Ten Of The Best Books About Climate Change, Conservation And The Environment of 2018
Whether you are giving gifts to others or to yourself, this list of the best popular science books of 2018 about climate change, conservation and the environment is a great place to start reading and gifting
by GrrlScientist for Forbes | @GrrlScientist
(Credit: book jacket image composite created by Bob O’Hara.)
In this group of books, I include those that deal with climate change, conservation and the environment — categories that overlap so much that it’s often difficult to know where the boundaries lie. Once again, I found it difficult to narrow down this year’s field to just ten very important and timely books, but I think you’ll agree that all these books are inspirational, educational and just plain good reading.
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush (Milkweed Editions, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
You may not know this, but America’s coasts are disappearing, little by little, wave by wave. Every year, maps of the coastline are being redrawn as low-lying areas, including mangroves, tidal marshes and wetlands, are swallowed by rising seas. In areas that are still, barely, above sea level, salt is killing the trees and plants, and as they die, essential habitat disappears. This important book shares rare glimpses into the lives of those who live in these ecologically devastated areas, it skilfully interweaves the complexities of nature and humanity — and even some science — so we, the readers, can experience the ecological devastation alongside them. The author, who also includes her won story, interviews both experts and residents of flood-prone and storm-ravaged areas, and shows how the poor are disproportionately affected by these changes. The personal stories are compelling, the prose is exquisite — some of the most evocative writing I’ve ever read — and this relevant book is accessible to a wide readership. If you read only one non-fiction book this year, make this The One: I guarantee you’ll never see the world the same way again.
Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island by Earl Swift (Dey Street Books, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
For some people, climate change is a science-driven conspiracy, but for most of us, it’s an undeniable reality that confronts us daily in myriad ways. Journalist Earl Swift’s timely book provides a behind-the-scenes view of what it’s like to live, every day, in the path of climate change and rising sea levels — whether you “believe in it” or not. Swift lived amongst the residents of the tiny community on Tangier Island, Virginia, located in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and managed to convince them to include him in their everyday lives. The result is that he could write this book, which is an eloquent insider’s portrait of their disappearing way of life. Tangier island is the source of Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, and is best known to seafoodies as the softshell crab capital of the world. But two-thirds of Tangier Island has already been submerged since 1850, and its shoreline continues to retreat by fifteen feet a year. In fewer than 25 years, the island — along with its two-hundred-year-old community — will completely disappear. Chesapeake Requiem is a soulful examination of the natural history of an extraordinary ecosystem, an intimate document of a vanishing way of life and a brilliant account of man’s relationship with the environment.
Wilding: The return of nature to a British farm by Isabella Tree (Picador, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
The Knepp Castle Estate in West Sussex was an unprofitable and unsustainable British farm that had been damaged by destructive modern agricultural practices. After moving in, Isabella Tree and her spouse, Charlie Burrell, decided to let nature take over. They removed fences and introduced large herbivores to the land — cattle, ponies, pigs and deer — proxies for some of the large animals that once roamed Britain and after that, they stopped interfering. Surprisingly, in little more than a decade, the 3,500 acre “Knepp experiment” has experienced a remarkable explosion in wildlife diversity. This wonderfully readable book, which is partly a memoir and partly a plan of action, is an inspirational guide for how to “rewild” a landscape. The author also explains how rewilding aids people by generating employment and stimulating the local economy, and how it benefits nature itself by restoring soil health and increasing biodiversity — for example, turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, lesser spotted woodpeckers and purple emperor butterflies, quickly returned and are now breeding at Knepp. But the author doesn’t shy away from discussing the challenges and difficulties of rewilding — discussing practical problems involved with relocating wild deer and philosophical objections such as arguments about the ever-present hazard of food shortages on an island, and the need to make every inch of ground productive in some way. This honest, thoroughly researched and deeply hopeful book will appeal to everyone — especially farmers — who is concerned about how intensive farming practices are degrading the environment and how nature can be restored.
In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World by Lauren E. Oakes (Basic Books, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
In this book, we accompany author and scientist, Lauren Oakes, on her journey from the classroom to the cold, wet old-growth forests of the rugged outer coast of Southeast Alaska as she conducts field studies to identify causes underlying the long-term ecological changes and social impacts of an Alaskan forest directly affected by climate change due to the dramatic decline of the yellow cedar. Whilst the author is dealing with her despair over the cedar’s rapid retreat from its historic range, her father suddenly dies. This remarkable, straightforward personal narrative provides a moving behind-the-scenes glimpse into the development of a young scientist as she searches for meaning and resilience in the face of great personal and global challenges. This inspirational memoir’s appeal will reach far beyond its timely and valuable lessons about climate science, social science and forest ecology; it shares much-needed hope and wonder with readers searching for how to live in an increasingly devastated world.
Return of the Sea Otter: The Story of the Animal That Evaded Extinction on the Pacific Coast by Todd McLeish (Sasquatch Books, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
Fur was nearly the sea otter’s undoing. Unlike most marine mammals, sea otters do not rely on blubber to maintain their internal body temperature. Instead, their dense, luxurious fur is how they insulate themselves from the killing cold of the northern Pacific Ocean. So of course, humans turned their covetous eyes onto sea otter pelts, igniting a demand that nearly wiped out the species. But the damage didn’t stop there because sea otters play a critical role in shaping healthy marine shoreline ecosystems, preying preferentially upon abalone, sea urchins, clams, crab, and other crustaceans — which people also like to eat — making them the bane of fishermen. Yet despite centuries of “harvest” and persecution, these fascinating and complex marine mammals somehow managed to survive. This hopeful book, written by a science journalist who traveled North America’s west coast from California to Alaska, details the sea otter’s remarkable comeback story from the brink of extinction, the conservation efforts that helped it, and the challenges to so-called “sustainable fisheries” that this comeback presents. Entertaining and yet still scientifically accurate, this inspiring book will be enjoyed by conservation biologists as well as by citizen scientists, students of the sciences, and by nonspecialists.
Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil & the Future of Africa’s Big Cats by Andrew Loveridge (Regan Arts, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
Lion Hearted is the book I’ve been awaiting for years. After American hunter, Walter Palmer, killed a lion named Cecil in 2015, zoologist Andrew Loveridge, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford who studied Cecil for eight years, speaks out. For the first time, Dr. Loveridge pieces together the fascinating life and fuzzy details of this beloved lion’s slaying. But more than just telling the story of Cecil, this book shares the larger context: the special conservation needs of lions, whose natural history and complex society is unique amongst big cats. Based upon decades of research, Dr. Loveridge discusses the effects of trophy hunting in Hwange National Park, reporting that most lion mortality observed by his project was connected to legal or illegal hunting of one breeding male or dominant female and the resulting chain reaction that leads to most, or all, of the pride being wiped out. This finding casts real doubt on the supposed benefits of legal trophy hunting. Also included are the personal stories of the biologists, the lions and the reactions to inconvenient facts by hunting and regulatory authorities. Beautifully written, meticulously documented and expertly argued, this book is an important contribution to conservation literature.
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb (Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
Before white settlers arrived in North America, the continent was home to millions of beavers. Thanks to these industrious rodents’ activities, the landscape was covered in an intertwined system of streams and wetlands that resembled a “bowl of spaghetti”, which made the land much wetter than it is today. But white settlers arrived and the fur trade swiftly expanded, so that beavers almost disappeared because their fur was popular for making hats for English gentlemen. But beavers are a keystone species whose presence supports entire biological communities, so the reduction of these animals resulted in the loss of critically important habitat. Additionally, the loss of beavers’ “ecosystem services” affected humans too by reducing groundwater retention, thereby increasing the frequency and severity of floods, droughts, erosion and wildfires, and intensifying the effects of climate change. In this impassioned and educational book, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb highlights the ecological importance of beavers, shares important facts about their natural history, and corrects persistent misconceptions about them. He also interviews a variety of experts, ranging from scientists and environmentalists to ranchers and citizen scientists, and shares scientific arguments espousing the restoration of the beaver to its ancestral lands. Includes lots of useful references. Written with clarity, intelligence, and humor, this engaging book will appeal to basically everyone.
Cane Toad Wars by Rick Shine (University of California Press, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
In 1935, white Australians (an alien invasive species) imported 101 cane toads (an alien invasive species, as it turned out) from South America to eat beetles that were devastating the sugar cane crop (another alien species) in Queensland. What happened next is the stuff of legend because cane toads did not eat the insects they were supposed to eat, but they did quickly invade all of northern Australia, becoming fabulously, wildly successful. But more than just re-telling the history of this most famous of all man-made ecological disasters, Rick Shine, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney, explores the complex and often nuanced story of evolutionary change and ecological resilience: the adaptation of the toads to their new environment and of their new environment to them, writing that these events have much to teach us about evolution and ecological resilience. This engaging firsthand account account tells the personal story of Professor Shine’s lifetime of research into cane toads and how rigorous natural history studies can effectively inform conservation policies and practices. Professor Shine also makes a strong argument in support of that (apparently) most quaint of scientific practices: field work.
Brave New Arctic: The Untold Story of the Melting North by Mark C. Serreze (Princeton University Press, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
Mark Serreze entered the climate field as a grad student, just when research into Arctic warming was gaining steam, and matured in the profession as the quality, depth and breadth of Arctic research progressed quickly. From explaining the history of the scientific investigations into global warming and the growing complexity of the questions being probed, to showing how research is changing as technology advances, Professor Serreze, who started out as a skeptic, is a trustworthy guide revealing how scientists know that climate change is real and that it results from human activities. The author’s wit combined with his personal history as an academic and his insights into the scientific process make this interesting story irresistible. That Professor Serreze was finally convinced of the connection between human activities and climate change makes him particularly able to explain the science. Some readers may be put off by some of the jargon, which is usually (but not always) well explained for nonspecialists, but overall, this is an intelligent and readable story about the issues being examined by climate scientists, accompanied by actual data.
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann (Knopf, 2018: Amazon US / Amazon UK)
Charles Mann has written a number of books about history that I’ve read and enjoyed, but this book represents a bit of a shift in focus to comparing and contrasting two main schools of thought within the environmental movement. This book begins with short biographies of two extremely influential scientists who are mostly forgotten today: Norman Borlaug (“the Wizard”), who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, for being the father of the “Green Revolution”, which led to increased crop yields in South Asia and other parts of the developing world, and ornithologist William Vogt (“the Prophet”), who wrote and published the hugely influential book, ‘Road to Survival’ in 1948, where he concluded that human population growth would exhaust all natural resources. Basically, both agree on the basic facts of human-caused environmental issues, but disagree on what to do about them. But as the human population rapidly approaches 10 billion, we are running out of time — are we capable of solving hunger, climate change, resource depletion, and other challenges before modern civilization collapses? Prophets say we must reduce consumption, Wizards say we must find more efficient means of production. This intense and carefully-researched book presents a balanced, scholarly and calm exploration of society’s most pressing problems.
For more faboo science books, please refer to my previous annual mini-reviews of the 10 best books about ecology, conservation and the environment in 2016 and 2017.
Many thanks to the publishers and their publicity agents who graciously sent review copies of their beautiful books far off the beaten track to snowy Norway.
Originally published at Forbes on 23 January 2019.
