The North Atlantic cod, while not extinct, is but one of many examples of the loss of biodiversity that is occurring around the planet; hence, the "dying planet."

As dire as our circumstances are, Sale provides a few chapters that hold out hope or at least suggest ways to confront the problem. The two primary responses he recommends are to reduce our use of fossil fuels and to slow the growth of the human population. Though his chapter on slowing the growth of the human population is brief, it is clearly his most important concern. Sale writes, "Unchecked population growth presents substantial (I am tempted to say insurmountable) impediments to our need to achieve sustainable use of the earth's goods and services. If those of us who understand this do not speak up concerning our population problem, who else will? I fear we have been complacent for far too long." Given that we are already pressing up against the limits of the world's resources, it is hard to believe that we will be able to support the 9.2 billion people expected to be inhabiting the planet by 2050 and so, it is hard to disagree with Sale.

At a time when climate change is the focus of so much attention, it is useful to look at other ecological problems that we face, though certainly a changing climate will exacerbate whatever harms we are doing to the world's biodiversity. The obvious conclusion is that all of these concerns are interrelated and that we must address them all at once. There is no single policy or approach that will mitigate the coming disasters.

Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet / Kendra Pierre-Louis -- N.Y.: Ig Publishing, 2012

There are plenty of books still to be published in 2012, but for now, I would rate Green Washed as the book of the year. This is not to say it does not have some unfortunate weaknesses. Broadly put, the book's thesis is that all of the highly publicized "green" products that have been coming out in recent years do little to address the serious environmental challenges we face. Even were we all to substitute green products for the conventional products we currently buy, we would still be facing environmental contamination, depleted resources, degraded and vanishing habitats, and of course, climate catastrophe. According to Kendra Pierre-Louis, the author of Green Washed, our only way out is to consume less.

My own views on this are in complete accord with Pierre-Louis's and because of the urgency of the environmental problems we face, I dearly hope that her book receives a wide audience. Unfortunately, the case she makes for her thesis is merely good -- not great. I suspect that anyone in the developed world who is moderately attached to his or her current lifestyle will find ways to dismiss Pierre-Louis's arguments, but hopefully Green Washed will be the starting point for a more serious examination of the futility of green consumerism and the need for reduced consumption and that it will not serve as a vaccine that inoculates consumers against calls for reduced consumption.

Most of the book is taken up exposing the environmental damage that is done by many "green" products: organic cotton, local food, cleansers and cosmetics, hybrid and electric cars, aluminum water bottles, and LEED certified buildings. Perhaps the strongest case can be made against hybrid and electric cars. Pierre-Louis points out that the advantages that hybrid and electric cars have over gas-powered cars are that they are marginally more efficient, that tail pipe pollution is not concentrated in city centers, and that the electricity on which they run can be produced from renewable sources.

What is left out in the enthusiasm for hybrid and electric cars are the resources necessary to make a car in the first place. The embodied energy in a hybrid or electric car is comparable to that in a gas-powered car; consequently, the improved gas mileage of a hybrid represents a fraction of a fraction of the energy consumed by the cars.

Even more telling is the environmental cost of building and maintaining the system of roads and parking facilities, without which our cars would be useless. The amount of concrete and asphalt that goes into our road system is staggering and it needs to be virtually rebuilt every decade or so. Roads themselves constitute a significant portion of the impermeable surfaces that are destroying our watersheds and heating our urban areas. Roads quickly transport tire fragments and motor oil into our sewers, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, regardless of whether they are accommodating gas or electric powered vehicles. Roads encourage the urban sprawl that is responsible for the destruction of vital natural habitats. Pierre-Louis is completely correct in observing that the "green" car is little more than a device that will perpetuate a system of transportation that is destroying the planet.

A more sensible response to the crisis brought on by gas-powered cars is to stop driving cars, or at least drastically reduce the amount that we drive. Imagine if all auto and truck traffic was reduced by a mere 50%. Auto production would decline significantly and the number of lanes we would need to maintain would diminish. Plant and animal life would rebound and our air and water would become significantly cleaner. Rational bicycle-oriented city planning and improved public transportation could make our cities completely car-free. This is far greener approach than converting our gasoline-powered car culture to an electric-powered car culture.

Pierre-Louis employs a similar style of critique to the other topics she addresses. Her criticism of the LEED building standards and organic cotton clothing are strong. She points out that the greenest building is the one that's already built and that wearing clothes to the end of their useful life is a far better way to green our wardrobe than buying organic cottons if we replace those clothes as rapidly as we do.

Her critique of the local food movement is not quite so persuasive as she focuses primarily on the slight benefits of reducing "food miles" and ignores a number of other environmental benefits of local food production. Oddly, in that chapter, she describes the rapid depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, upon which the production of food in the American Midwest depends. It would seem that local food production would need to make use of the water that is available nearer to population centers on the East and West Coasts, thereby forcing agriculture to rely once again on surface water and not as much on non-renewable ground water.

As her general approach is to point out how our social and economic institutions are at the root of our environmental crises, it is curious that she does not mention the significant environmental damage that is done by our meat-eating culture. This is particularly true in that her recommended way forward is to consume less, reduce waste, and develop alternative institutions that are more environmentally friendly. Meat production requires a significantly greater input of energy and a significantly greater use of land than plant food production for the same nutritional value. Furthermore, a 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report estimated that the ranching and slaughter of cows and other animals for meat is responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gases and, of course, concentrated animal feeding operations (a.k.a. factory farms) have a profound impact on their environs due to the enormous and concentrated mass of manure they produce. There is likely nothing easier and more effective for reducing the negative impact one is having on the planet than simply becoming a vegetarian, or better yet, a vegan.

Pierre-Louis devotes three chapters to alternative, or "green" energy. Clean coal is an easy target, but Pierre-Louis's critique of biomass is a more valuable contribution to the discussion. Her examination of solar power is somewhat ambiguous. She criticizes impacts of constructing photovoltaic panels and their poor positioning by consumers, but solar power does not receive scathing criticism. The worst that is said of it is that it is likely to simply facilitate continued consumption of other resources and degradation of the land and water.

The last three chapters address "the way forward," which is, again, to reduce consumption. Pierre-Louis recognizes that our economic system is dependent upon ever increasing consumption and so the way forward will involve an entirely new economic model. Here, she recommends the "steady state economy" advanced by Herman Daly and others.

Among the more disappointing aspects of the book are its numerous typographical errors. The work appears not to have been proofread and instead, seems to have been prepared for publication by a spell check program. (Amory Lovins is, for example, noted as "Armory" Lovins.) The errors are -- in the big picture -- trivial, but it leads one to wonder how carefully done was the research that went into the work. As the research is based on a variety of kinds of sources (peer-reviewed scientific articles, government publications, N.G.O. reports, and popular news sources), one needs to look carefully at the support for the claims being made. Obvious errors in the bibliographic citations do not instill confidence.

Despite these criticisms of this particular work and its presentation, the thesis is eminently plausible and supremely important. Kendra Pierre-Louis has given us an honest attempt to make the case for adopting institutions that will support sustainable lifestyles. Very much of what she has given us makes perfect sense and she provides much material to raise questions about the effectiveness of green products. My hope is that she or someone like her will continue to publish works along the lines of Green Washed.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet / Mark Lynas -- Washington D.C.: National Geographic, 2008

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is composed of three working groups. The second group is responsible for reporting on the impacts of climate change on the natural and human environment. Its most recent report (the fourth assessment report) makes for difficult reading and not simply because of its disturbing predictions. The prose is at best terse, sometimes to the point of being cryptic. Futhermore, while it describes the probable impacts of climate change, it does not clearly identify when these impacts will come about, neither on a temporal scale nor on a thermal scale. Thankfully, Mark Lynas has done an admirable job of partly filling this gap in his book Six Degrees.

The basis of Lynas's book is scholarship done at the Earth Sciences Library at Oxford University. Lynas systematically scoured articles in peer reviewed journals and classified their predictions of impacts according to temperature increases degree by degree. The literature estimates impacts for temperature increases ranging from less than one degree Celsius to five degrees Celsius. Occasionally impacts are discussed for more than five degrees. This provided a convenient structure for Lynas's book: each of his six substantive chapters describes the effects of progressively greater temperature increases. Lynas makes no attempt to predict when these increases might occur as this depends on the public policies we adopt.

Broadly speaking, the impacts of increases up to two degrees Celsius are in the manageable range, though they will certainly be extremely problematic for regions most vulnerable to climate change. Indeed, we have already experienced enough unusual weather events consistent with climate change to say that the impacts of climate change are upon us. The 2003 heat wave that dominated Europe for three months, for example, is estimated to have killed 22,000 to 35,000 people. Lynas describes this event in his "Two Degrees" chapter, suggesting that such heat waves would become common in such a world. It is noteworthy, that reasonable assumptions about our future carbon emissions would make a two or three degree increase likely.

As the temperature rises into the third degree, predictions of cataclysmic consequences become common in the scientific literature. Dangerous feedbacks will begin to play an important role in increasing the Earth's surface temperature. For example, the Amazon and other rain forests are likely to begin burning away, causing a loss of moisture. As the forest floor dries out, it will begin releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gasses locked in the peat and soil. The permanent ice covering Greenland is also likely to begin melting at an accelerated pace. This will raise sea level, of course, but it will also lower the elevation of the ice pack and dump increasing quantities of ice into the surrounding water, thus raising the local temperature in Greenland and accelerating the melting process in another dangerous feedback. Food production will be severely disrupted by flooding and droughts around the world.

By the fourth degree increase, the nightmare truly begins. Both the Ross and Ronne ice shelves of the Antarctic could become unstable. Were one or both to collapse (as did the Wordie, Larsen A, and Larsen B ice shelves) the rate of glacier melt from the Antarctic mainland would increase dramatically leading to a rapid rise in sea level. By the fifth degree increase "an entirely new planet is coming into being....The remaining ice sheets are eventually eliminated from both poles. Rain forests have already burned up and disappeared, rising sea levels have inundated coastal cities and are beginning to penetrate far inland into continental interiors. Humans are herded into shrinking 'zones of habitability' by the twin crises of drought and flood."

As early as the third degree of warming, methane hydrates will begin to be released from the Arctic Ocean floor and from melting permafrost. Methane hydrates are greenhouse gasses that are far more potent than carbon dioxide. By the fifth degree of increase, the quantities of methane hydrates released into the atmosphere are likely to be staggering and will trigger a feedback that might make the planet entirely uninhabitable.

Lynas does not find many predictions in the scientific literature about the consequences of a sixth degree of warming; however, it is recognized as a possibility, particularly if there are enough strong feedbacks to push the planet to an new equilibrium that is far warmer than what we now experience. In Storms of My Grandchildren, NASA climatologist James Hansen raises the possibility of "the Venus Syndrome" in which the greenhouse effect extinguishes all life on Earth. Lynas thinks it is unlikely that the changes to the climate will extinguish human life, but were the planet to reach the high end of the range of warming predictions, such a possibility is not negligible.

The methodology behind Lynas's book is sound and the presentation of his scholarship is illuminating. I doubt that there is a better general summation of the scientific literature as it pertains to the effects of climate change. Six Degrees is a cogent account of the future we likely face. Despite its dispassionate tone, it is a clarion call for action to mitigate the disaster that is likely to unfold during the lifetimes of the younger members of our world.

Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand / Haydn Washington and John Cook -- London: Earthscan, 2011

In recent years, a number of books have been published exposing the corporate-sponsored cottage industry that is challenging the conclusions of climate science. See, for example, James Hoggan's Climate Cover Up and Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's Merchants of Doubt. Haydn Washington and John Cook's Climate Change Denial is clearly within this genre. Indeed, much of its research relies on the work of these other books. It does, however, take an important step beyond the critiques of the denial industry by inquiring into the psychology of denial and by noting the extent to which our entire culture is in denial about the consequences of climate change.

The first chapter distinguishes denial from skepticism and attributes the former to those who reject the fact or significance of climate change. It attributes the latter to the scientific community which increasingly is warning us about the dangers of climate change. The second chapter provides the mandatory outline of the conclusions of climate science. Chapters three and four recount various forms of denial and the history of the denial industry. The work is fine, but the two books mentioned above provide greater detail. A great deal of space is devoted to criticizing Ian Plimer's 2009 book Heaven and Earth. Washington and Cook begin by noting that it is tempting to dismiss Plimer's book out of hand, and after a cursory examination of it, this option does not seem unreasonable; however, Washington and Cook believe the work has become too important within the denial industry to ignore. Their critique is trenchant, without becoming mired in detail.

Chapters five through seven are, however, the most important of the book, though not necessarily the most well-written. In these chapters, Washington and Cook take up the social, political, and psychological questions as to why the denial industry's public relations efforts have been so successful in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. The answers, roughly put, are that we have allowed the denial industry to get away with too many distortions and falsehoods and that we ourselves have fallen prey to a form of denial they call "implicatory denial."

The necessary response is to recognize that we are all -- to some extent -- in denial about the consequences of climate change. Washington and Cook exhort us to "Accept reality!" and begin acting to transform our lifestyles in ways that will reduce our carbon footprint. Furthermore, we need to acknowledge that our politicians will do nothing about the pending catastrophe until we force them to act. We must not be content with nice sounding policy statements and instead demand concrete actions that will reduce the world's carbon emissions. In particular, we must find a way to put a price on carbon so that there is an incentive to conserve and so that alternative energies can become more competitive.

In chapter seven, Washington and Cook discuss six alternative energy sources that don't emit significant amounts of carbon. They make valuable references to other books that discuss these alternatives in greater detail. They go on to discuss two more very controversial non-carbon alternatives: nuclear power and the technology to capture and sequester the carbon that results from coal fired power plants. Washington and Cook are critical of both, claiming that they will not quickly and significantly reduce carbon emissions. They also note the dangers that these technologies pose. In the same vein, they warn against geoengineering.

If we take Washington and Cook's advice and accept that the pending climate catastrophe requires action, we still need to be careful about assessing the extent of the danger and the consequences of our actions to address the problems of climate change. It is here that the environmentalist community must come to terms with the role of nuclear power, carbon capture and sequestration, and geoengineering projects. A number of writers concerned about climate change, particularly, James Hansen and George Monbiot, look favorably on some of these options which probably reflects their concerns about reaching a "tipping point" with regard to climate change. As such a future is not at all impossible, it seems prudent not to summarily reject options for reducing carbon emissions; however, Washington and Cook correctly recognize that the dangers these options pose are extreme. If it is prudent not to rule out extremely dangerous measures, then it is even more prudent to re-double our efforts to bring about not just a low carbon society, but a low energy society. Much can be gained by returning to lifestyles where the quality of life is not dependent upon the profligate energy consumption of the last one hundred years.

Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity / James Hansen -- NY: Bloomsbury, 2009

1988 was a significant year for the study and understanding of climate change. It was the year that the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was also the year the James Hansen testified before Congress, warning of the coming climate disaster. Since then, Hansen has been one of the leading scientists investigating the progress of our changing climate. He has, however, shied away from high-profile advocacy for changes to public policy -- that is until recently. In this respect, Storms of My Grandchildren is a landmark in his scientific and public profile. In it, Hansen attempts to make a clear case for specific policy actions that he believes are needed to avert the pending climate disaster.

His writing style is not always the greatest. He alternates between the breezy style of informal correspondences that describes his personal experiences and the objective style of scientific (though popular) explanations. Later in the book, he adopts a third style of policy advocacy. None of these sections of the book seem especially good examples of their genera, but setting this aside, the substance of the book is interesting and very important.

The early chapters of the book deal with his conflicting feelings about simply doing science and leaving policy questions to others as against stepping outside of the scientific enterprise to make a conscious political impact. His initial approach to this was simply to present his conclusions to policy makers and trust in the force of reason to motivate their actions; however, after successive disappointments, he has come to believe that scientists must not only make the science clear to politicians and the public, but they must explain the consequences of the facts for policy decisions.

Among the events that most drove him to this conclusion was the efforts on the part of the George W. Bush administration to prevent him from speaking freely about his scientific conclusions. As a public employee working for the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he was subject to orders from both NASA's Public Affairs office and the White House. Fortunately for all of us, his high profile prevented the efforts to censor him from being too successful. His own account of the machinations of the Bush White House is limited, but he makes reference to the investigative work of Mark Bowen, published in Censoring Science to fill out the story.

Hansen's views on climate change are more pessimistic than the conclusions of the IPCC. The IPCC has been criticized by climate skeptics as over-stating the danger of climate change. They often criticize climate models that go into predicting the future of the climate. Interestingly, Hansen agrees that the climate models are not especially reliable, but he points to paleological climate research to demonstrate that the probability of disastrous consequences of the "business-as-usual" emission of greenhouse gases is far greater than the climate models predict. In his penultimate chapter, he suggests that it is not impossible that business-as-usual will transform the Earth's atmosphere into something like that of Venus. Currently, there are nearly 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Hansen suggests that the "Venus syndrome" might be triggered if that rises to levels even less than 1000 ppm, i.e., a level that is not out of the range of possibility.

The policy decisions that Hansen advocates include the construction of more nuclear power plants, including "fourth generation" power plants known as "breeder reactors." According to Hansen, breeder reactors would serve two important purposes, (1) they could produce significant amounts of energy without carbon emissions while producing nearly no fissionable waste, and (2) they could use the nuclear waste we currently have generated as a fuel source. Given the dangers of carbon emissions and the unlikelihood that other non-carbon energy sources will satisfy industry's appetite for power, Hanson's suggestion seems worth considering; however, Hansen's assertions about the consequences of the construction of numerous breeder reactors need more argument than he presents in his book.

Hansen also argues that the most dangerous threat to the environment is the prospect that coal will be used to sate industry's appetite for power. Carbon capture and sequestration has, for Hansen, genuine potential for coal exploitation. At the same time, he recognizes the costs and dangers involved. His preference simply is to "leave the coal in the ground." This could be largely accomplished by establishing a "fee and dividend" system of carbon energy production. Hansen is critical of the cap and trade proposals that are popular among many environmentalist politicians. He believes they will be ineffective and are ripe for corruption, comparing emissions permits to indulgences sold by the Catholic church in the Middle Ages. Sinners were allowed to continue sinning while the church made money. In this instance, polluters are allowed to continue polluting while the government makes money.

In contrast to this, Hansen's fee and dividend system would place a fee on carbon-based energy production at its source (the well or mine). The fee would then be divided equally as an annual dividend to all legal residents of the US. The fee would be increased annually so that the consumption of carbon-dependent goods and services would rise gradually, reducing their viability in the market, until finally carbon-based energy would be replaced by other forms of energy. Meanwhile, the annual dividend would make the program popular. Those who consume carbon-dependent goods and services would pay the price and those who do not would reap the benefits.

One hitch in Hansen's system is regulating imported goods and services. Here, he suggests a carbon tariff on goods coming from countries that are not reducing their carbon emissions. Initially, the tariff seems workable, but it might fall victim to World Trade Organization requirements prohibiting such tariffs; furthermore, it might not actually succeed in reducing emissions, but instead destroy the very international cooperation and agreements necessary to tackle the emissions problem. These are points made by Sallie James of the Cato Institute in her essay "Climate Change and Trade" in Climate Coup, edited by Patrick Michaels.

Among the most significant chapters linking science and public policy is Chapter 8,"Target Carbon Dioxide: Where Should Humanity Aim?" which deals with estimating the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide that the planet can tolerate without triggering truly disastrous consequences. Hansen initially thought that 450 ppm was the tipping point, but after more careful study, he now believes 350 ppm is the maximum that can be tolerated. This means we have already surpassed dangerous levels which explains Hansen's urgency and his desire to "leave the coal in the ground." Based on Hansen's estimates, Bill McKibben has set up the Web site 350.org to publicize efforts to bring our emission down to this level.

Periodically, Hansen points out one important driving factor in our race to climate catastrophe: our system of campaign financing. Hansen argues that because our elections are privately funded with now unlimited corporate dollars, carbon energy-based industries largely are able to determine public policy related to environmental protection. An indication of this is that a carbon tax (or fee) is hardly discussed by politicians. Our options are limited to no regulation or an ineffective cap and trade system that will allow business-as-usual emissions and corporate profits.

Hansen is certainly right about the influence of corporate money on elections and in turn public policy. As it is unlikely that the current campaign finance regime will change, anyone who is concerned about the climate has few options for change within the electoral system. On occasion, Hansen acknowledges this and even flirts with calling for civil resistance against carbon emission. In general, his Storms of My Grandchildren makes a strong case for just such action.

Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat & Conservation Landscaping-Chesapeake Bay Watershed / Britt Slattery, et al -- MD: US Fish & Wildlife Service, 2003

There are a lot of very good reasons to remove invasive plants -- particularly non-native invasives -- and replace them with less aggressive native plants. Most important is the ability of a variety of native plants to support the local wildlife, but also important is their ability to improve the soil quality by sinking deep roots that aerate the top soil and add organic matter. Deep rooted plants are also far better at retaining water and in urban and suburban areas, this is critical for reducing the destructive, polluting, storm water runoff that is killing our streams rivers, and bays.

However, identifying the right native plant is not always easy. Fortunately for those of us who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a handy catalog of hundreds of native plants: ferns, grasses, herbaceous plants, herbaceous emergents, shrubs, and trees. For each (or almost each) plant, the guide provides basic information to help you decide if the plant is right for you.

The guide identifies the basic characteristics of the plant: size, colors of its flowers, leaves, and fruit, as well as the time of the year when it flowers and fruits. It also provides basic information about its optimal growth conditions: sun, shade, and partial shade; but also soil pH and soil conditions: clay, loam, sand, or organic. It even provides an indication of the ideal habitat and geographic region within the watershed to help ensure that its nativity is reasonably local. For anyone particularly interested in attracting wildlife to your garden, it indicates how attractive the plant is to song birds, water fowl, small mammals, butterflies, beneficial insects, and hummingbirds.

The authors point out, of course, that the Chesapeake Bay contains many more native plants than are included in this catalog, and encourage the reader to seek out other sources to learn about those plants outside of their selection. The encouragement isn't necessary, though, as one's appetite for more information about native plants is whetted by the guide's clear presentation alone.

Perhaps the only weakness is the size of the photographs. While it is great to have photos of each plant, the photos are tiny and there is only one (sometimes two) for each plant, sometimes showing fruit, leaves, or blossoms, but seldom more than one of the characteristics. Consequently, using the book in conjunction with other reference sources amplifies its value, but regardless of this drawback, it is an extremely helpful starting point for learning about what native plants will grow well in your garden.

Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide / Peter Del Tredici -- Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010

For at least a century, American botanists have raised the alarm over the invasion of non-native plant species. The immigration to North America of people from all over the world has brought with it food crops, ornamental plants, and stow-away seeds that have found a congenial new habitat in the Americas. The primary concern is that these non-native species are sometimes "invasive," meaning they exist without natural predators and therefore spread out of control. Their success crowds out many native species, thus reducing the diversity of the native ecosystem and damaging the health of the environment.

Despite the apparent threats, Peter Del Tredici, Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, is not so alarmed about non-native invasives. Starting from the premise that our native ecosystem has been irreparably transformed by urban development, native species are now as alien to the new urban ecosystem as non-natives. For Del Tredici, the important question in the urban setting is not whether the plant thrived in a by-gone local ecosystem, but whether the plant provides "ecosystem services" that would not otherwise be provided to the city.

In place of the native/non-native distinction, Del Tredici distinguishes plants that grow spontaneously in the urban environment versus plants that require cultivation. In the concrete jungle, Ailanthus altissima (the tree-of-heaven) is able to grow without any help from us, and according to Del Tredici, without this species, our urban tree canopy would be greatly impoverished. Replacing them with "native" species and maintaining natives would require an enormous effort for little or no increased benefit. Among the ecological benefits that spontaneous plants can provide to the city are temperature reduction, food and habitat for wildlife, erosion control, riparian stabilization, nutrient absorption, soil building, and phytoremediation or the ability to absorb and store heavy metals thereby cleaning contaminated sites.

Del Tredici's argument is persuasive, but only as long as we accept that our urban environments will be built without caring that they be hospitable to formerly native species. Careful urban planning can increase the areas that are compatible with native plants and thereby preserve the local biological heritage. Del Tredici would, however, point out that this reflects a cultural value judgement and can not be defended on the basis of biodiversity or ecological services. On the other hand, invasives are often able to spread rapidly outside of the urban environment and into relatively undisturbed ecosystems. Such escapees from the city likely pose all the threats to native species about which botanists warned us.

Del Tredici's argument in favor of spontaneous plants makes up just 23 of the book's 374 pages. The rest of the book is, as the subtitle states, a field guide in which spontaneous urban plants are cataloged and described in a manner traditional to such field guides. Each entry includes, however, information on the ecological functions and cultural significance of the plant described. This is consistent with Del Tredici's two primary goals, "to teach people how to identify the plants that are growing in urban areas, and to counter the widespread perception that these plants are ecologically harmful or useless and should be eliminated from the landscape." Each entry also includes five or six useful color photographs of the plant or its near cousins.

Merchants of Doubt / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway -- N.Y.: Bloomsbury Press, 2010

If I were to nominate a "Book of the Year," it would certainly be Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Their history of "how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming" is timely and important.

Meticulously researched, Merchants of Doubt traces the formation and development of a contrarian cabal of scientists. Funded by commercial interest groups, these scientists implemented a concerted strategy to discredit scientific research that might lead to the regulation of industry. In some instances, the effort led to the defamation of the scientists behind the research.

Four names stand out in the origins of the effort: Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer. All were physicists who had worked on important defense projects during the Cold War and all were ardent anti-communists. Two of their early efforts to affect the public debate surrounding scientific conclusions were the defense of the tobacco industry and the defense of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

In the 1960s, Seitz led the effort (paid for by the tobacco industry) to sew doubt on the connection between tobacco and cancer, despite the industry's full knowledge that smoking caused cancer. This was done through the "Council for Tobacco Research," formerly the "Tobacco Industry Research Council," which had been renamed to avoid its obvious connection to the tobacco industry. Seitz was following the footsteps of C.C. Little whose work for the tobacco industry also attempted to sew doubt about the dangers of smoking. There is "no proof" served as the public relations mantra of the industry and it was lent credibility by a small number of scientists on their payroll. Eventually, they could delay public acceptance of the science no longer. Tobacco was regulated and the industry was convicted of racketeering.

Robert Jastrow lead the effort to promote the perception that a space-based anti-ballistic missile system would not only be possible, but would ensure the safety of the public, adopting the premise that a nuclear war was winnable. This effort pitted him against Carl Sagan whose research with four other scientists suggested that even a limited nuclear exchange would plunge the world into a "nuclear winter." Later research suggested that the consequences would not be a severe as Sagan et al. thought, but they would be sufficient to destroy global food production. So contrary to Jastrow's claims, a nuclear war could not be won. Nonetheless, Jastrow pressed his claims by creating the George C. Marshall Institute, with Fred Seitz as the founding chair. In the end, not only has it been accepted that a limited nuclear war would have dire consequences for the planet's ecosystem and vital global economy, but that the possibility of a workable space-based nuclear defense shield is a fantasy.

As the debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative wound down, one participant in the debate, William Nierenberg, co-founder of the Marshall Institute, was appointed by President Reagan to chair the Acid Rain Peer Review Panel, charged with reviewing the results of U.S.-Canadian research on acid rain. His panel included Fred Singer who was suggested to him by the White House. Nierenberg's panel recommended significant reductions in sulfur emissions to control acid rain; however, after showing the draft to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Nierenberg returned the report to the committee with changes that significantly reduced the level of confidence in the danger of sulfur emissions.

More amazingly, Fred Singer, charged with writing the final chapter, could not draft anything that the other eight members of the committee could accept. Still, Singer's chapter became an appendix that completely rejected the force of the Panel's report. To top it off, at the behest of the OSTP, Neirenberg attached -- without the consent of the committee -- an executive summary which belied the report's conclusions. These changes confused the public reception of the panel's conclusions, resulting in significant misunderstandings of the science of acid rain.

After leaving the Acid Rain Peer Review Panel, Fred Singer, supported by the Marshall Institute, began promoting a counter narrative to the science establishing the depletion of ozone by CFCs. He was joined in this by Fred Seitz and Patrick Michael, an agricultural climatologist who would later participate in casting doubt on the effects of green house gasses on the climate. The counter narrative to ozone depletion once again stressed the uncertainty of the science, despite the fact that the relationship had been firmly established among the experts in the field.

Beginning in 1998, Fred Seitz and, shortly after, Fred Singer took up the cause of discrediting the dangers of second hand smoke on behalf of the tobacco industry. In this effort, the tobacco industry's public relations firm APCO Associates formed The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition led by lobbyist Steven Milloy to help sway public opinion against the conclusions of the EPA which was warning of the dangers of second hand smoke. Milloy and TASSC coined the tag line "junk science" to smear whatever scientific conclusions (or scientists) were the target of their anti-environmentalist campaigns. This tag line is currently being used by Milloy to attack climate science.

By now the basic pattern of attack was well established: find any reason -- even assert demonstrable falsehoods -- to cast doubt on the scientific conclusions that might possibly call for commercial regulations, and make use of non-peer reviewed mass media channels to confuse public opinion.

By 1979, climate science was arriving at the conclusion that green house gasses are a significant threat to the planet's climate. Of all environmental threats, green house gases, particular CO2, strikes at the core of the world's industrial economy. So it is no surprise that the merchants of doubt would quickly turn there guns on climate science and its scientists. The first responses came from economists Tom Shelling and William Nordhaus, but other familiar actors soon joined the fray, particularly William Nierenberg.

In 1988, James Hansen's testimony to Congress asserting empirical evidence of climate change, raised the stakes, and the Marshall Institute responded, enlisting Jastrow, Seitz, and Nierenberg. Singer joined the attack by publishing an article he purported to be co-authored by Roger Revelle, an eminent scientist who had warned the world of the threat of global warming. Singer's article suggested that Revelle had changed his mind about the certainty of global warming, but Revelle's family and closest friends denied that he had changed his mind. Singer appears to have taken advantage of an ailing (indeed dying) octogenarian to advance Singer's own political agenda. Also joining the global warming deniers was Patrick Michaels who previously had risked depleting the ozone by defending CFCs.

Perhaps the most amazing attack of the doubt merchants is a recent attack on Rachel Carson's indictment of DDT in her book Silent Spring. In this instance, the campaign appears to be generated by a number of libertarian think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Hoover Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Oreskes and Conway suggest that attacking Rachel Carson and the long settled debate about the dangers of DDT is a deeply strategic move. They write that if the deniers could effectively suggest that "Carson was wrong, then the shift in orientation [that Silent Spring inaugurated]might have been wrong, too. The contemporary environmental movement could be shown to have been based on a fallacy, and the need for government intervention in the marketplace would be refuted." Whether this is the deniers' intent or not, the campaign against Carson at very least shows the extent to which the merchants of doubt are willing to go to attack environmental science.

With the amazing advance of science and technology, our ability to affect the planet has been significantly increased. Understanding the consequences of those effects is critical to our survival, whether they are various carcinogens, ozone depletion, acid rain, or global warming. Oreskes and Conway have made an unimpeachable case that the ideological agenda of libertarian think tanks and lobbyists and their hired scientists is to discredit whatever scientific research supports regulation. This is a grave threat to the planet and to the quality of our life on it. Oreskes and Conway's expose of these machinations should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand current environmental debates.

The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind / Terry Glavin -- NY: St. Martin's Press, 2006

In The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind, Terry Glavin provides a moving narration of the world we are losing. The book is most statistical in its first few pages, where Glavin lays out how the pace and scope of extinctions we face today is comparable to five historical periods of significant extinction. The book's seven chapters are stories of risk and resilience among (as the subtitles outline): a tiger, a bird, a fish, a lion, a whale, a flower, and a world.

While the highly readable narrative style is commendable on its own, the book also is satisfying for its geographic scope - taking readers to varied cultures and ecosystems - and several strains of analysis woven throughout the text. Glavin borrows an analytical tool from the United Nations Environment Programme, which developed four scenarios of how humans might respond to loss of biodiversity, dubbed the "security first," "markets first," "policy first," and "sustainability first" options. Introducing their basic tenets in the prologue, Glavin further elucidates the scenarios in his chapters by pointing to ways in which the movements he documents might be categorized. Although the set of possible future conditions is virtually infinite and inevitably messier than is suggested by scenario analyses, I find them useful tools for understanding likely consequences of different sets of values. The scenarios Glavin borrows are relevant to responses underway today, and his use of them enriches both the scenarios set forth and his narratives of biodiversity challenges.

The book understands extinctions to be complex phenomena, with a variety of proximate and ultimate causes. Glavin both implicates humans and goes easy on us, identifying human actions as the critical factor in the current wave of extinctions, but noting that it was not our intention and that humans have made many noble efforts to reverse or mitigate this impact. Human actions have lead to extinctions not only by directly killing animals but also by destroying habitat and by introducing exotic species that crowd out natives. Glavin seems to imply that because our destructiveness is a secondary effect of our actions, we are somehow less culpable for their results. In the long span of history, there may be something to this argument, but we now have the ability to anticipate secondary effects and do have responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of our actions. On the other hand, the evidence the book provides that humans do value the natural world is a source of hope that we might in fact take responsibility for and change our actions.

Another recurring theme is Glavin's assertion that humans (and environmentalists in particular) have made false distinctions between humans and nature, civilization and wilderness. Although this is an intriguing and on some level compelling assertion, Glavin does a mediocre job of substantiating it in his writing. His illustration of how societies in different times and places have had various relationships with nature successfully casts doubt on the notion that there is one Right Relationship or that we have found it (although I don't think either of these beliefs are widely held), but does not successfully breakdown distinctions between human society and the natural world. Moreover, the writing style, while enjoyable, tends to re-enforce the us/them dichotomy. In telling the story of endangered species, the style tends to exoticize the animals and conveys an almost voyeuristic sense of watching them in their habitat (almost like a National Geographic special) rather than relating to them in the world we share, as I might expect from someone trying to break down arbitrary distinctions.

The strongest way in which Glavin establishes a unitary sense of nature is by addressing both species loss and the loss of diversity in human cultures as part of the same "dark and gathering sameness." Having the stories of losses of human languages, history, and local knowledge and lore woven with the stories of habitat and species loss adds richness to the storytelling. However, the analysis of the association of these two phenomena is a bit shallow. In the examples provided, their causes and consequences seem a bit distinct (e.g., cultural repression in Soviet Russia led to losses in human culture while fish species fared better in Soviet days). Also, while the text draws on a fairly well established literature regarding the benefits of biodiversity (especially as laid forth by E.O. Wilson), it does not provide comparable references or well formed arguments regarding the benefits of diverse human cultures. Glavin asserts that the human species is more "resilient" for having diverse cultures, in parallel to an example about crops with diverse sub-species being more resilient to diseases. However, the book does not grapple with the fact that cultures are not static artifacts under any conditions (gathering sameness or otherwise) nor compare the benefits of diverse cultures to those of a more homogeneous culture which is also more complex. Perhaps he will explore the connections more fully in another work.

Another area that was not adequately addressed was climate change. Glavin makes mention of climate change a few times in the book, as something that will worsen the current period of extinction. Indeed, other reading I've done (e.g., The Rough Guide to Climate Change: Symptoms, Science, Solutions by Robert Henson (London: Rough Guides, 2008) has pointed to the biodiversity impacts of climate change that we already are experiencing and expect to intensify in the coming decades. While The Sixth Extinction is more historic than predictive and I would not expect Glavin to include a great deal of anticipatory evidence of the impact of climate change, devoting a couple of solid paragraphs would be a worthwhile addition to the book, as considering an expanded set of causes for extinctions has a significant impact on the set of responses we should be preparing.

What most disappointed me about the book is Glavin's rejecting environmentalism and the "language of environmentalism."  He defines these terms in fairly broad brush early on, and goes on to repeat his criticism at several points in the book. This troubles me because of the suggestion that the environmental movement is some solid, well defined structure of a white liberal elite walking in lock step and speaking with one voice. It's not. And while I might enjoy watching Carl Pope, Wangari Maathai, and Van Jones duke it out to claim the microphone of Environmentalism, the reality is that these are just a few figures inside a big tent of people that come with diverse values and proposed solutions. They form alliances. They have arguments. The behavior among the various groups and activities that I would include as part of today's environmental movement look an awful lot like the whole rest of the world. Perhaps defining an environmental movement within human society at all is a false distinction on the order of considering nature as "other."

The reason this is more than a minor irritation to me is that it seems a familiar tactic. Writers decry environmentalism in an effort to have their environmental arguments taken seriously by a public they believe are not environmentalists. That the naysayers draw arbitrary distinctions is illustrated, conveniently, by an article that appeared in the New York Review of Books while I was reading The Sixth Extinction. John Terborgh's review of Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Caroline Fraser (15 July 2010) sets forward a different notion about what humans' relationship with nature is and should be. In the Rewilding analysis, conservation is best achieved when humans are willing to respect a separate space for wildlife, giving up the "romantic" and "fanciful" European/American idea that people and nature can co-exist peaceably (perhaps that we are in fact one...?). This group of romantic westerns sounds an awful lot like Glavin's environmentalists, the ones who draw false distinctions between humans and nature, society and wilderness. Hmmm...

A similar ploy has been used in works like "The Death of Environmentalism" (Shellenberger and Nordhaus, 2004). I've argued against the environmental movement's being viewed as a uniform, cohesive group, but do think there is some valid criticism of the power structure within parts of the movement and manner in which groups have chosen to talk about and address environmental issues. Certainly the movement has as yet been insufficient to the task of changing our course or transforming our ethos. Still, I would call on critics not to wholly dismiss environmentalism but rather to identify allies within the movement and to call on everyone to think deeply about their relationship with the world we live in and how to appropriately act on their own values. Drawing arbitrary lines among people will no more get us to our goal of living in a just, peaceful, and flourishing world than will drawing arbitrary lines between humans and nature.

The Sixth Extinction is an enjoyable and thought provoking read. I hope to find other books that draw on Glavin's style and theme to explore our relationship with and impact on the planet.

The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate / Andrew E. Dessler & Edward A. Parson -- Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2006

The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change is just what its subtitle asserts: a guide to the debate -- or perhaps the debates. The combined expertise of Dessler (a climate scientist) and Parson (a professor of law) allow them to summarize several debates regarding the scientific facts about climate change, its causes, its likely consequences, and the wisdom of various mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Global Climate Change's first chapter briefly sets the stage for the work, laying out the fundamentals in the scientific and policy debates. The second chapter gives a brief description of the scientific method and attempts to distinguish and clarify empirical and normative claims made in the wider public debate on climate change. The best of the work begins in Chapter Three, which provides an admirably clear account of what is known about climate change and its likely consequences as of the time of publication. The conclusions are based largely on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other special reports published by the Panel. Some subsequent material is included to bring the findings up to date.

The conclusions of these reports show significant global warming and argue that it is caused mostly by our production of various greenhouse gasses. Consequently, the fourth chapter outlines adaptation and mitigation strategies and discusses their costs and benefits. Finally, the fifth chapter describes the political debates related to responding to climate change. In each chapter, Dessler and Parson give an even-tempered presentation of the main arguments of the parties to the debates, but without withholding their own views. Usually, these views assume the middle ground of various ranges of uncertainty described by the IPCC.

Among the more interesting elements in Global Climate Change is Dessler and Parson's the treatment of "the climate skeptics," i.e., those who believe some number of the following claims, (1) the Earth is not warming, (2) the Earth may be warming, but human activities are not responsible, and (3) future climate warming will almost certainly be very small. The authors address these claims directly in the last chapter, but much of what is in the third chapter is sufficient to rebut the claims. There, Dessler and Parson examine five natural factors that might cause the climate to change: orbital variations, tectonic activity, volcanoes, solar variability, and internal variability. The authors conclude that none of these factors are significant enough to account for the rise in the global temperature during the past century. At most, they are able to explain small fluctuations or minor deviations from the general warming trend. Indeed, the best climate models include all these factors and human activity in the explanation of the data.

In brief, Dessler and Parson definitively reject the skeptics first claim, believe that human activity has likely caused most of the recent temperature increase, and caution us not to believe that climate change won't be a significant problem in the future. They write, "If climate change lies near the low end of the projected range, impacts over the twentyfirst century are likely to be manageable for rich, mid-latitude countries, but may pose serious difficulties for poorer countries. If climate change lies near the high end of the projected range, impacts over the twenty first century are likely to be severe and potentially unmanageable for everyone." Unfortunately, they dedicate only six pages to describing these impacts. For a readable and well organized treatment of the impacts, see The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson -- London: Penguin Books, 2008.

Global Climate Change is an excellent treatment of the debates, but since its publication, the gravity and certainty of the conclusions in the climate change debates have increased. For the most current information on the scientific aspects of the debates, one must read the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007). It is available at http://www.ipcc.ch. The report is presented by three working groups covering "The Physical Science Basis," "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," and "Mitigation of Climate Change." Each group provides a detailed survey of the scientific literature and its main conclusions, along with a kind of executive summary for policy makers. It would be a great contribution to public understanding if Dessler and Parson published a second edition of Global Climate Change based on the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report.

Addicted to Plastics / Ian Connacher -- Reading, PA: Bullfrong Films, 2007.

The documentary "Addicted to Plastics" (part of the 'etc.' on this blog) has the basic characteristics of a well done documentary. It is engaging and entertaining while informative. It covered some of the more widely known problems of plastics (their volume in our waste stream, the fact that they don't decompose and can only be down-cycled, not recycled) and drove home a couple of other points. One - the oceans are becoming plastic soup. Some of the most impressive scenes from the movie were of pieces of plastics large and small being removed in formidable volumes from remote parts of the earth. Two - plastics absorb chemicals that are otherwise diluted in the ocean, increasing their health hazard to marine and bird life and passing that risk up the food chain.

The documentary attempts to be optimistic by pointing to recycling efforts and new forms of less harmful plastics but doesn't offer any real call to arms to address the problems from plastic with concrete or timely measures. In fact, an overblown portrayal of life without plastic seems to suggest that the problem is too big for individual action. Although I believe that collective action holding manufacturers responsible for the lifecycle of their products is more powerful than individual efforts to reduce, the damage wreaked by plastics, as clearly outlined in the film, is too great to wait for the 'green chemistry' to save the day. Acting now to reduce the volume of plastic being produced decreases air, land, and water pollution and increases the livability of the planet we so enjoy.

Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent / Andrew Nikiforuk -- Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books, 2008.

While many governments and oil companies are steadfastly denying the imminent peak of world wide oil production, their words are belied by their actions. In Tar Sands, Andrew Nikiforuk describes the headlong rush to develop perhaps the most expensive and dirtiest hydrocarbon reserve on the planet: the tar sands of Alberta. Nikiforuk notes that 60% of all global oil investments are made in the these tar sands and that the consequences for the people of Alberta and the Mackenzie River Watershed are devastating.

To turn the tar sands into oil involves a mining operation that makes Appalachian mountain top removal look non-invasive. The oil (or more precisely, the bitumen) is a tar-like substance that is mixed with soil, sand, and rock. To remove it, the land is carved up and steamed using, huge quantities of water. Left behind are gigantic lakes formed inside levees. These lakes contain poisonous tailings. The size and expense of the operation defies imagination.

Beyond the environmental disaster, Nikiforuk describes that impact that this development has had on the civic epicenter of it all: the boom city of Fort McMurray. Crime, drugs, traffic deaths, inflation, and the erosion of public health are among the social disasters that accompany the development. Nikiforuk observes that Alberta and Canada in general are quickly becoming "petrostates," in which the economy is organized to export oil to the world, in particular, to the United States. Characteristic of petrostates, the government of Alberta is becoming increasingly undemocratic with decisions made without public oversight and in compliance with the wishes of oil company executives.

Tar Sands is a testament to the power of the international demand for cheap energy, and the willingness of people to sacrifice so much to cash in on that demand.  It is also worth noting that if the tar sands are fully exploited, the amount of carbon dioxide that will be released into the atmosphere and oceans will likely push global warming well beyond what is already an extremely dangerous level.

Anacostia: The Death and Life of an American River / John R. Wennersten -- Baltimore: Chesapeake Book Co., 2008.

When people think of rivers and Washington D.C., they naturally think of the Potomac. However, when the city was first planned, its primary waterfront was to be on the Anacostia River, or what was once called the "East Branch." Unfortunately for the Anacostia, the wealthier and established citizens of Georgetown persuaded developers to direct the face of the city toward the Potomac, thus starting a long history of neglect and degradation of the Anacostia.

John Wennersten's Anacostia is both a natural and political history of the Anacostia River. It's natural history made its headwaters an ocean-going port until silt clogged the port at Bladensburg in 1850 and with the growth of Washington D.C. during. After the Civil War, poor water management resulted in extreme contamination and epidemics of small pox, cholera, and malaria which killed thousands. By 1873, it (and Rock Creek) had become little more than open sewers which it remained until the Clean Water Act was passed one hundred years later in 1972.

While the Clean Water Act brought some progress toward cleaning the river, one can still not safely swim or fish in the Anacostia (goals set by the Act.) It was not until 1988 that genuine progress began when the Anacostia Watershed Society was formed. The Society was (and is) a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the watershed. Along with other environmental partners, the Society has forced the EPA to address the dreadful state of the river. While much remains to be done, the last third of Anacostia is an inspiring testament to the determination of environmentalists to take back our natural birthright from the self-interested developers and despoilers of the land.

Among the most interesting aspects of Anacostia is how Wennersten connects the lives of the people of Washington D.C. to the Anacostia. Time and again, the rich and powerful (wittingly or not) displaced the poor and vulnerable from prime real estate and forced them to move to what is known as "Anacostia" or the east side of the Anacostia River inside D.C. Wennersten's sympathetic account of the mistreatment of people would not be news to many people in D.C., but deserves much wider currency.