Cold Comfort

Few things make a child rue global warming more than a snow-day-free winter. Half way through January with not a flake in sight, my kids are beginning to despair. In contrast, I can recall winters when nor’easters brought days-long ice storms and the consequent school reprieve as late as March. Memory, in this case at least, gives me hope.

But hope doesn’t make me wish less ardently for a blizzard. Instead of staring fruitlessly at Weather.com, I turned for solace to a new volume, The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic. Inspired by the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, which aims at heightening awareness and encouraging research, the work presents writings from the earliest days of polar exploration to the present. The wages of snow obsession, as should forewarn my kids, are abundantly clear in many of the selections. Here’s this from Nobu Shirashe, who returned from a Japanese Antarctic Expedition in 1912:

The whole enterprise was indescribably difficult and fraught with danger, and it was without doubt the worst of the trials and tribulations we have experienced since we left our mothers’ wombs.

The withering monotony of the endless polar night is captured by Fridtjof Nansen, on board a ship helplessly adrift in the Arctic ice:

One day differed very little from another on board, and the description of one is, in every particular of any importance, a description of all.

And from Robert Peary, who may or may not have exaggerated his claims to have reached the North Pole in 1909:

If it were possible for a man to arrive at 90 degrees north latitude without being utterly exhausted, body and brain, he would doubtless enjoy a series of unique sensations and reflections. But the attainment of the Pole was the culmination of days and weeks of forced marches, physical discomfort, insufficient sleep, and racking anxiety. It is a wise provision of nature that the human consciousness can grasp only such degree of intense feeling as the brain can endure, and the grim guardians of earth’s remotest spot will accept no man as guest until he has been tried and tested by the severest ordeal.

Some may quibble that the volume is over-stuffed with such tales of early explorers’ machismo. Indeed, from the relative security of his well-stocked ship, Nansen laments, “I am almost ashamed of the life we lead, with none of those darkly painted sufferings of the long winter night which are indispensable to a properly exciting Arctic expedition. We shall have nothing to write about when we get home.” But looking deeper into the book, I found plenty of variety beyond the standard explorers’ memoirs and logs. Fictional offerings include works by Jules Verne, Jack London, and Andrea Barrett, and expository nature essays appear from Gretel Erhlich, Barry Lopez, and other contemporary masters. Lopez’s essay from his 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning Arctic Dreams in particular gains fresh relevance when read in this context, as he relishes the movements of caribou and snow geese from the perspective of a man not near starvation, as well as extolling immutable rhythms of animals in wild nature in a time before acute awareness of climate change.


Given the ever-more alarming news of shrinking ice sheets and vanishing polar bears and penguins, it may also surprise readers that only a few of authors explore how global warming is impacting the earth’s extremes. Co-editor Elizabeth Kolbert, author of a galvanizing climate change report, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, addresses such concerns briefly but grimly in her introduction, admitting, “A landscape that once symbolized the sublime indifference of nature will, for future generations, come to symbolize its tragic vulnerability.” But I, for one reader, am pleased that the vast majority of the book offers a pure white escape. This warm winter, I found in it a place to refresh my winter memories and, perhaps, to learn how to proceed bravely instead of hunkering down in the cold and dark.

One Sky, One Choice

“I’m too busy.”
“It’s too cold.”
“I’d have to put my tooth in.”

Those were just a few of the excuses that met my invitations to Saturday’s Step It Up anti-global warming rally. Locally, ours was touted as a gathering of the One Sky movement, an initiative that has identified specific, achievable, science-based priorities for climate change activism—e.g., five million green jobs by 2015, cut carbon 30% by 2020, and no new coal fired power plants. Saturday’s rallies around the nation asked leaders, including the myriad presidential candidates, to step up and commit to these tangible goals essential for saving the planet. Hillary, Mitt, and their ilk were conspicuously absent from the modest event near me, and I haven’t heard yet if they showed up elsewhere. While I’ve not been glued to tv or radio, it seems that most reporters were away covering the crisis du jour—or maybe just wanted to relax at home with their teeth out.

But at least some hometown politicians were there. One talked about how refreshing it feels to be for things, such as alternative energy, mass transit, and simple living, rather than endlessly against oil drilling, highway construction, mindless consumption and the like. ( The positive framing of the issue was the reason I felt comfortable bringing my eight year old with me when other family members backed out. ) But the most inspiring words for me came from a state legislator, one of the greenest pols in Maryland. Liz Bobo captured my attention by praising writer/organizer Bill McKibben, calling the author of The End of Nature a prophet of the climate change crisis (though she didn’t mention his new book, Fight Global Warming Now, a resource-packed guide for individuals and communities).


Then, Bobo talked about a recent poetry reading by Jane Hirshfeld, author of After and other prize-winning collections. Hirshfield’s poems speak of nature’s resilience as well as beauty, offering hope in the face of Al Gore’s most alarming statistics. And her imagery, of the wild animal world watching, perhaps in judgment, as humans despoil our shared planet, resonates with Ms. Bobo as she argues with colleagues in the State House and addresses often-meager crowds of supporters. How grand that a poet’s work strengthens a legislator’s; how fine that together we can achieve the vision of One Sky--if only we decide that we must.

Sunday Not-So-Funnies

I almost wish I’d just stuck to reading the comics in last Sunday’s Washington Post (7/29/07). The Book World section cover story reviewed The Unnatural History of the Sea, in which Callum Roberts traces the history of our “boundless delusion” that the sea is a limitless resource immune from human overexploitation. In case reading about the possibly-irreversible degradation of ocean life weren’t depressing enough, another review looked at Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming by science journalist Chris Mooney. Storm World looks into the increasingly grim facts about global warming and its spinoffs, such as Katrina and other “hypercanes,” and finds something even more distressing: our government is muzzling the scientists who would alert us to danger perhaps in time to prevent the worst results. I took a breather after these two dismaying critiques and scanned the column for young readers. Sunday’s presented an array of retellings, often with ethnic twists, of classic fairy tales. But I couldn’t help wondering which Brothers Grimm parable of human folly describes our environmental blindness best.


Back to the adult book reviews, the one that most caught my eye addresses the perhaps-surprising best seller, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. A science journalist, Weisman postulates that all human life could suddenly disappear, perhaps from a human-specific, airborne virus. Then he asks—how would the Earth react? Within days, New York’s subway tunnels would flood, within years pet dogs would start their decline toward extinction, and within decades, most of our homes would be collapsed, the remains overgrown with vegetation and overrun with new four- and six-legged occupants. The end of humans would also mean the cessation of nuclear power plant maintenance, and the resulting Chernobyls would spread radioactive contamination around 100s of sites. But the most ubiquitous, persistent signs of former human glory would be our plastic trash. Plastic bags would block sea turtle intestines and miles-long plastic nets would continue to fish the troubled oceans long after we vanish into the past.

To my surprise, the reviewer (Michael Grunwald, author of The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise) doesn’t seem to grasp the value of this thought experiment. He says The World “is trivia masquerading as wisdom” and criticizes the author for recommending population control as a partial solution to current and projected environmental crises. It’s just the kind of formal book review I dislike—devoting more space to the reviewer’s reactions than to the substance of the book. We learn that the reviewer attends lots of “depressingly apocalyptic environmental conferences” and that he adamantly opposes strict population limits and thinks human survival is the best and only reason to protect the planet. But he fails adequately to present Weisman’s viewpoint or to quote from the book to give potential readers a taste of Weisman’s prose style. Although I’m a strong supporter of newspaper book reviews as an essential resource for readers confronted with so many books, this one doesn’t do its job. I can’t tell from this reviewer’s strident objects whether or not he’s giving Weisman’s arguments a fair shake.

Luckily, The World has attracted enough attention that Weisman’s out there on the talk show circuit speaking for his book himself. Check out his July 30th interview on public radio. Or you can read a transcript of a live discussion, sponsored by The Washington Post, with Weisman and Callum Roberts (author of the above-mentioned The Unnatural History of the Sea about both of their books. Weisman takes the time to respond to the Post review and to talk about how he remains optimistic about the future in the face of all that he learned during his research. I may have to read it again to capture some of that optimism for myself. Or maybe I’ll just read Zits.

Live Earth, Starring . . . .

We were outside enjoying belated July 4th fireworks during most of the "Live Earth" concert coverage, but thanks to YouTube, I didn't have to miss everything. Here's Madonna's official contribution, "Hey, You."


I like the contrast between the harsh visuals and her calm, sweet vocal delivery, and of course I agree with the message that each indivudal needs to recognize the threats to the earth & human welfare and act asap. Though I missed the multi-channel coverage, it was exciting to think of such diverse stars as Madonna, Garth Brooks, The Police, Corinne Bailey Rae, and so many others lending their talents to raise global warming awareness. Criticisms of the carbon costs of Live Earth were inevitable; critics can't legitimately argue that protesters are wrong to fear and oppose business as usual, so they accuse participants of being hypocrits.

But it does seem to me that the concert organizers missed an opportunity to celebrate the finest singers on the planet. Here's another YouTube video featuring just a few of these performers, all of whom are above the criticism that their work consumes too much fossil fuel:



If you think I'm kidding about the musical intentions of songbirds, I recommend reading David Rothenberg's delightful Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song. Rothenberg, a clarinetist as well as a philosopher, explores human understanding of birdsong from the perspectives of scientists, historians, poets, and fellow practitioners. Best of all, he expands on insights in the text with excerpts of birdsong and other natural music on his website. If the world made any sense, anyone who heard a lyrebird sing would be converted into a climate change activist. But as the world is now, I'm glad that Madonna's voice is part of the growing global choir.

Big Coal Q & A

Are you infuriated by mountaintop coal mining? Do you need some literary ammunition against proponents of coal-to-liquid as a gasoline alternative? Do you just wonder where your electricity comes from? Jeff Goodell offers authoritative answers to these burning questions in Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future. In a surprisingly engaging book about a global resource extraction industry, Goodell analyzes how our reliance on coal has led to nationwide inertia against alternative energy research. In the 21st century, he argues, few of us realize our dependence on a 19th century energy source. He says, “We may not like to admit it, but our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.”

This is an especially important book at this moment of energy legislation debate on Capital Hill. If you don’t have time to read the book, please use that shiny iPod to hear a podcast of Goodell’s June 21 interview, ironically on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. And if you’ve taken your high blood pressure medication, get a podcast from Diane Rehm’s WAMU radio archives of her June 20th discussion of the energy legislation debate. Guests include a well-spoken representative from the Natural Resources Defense Council, but you’ll also hear an employee of the Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers extolling the virtues of coal-to-liquid as the key to defeating the terrorist menace.


If the discussion gets you steamed up as it did me, stay tuned to hear Diane’s radio book club discussion of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Thinking about Bronte’s insights into human nature and perhaps her line, “Better to be without logic than without feeling,” seems especially appropriate after just listening to a coal advocate using data and reason to convince us to accept more global warming to improve his profit margins.

No (Book) Impact Man

Who wouldn't want to read almost daily about "A guilty liberal [who] finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic"? That irresistible character is No Impact Man, author of one of my very favorite blogs. Since his posts started arriving in my inbox a month ago, NIM has chronicled adventures such as saving electricity by stomping his laundry like grapes in the tub and waxed philosophic about the pollution-induced death of a minke whale in New York harbor. Though I sometimes can't even imagine following his example (we have wayward ants, but no composting worms, in our kitchen), he always gives me something to ponder and often a laugh or two.

You can imagine my suspense upon reading today's headline--"Worse Than Giving up Toilet Paper." What could be worse? NIM is starting a new phase of his energy-efficient living experiment, which he calls the "sustainable consumption stage." A writer and book glutton of long standing, NIM began seeing his bulging shelves as antithetical to his sustainability goals. Yet the prospect of parting with objects of such varied and rich values left him feeling panicked. Will NIM get rid of some or all of his treasured books? Should others seeking to save the planet follow suit? And what should be done with books demeaned unworthy of one's own shelves? I won't spoil his story by telling you. But I'd love to hear what you think about his decision and about the comments on that thread of NIM's discussion. Like NIM, I think that what to do about buying, keeping, and purging accumulated books are vital questions in determining how books can and could be used to slow climate change and generally save the earth.

Native Plants as Necessities

I read a book not worth blogging about this weekend, so that freed me to talk about some outdoor, book-free activities—which of course led to more books and thinking about books. Two of my kids and I spent Saturday morning volunteering at a native plant sale held by the Audubon Society of Central Maryland. The annual event supports two local wildlife sanctuaries and environmental education projects (including a schoolyard wildlife habitat grant program that I coordinate), but it’s worthwhile for its own sake as a way to encourage native plant and wildlife habitat gardening. Every year, the offerings grow more diverse, including ferns, grasses, groundcovers, perennials and woody plants, each with indisputable native provenance. We arrived before the crowds, and I altruistically resisted buying the ferns and chokeberries that I coveted, letting the customers get first crack at the goodies. By the time we finished hauling purchases to a few dozen cars, it was too late. But that’s ok; the plants are out there adding biodiversity to central Maryland, even if they’re not in my yard.


It occurred to me that my bioblitz site would have benefited if I’d bought at least some bunchberry to add surreptitiously to the near-monoculture of mown grass at my library. While I picked a lawn-like spot deliberately to see what grows & thrives in that common setting, it’s still been depressing to find so little. It makes me think that a new form of monkey-wrenching could be planting wild columbines to replace New Guinea impatiens and similar acts of sedition (seed-ition?). To learn about the damage we’ve wrought by the simple act of yard-construction, read Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards. Stein argues that our tidy lawns (and library grounds) are wiping out vast swathes of wildlife habitat, and that each of us has a responsibility to restore at least the patch around our home. Her efforts to transform six acres of Pound Ridge, New York are chronicled conceptually in Noah’s Garden and more practically in Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology. Stein also presents a corollary to her argument that native gardens are good for wildlife--that gardens and outdoor experiences are vital for children--in one of my favorite books Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood. If that’s not enough gardening books for you, look for recommendations of books appropriate for each region of the U.S. at Plant Native. And if you'd like to witness how a natural landscaper-turned blogger transforms a misbegotten yard into a woodland oasis, visit Wild Flora's Wild Garden.

Sunday, my family managed a hike along the Little Patuxent River and also a visit to an Open House of Chesapeake Climate Action Network. At least once a year, Climate Action invites the public into its founder’s Takoma Park, Maryland home to see how much one family can do to reduce its carbon footprint. We admired a corn-powered stove, rain barrels, and high efficiency appliances, then chatted with a solar water heater installer and a biodiesel car owner. The kids gobbled solar oven-baked cookies, but it was the minescule electric bills that got my husband drooling. Equally attractive, there’s almost no lawn to mow, and blooms of field chickweed attracted a butterfly that would find no reason to stop by my blitz site. The buzz of human visitors, excited by all the possibilities around them, made me think that Sara Stein could extend her argument still further. People of all ages need gardens, outdoor experiences, and new possibilities for improving their environment to thrive. The crowds at the Audubon sale and the Open House were shopping for ideas, for hope.

Act Locally, Read Frequently

“Think globally. Act locally. Read frequently.” I like the motto so much that I wish I’d thought of it. But instead I found it on the website of Arlington READS Green, a project of Arlington County, Virginia and the Arlington Library system. Participants are invited to read “green” books and join in book discussions, author talks, a used book sale, and other enviro-friendly book-related happenings. It’s the literary branch of a many-limbed effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Arlington County, a program aptly named Fresh AIRE (Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions).

So what are Arlington READS Green readers reading? The five selected books include 3 nonfiction titles directly focused on global warming ( An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert, and The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock). To leaven the mix, two novels are also suggested: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and Hoot by Carl Hiassen. Oddly, for this nonfiction fan, I’ve read the novels and not the others but recognize all as fine choices to stimulate discussion and heighten awareness. Anyone who lives in the Arlington area may want to check the schedule to learn if you can take part in the discussions. Tonight, for example, is a gathering for kids & teens to chat about Hoot, both book and movie.

But those of us who can’t get to that library can think about public libraries in our own neighborhoods. Could a program like Arlington READS Green work there? Could you help start one, or at least suggest it to the library staff? Another possibility is to suggest one of the GREEN titles (or another appropriate book) to your current book club. The parents' book club at my daughter’s school read Prodigal Summer with much pleasure and lively conversation. I took along a handy reading guide as a source of discussion questions and background info. The best result of the meeting was new fans for Kingsolver, one of the finest nature writers working today. And I know that while reading one book about the environment doesn’t always change your life, reading lots has to have an impact. So three cheers for Arlington READS Green! Let get out there and read frequently together.

Hope in The Post

My Sundays usually begin with a perusal of The Washington Post. My husband grabs the front page (& comics), so I head straight for the book review section. Yesterday, there weren’t any nature or science books that caught my eye (though I'm going to check out one on mistakes women make trying to balance career and motherhood--The Feminine Mistake). But when my husband relinquished Page 1, my reading ups and downs began.

First came a down. As a minor participant but fervent supporter in the StepItUp global warming protests Saturday, I anticipated a front page story on the 1,400 rallies nationwide. Nope. Paging deeper into the Post, I finally came upon a below the fold, left hand corner item on A6, Nationwide, a Clamor Over Global Warming. Compare those few inches of coverage to literally pages on the primary fundraising duel between Obama and Clinton, and you can see my distress. If an international outcry against the greatest environmental threat ever faced can’t get the headlines, what can?

Distraught over the StepItUp reporting, I was in the perfect mood to see an “Outlook” section editorial by a fine writer I know, Janna Bialek. She charges in
Why I Won’t Be Celebrating Earth Day This Year that environmentalists have become just another special interest group. By arranging carpools and recycling drives, she argues, environmentalists let others off the hook to drive SUVs and overheat their McMansions. Bialek’s sitting out Earth Day, she says, and now rejects being called an environmentalist because “Time has proved that the message of Earth Day—that awareness will lead to action—is naïve.” Some readers might view such words as an admission of defeat, but Bialek, I think, means them to jolt us into action. On Earth Day, she’ll skip the organized tree plantings to search alone for wildflowers or eagles, but mostly for spiritual renewal. She needs, as we all do, hope that we can find a way to save the earth. That, I think, is how I’ll make Earth Day every day this year, searching for hope in newspapers, films, books, and of course outdoors.

I’d be remiss not to mention another source of hope in Sunday’s Post. Chad Pregracke is in Washington, D.C., running cleanups of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. The projects are part of his riverkeeping campaign that began a decade ago on the Mississippi. The Post calls him “the Al Gore of the nation’s river system,” and Robert Kennedy, Jr. hails him as “a genuine American hero.” What’s not to be hopeful about that? DC area readers might like to read the Post article, Trawling for Trash to Keep our Rivers Clean, especially if you have time to pitch in. But if you’d like to learn about hands-on, stepped-up environmental action, visit the website for Pregracke’s 2007 book, From the Bottom Up: One Man’s Crusade to Clean America’s Rivers . I haven’t read it yet, so I’d love to hear what people think of it.

Reading While Rallying

I hope that you’ve already heard about tomorrow’s First National Day of Climate Action, a national day of rallies and protests aimed at convincing Congress to cap carbon emissions. Many efforts seek to dramatize the unwelcome changes we’re already facing: scuba divers will be visiting bleaching coral reefs off Florida, and skiers will be schooshing down shrinking glaciers in the Rockies. Around here (Maryland), more prosaic activities are planned, with gatherings, sign-wavings, and hikes of like-minded folks hoping to draw at least a little media attention. The closest group event to me is 20 miles away, though, and it doesn’t seem quite right to drive my minivan (yes, as classic soccer mom, I drive a minivan) to a rally against energy waste. Since other commitments (soccer included) kept me from organizing my own local rally, I needed a Plan B.

So of course I thought of a personal read-a-thon. At first, it seemed ideal to immerse myself in global warming treatises for the day, with the plan to blog about the best next week. After all, activism through books is a major goal of mine. But upon reflection, sitting along doesn’t seem the right way to support the “Step It Up” campaign. The Administration’s been cowering behind the “We need more research” bush long enough. The jury is in. We can quibble over the details of how fast, where, and who, but global warming is happening. What’s a reading activist to do to help stop it?

I know what we’ll do tomorrow. My kids and I will walk to our local park, wearing our “Save the Arctic” t-shirts, and mingle with other families at a planned pet festival. Our message will be quiet and more visual than verbal (wolves and polar bears on the shirts), but maybe it will remind a few people we pass that global warming is part of our regular life, even on Saturdays at the park. More likely, it will remind me to make time in my busy (reading) life to step up and take action. As I walk, I’ll be thinking of more powerful steps my family and I can take, ways to reach out and reach in. My plan for our Climate Action is too small to be satisfying, but maybe that's a good thing. On Sunday, I hope to have the beginnings of a new plan to do more than just read or write. I hope you’ll join me Saturday and beyond.

And if you need more information about the campaign and its founder, Bill McKibben, check out an interview with him at World Changing Magazine. McKibben published the first popular book about global warming The End of Nature in 1989, and initiated the Step It Up campaign just months ago in Vermont. If you insist on reading rather than rallying on Saturday, or are coordinated enough to read while rallying, The End of Nature might be the book to get you started.

Climate Crisis Action Day

See my spiffy new button for GlobalWarming.org? I spent yesterday in Washington, D.C. for a rally against global warming, officially called, Climate Crisis Action Day. We heard John Kerry speak on the history of growing concern and legislative failures and a third grader talk about her concern for drowning polar bears. We also picked up some info on installing solar water heaters, plus a button from the Wilderness Society announcing, "I Like it Wild." Then we headed for our Congressional Rep's office to deliver my seven-year-old's drawing of a polar bear asking, "Save me!"

The rally was a little sparse, especially for such a beautiful day. The minimal gathering inspired my activist son to write a blog entry today, pondering the effectiveness of rallies in campaigns for social change. I'll leave that for his more social-theory oriented mind. My books-oriented mind started wondering how books can shape the campaign.

I've read only one, though: James Gustave Speth's Red Sky at Morning. It's a good place to start, written by a scholar (Speth's Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) and supplemented by a website, complete with additional resources, updates, and a streaming video of the author discussing his work. I've also skimmed the companion book to Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and read laudatory reviews of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert (Paperback,2006).

But there are so many other choices, some overtly hostile to climate change theories, others aimed at spoofing concerns rather than inspiring action. The field looks too big for one humble blogging over-reader to pick the best or most effective at helping the debate progress. So what books have you found useful? Did it inspire you to think better, talk better, act better? Or is there a book on climate change that still needs to be written? Well, then, stop rallying and start writing. . . .