Conservation In Practice - Books

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January-March 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 1)

Some books reviewed in our book review section are available through Amazon.com. To make your purchase easier we have included a link when available. When you purchase a book through this service on our website Conservation In Practice receives a portion of the purchase price.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed By Jared Diamond Viking Books, 2005 Reviewed by David Rains Wallace Wandering in the wood, Alice heard sawing and walked that way, hopeful of getting directions. Halfway up an oak, a hedgehog in a frock coat and silk hat was sawing off the limb it sat on. "I say," she cried, "you ought to stop that!" The hedgehog looked at her but kept sawing. "Why should I?" it snapped. "You'll fall!" "Why should I fall?" the hedgehog shouted, turning pink. "Explain!" "When the limb you're sawing falls, you'll fall too," Alice replied, with, she thought, admirable conciseness. "That's not an explanation," the hedgehog shouted, still sawing. "It's just proximate cause. You'll have to give ultimate cause!" "I shall never get home for tea," Alice sighed. Collapse is a splendid study of why some societies have succumbed to environmental deterioration while others haven't. It also describes modern forces which, Jared Diamond argues, will soon drive global society toward collapse if prevailing trends continue: "[B]ecause we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults of today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies." He brings much erudition to the book's first subject and much evidence to its second. I found it convincing. But then, I've been convinced for the past 30 years, which is why what strikes me most about the book is how much of it could have been published in 1975. None of the past collapses Diamond describes-of Easter Islanders, Lowland Maya, Greenland Norse-were unknown then, although new details have since emerged. The collapses have been canonical to environmental literature since at least the 1950s. Horrid as they are, I found myself feeling nostalgic as I read about them again-a stroll down doomsday lane. The impending collapses Diamond examines in the book's second half also were known thirty years ago. Rwanda and Haiti were so degraded that increasing trouble was predictable. Australia's deforestation, erosion, pollution, and introduced organisms were well documented. The only big surprise, I think, has been China's speedy change from a "small-is-beautiful" icon into a global generator of pollution and climate change. Even the reasons for hope that Diamond offers after 500 pages of reasons for despair would have been familiar in 1975-increasing public awareness, a growing environmental movement, and some governmental and industrial moves toward environmental protection. An appendix with hints for aspiring environmentalists was also a standard feature of 1970s environmental literature. Yet Collapse is a timely book, as demonstrated by lengthy reviews in mainstream publications. It is an excellent update on our predicament which will awaken many readers to its urgency. Unfortunately, other aspects of the timeliness are less encouraging. It is being reviewed widely because it comes from a best-selling author and a major publisher-it would have had similar notice if it were about colonizing Mars. And some reviews seem to be less manifestations of ongoing environmental concern than indicators of the extent to which the U.S. mainstream has first denied, then forgotten, the canon of environmental collapse. The New Yorker's review, by staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, exemplifies this, especially because that magazine once published versions of The Population Bomb and Silent Spring. Gladwell is sympathetic to Diamond's message and may be familiar with its antecedents, but he doesn't say so. Instead, he makes the idea that human welfare has an environmental component sound new. "We live in an era preoccupied with the way that ideology and culture and politics and economics help shape the course of history," he writes, "but Diamond isn't particularly interested in those things . . . Collapse is a book about the most prosaic elements in the earth's ecosystem-soil, trees, and water . . ." Indeed, one of Gladwell's comments gives the impression that the author conceived his concern with soil, trees, and water single-handedly. He notes approvingly that Diamond doesn't blame the 1994 Rwandan genocide entirely on overpopulation, deforestation, and erosion-that he is not an environmental determinist. Then he concludes, "The real issue is how, in coming to terms with the uncertainties and hostilities of the world, the rest of us have turned ourselves into cultural determinists." The New Yorker seems to be saying that Collapse is timely not so much because it raises the question of how civilized human beings can live within the constraints of a finite biosphere but because it raises the question of why they won't. Like my Lewis Carroll hedgehog, Gladwell requires an ultimate explanation of why we should stop sawing off our limb, not just the proximate one that we will fall if we don't stop. And the latter question does seem timely a few months after we elected a president hostile to living within constraints and over two decades after we elected another. Maybe it does need an answer before the mainstream will consider the former. One of the interesting things about Collapse is that, although the latter question is not Diamond's main concern, he keeps circling it. The book's subtitle, How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, is an example. Diamond never clearly defines success or failure while he defines the five environmental and cultural factors he thinks contribute to them: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and societal responses to environmental problems. He assumes a rational definition-failure is when people are so poor that they die or flee; success is when they are rich enough to enjoy life where they are. But then, if humans are at least potentially rational, as Diamond believes, why do they often choose failure? Diamond offers a variety of historical reasons. The Easter Islanders chose failure because they didn't realize that the island's environment was different from that of their original tropical homeland. The Classic Maya chose it because their elites exhausted resources in competing for prestige. The Greenland Norse chose it for those reasons and because, like the other societies, they had religious beliefs that outweighed survival. Thus, Diamond notes, choosing environmental collapse can often seem more rational than choosing success because logical goals such as profit, group solidarity, and religious transcendence can motivate the choice. In all cases, the exponential nature of population growth makes choosing success chancy because environmental degradation proceeds at rates hard to perceive during long periods when population growth remains moderate, then spins out of control during short periods when population growth explodes. Diamond doesn't really try to answer Gladwell's contemporary question of how "the rest of us became cultural determinists." In his final chapters, he takes a few stabs at describing ways in which the U.S. is choosing failure-as with our persistence in treating the arid West like the humid East and our elites' increasing tendency to hog resources and segregate themselves. He touches gingerly on prickly issues like immigration. Such passages are cursory, however. It would take a book of even greater length to answer Gladwell's question. Whether an explanation would stop the hedgehog sawing is uncertain, anyway. I believe some books addressed similar questions in the 1970s, although I can't remember the titles. And, given our pervasive amnesia, why should I? Back to Books Index >>
An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect By Sharman Apt Russell Basic Books, 2003 Reviewed by Nancy Bazilchuk God may have had a special fondness for beetles, as J.B.S. Haldane famously quipped, but across the millennia, humans have had an equally strong fascination for butterflies. Sharman Apt Russell's delightful book documents both the obsessed and the objects of their obsessions. Here are butterflies that mate while the female is still a pupa, caterpillars that disguise themselves as a browning leaf edge, and butterflies so large and high-flying that nineteenth-century collectors used shotguns to fell them. These natural history tales are interspersed with equally engaging anecdotes of butterfly fanatics through the ages. The stories of well-known Victorian collectors such as Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russell Wallace are told along with those of lesser-known enthusiasts such as Arthur Bonner, a felon and former Los Angeles gang member who is now passionate about saving the dime-sized El Segundo blue butterfly. You'll never look at a butterfly-or think about your passions-the same way again. Back to Books Index >>
Wisdom for a Livable Planet By Carl N. McDaniel Trinity University Press, 2005 Reviewed by Evan Johnson We recognize our luminaries by their achievements but often wait until they've passed away to learn the larger lessons from their lives. In Wisdom for a Livable Planet, Carl N. McDaniel offers well-crafted profiles of eight active environmental leaders-Herman Daly, a steady-state economist; Dave Foreman, a tireless advocate of habitat protection; and Terri Swearingen, who fought for clean air in her hometown; to name a few. The accomplishments of these individuals may be familiar, but in his essays McDaniel manages to uniquely tell the stories of the paths, often from humble beginnings, that led them to their passions. As the author sums up: ". . . their stories inspire myriad others like you and me to bring about changes that can make all the difference for those who follow." Back to Books Index >>
Return of the Peregrine: A North American Saga of Tenacity and Teamwork Edited by Tom J. Cade and William Burnham The Peregrine Fund, 2003 Reviewed by Margaret Pizer This coffee-table book gives an insider's perspective on a story whose outline is familiar to most readers: the unprecedented efforts that returned the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) from near extinction in the 1960s to the prominence and health that the species enjoys today. Sixty-nine scientists and activists contributed to this story. It has the feel of a scrapbook for the falcon, complete with peregrine baby pictures, photos of researchers at work, and reproductions of correspondence with policymakers about the plight of the species. Although the book focuses on this poster child for endangered species recovery, it also contains broader lessons about private-public partnerships and the extraordinary impact a few determined individuals can have. Indeed, the peregrine story is one of the only examples where a reintroduction can be credited with restoring a population. Back to Books Index >>