Conservation In Practice - Books

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January-March 2006 (Vol. 7, 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.
Plows, Plagues & Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate By William Ruddiman Princeton University Press, 2005 Reviewed by Peter Ward We have Jared Diamond to thank (or blame) for the recent plethora of three-noun-titled science books. William F. Ruddiman explicitly follows in Diamond’s wake in trying to understand the present by looking at the recent peopled past. Yet whereas Diamond’s now-famous and famously profitable book was an attempt to understand the distributional and cultural roots of human societies, here Ruddiman stakes out somewhat different territory. But he still tracks in and out of what I think of as “Diamondland,” challenging our perceptions of the distant past and of human relationships to climate and nature. Ruddiman takes on the assumption that the Industrial Revolution began the climate revolution. In fact, he traces rising CO₂ levels much farther back, to the start of agriculture some 8,000 years ago. Starting with his observation of methane and CO₂ levels that increased when they should have been decreasing, Ruddiman hypothesizes that even primitive agricultural practices produced “unnatural” levels of greenhouse gases. He attributes the rise in CO₂ primarily to large-scale deforestation for agriculture in Europe, the Middle East, and China. For example, Ruddiman uses historical records to calculate that 85 to 90 percent of England was deforested as of 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. It is the power of greenhouse gases in such small quantities that makes this hypothesis tenable: we are talking about gases measured in parts per million. Never have so few molecules done so much. Pre-industrial CO₂ releases from deforestation may have occurred at the snail’s pace of about 0.04 billion tons per year (compared to modern releases of 0.75 billion tons per year). But compound that over 7,750 years, and it’s enough to warm the earth by an average of 0.8°C. Ruddiman goes so far as to suggest that we have delayed an impending new ice age. Ruddiman doesn’t stop with the usual suspect, CO₂—he examines methane as well. Methane quickly breaks down into atmospheric CO₂, but in its short atmospheric lifetime before oxidizing, it is a vastly more efficient greenhouse gas than its end product. Ruddiman traces the most recent increase in methane back to 5,000 years ago, when—like CO₂ 8,000 years ago—methane zigged when it should have zagged. The increase is attributable, he argues, to the creation of manmade wetlands for rice farming throughout Asia. But Ruddiman’s backward look into climate history stops short of examining the full sweep of geological time. Although of obvious interest to climate scientists because of its current potency in warming things up, methane’s deeper history is on the cutting edge of both astrobiology and paleontology. In astrobiology, recent evidence from meteorites suggests that the early Earth had an atmosphere rich in methane, whose reducing qualities favored synthesis of the first organic compounds. In paleontology, the high levels of methane deduced from carbon-isotope ratios in ancient rocks implicate methane in the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago. The end-Permian was the biggest of the “big five” extinctions, and it wiped out about 90 percent of the species on Earth—a pretty impressive accomplishment for a bit of methane. Could current methane levels be heading Earth toward a similar outcome? Ruddiman doesn’t seem interested in taking his history lesson quite this far. Like Diamond with Collapse, Ruddiman concludes the book with a look at how the future may play out. He includes the obligatory yet ultimately unrealistic recommendations for how we humans could take back the air and save ourselves from a hot time in the future. His increasingly strident sermons from the academic mount fall flat because they follow such obvious and well-trodden paths. My take is that there is a more important legacy here, based not on what Ruddiman wrote but on what he didn’t write. This book is yet another testament to the fact that climate specialists simply do not talk to people studying the deep past. Ruddiman has made a start in this direction by considering lessons from climate history dating to the last ice age, but he falls short of examining the full extent and implications of deep climate history. He misses the crucial linkage between what happened in deep time and what is happening now. Did past times of rising greenhouse gases help bring about mass extinctions, and are those same conditions happening today? We will know only when two now-separate sciences begin talking to each other. Books like this one point the way toward how we can do that and why we should. Back to Books Index >>
Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl By Mary Mycio Joseph Henry Press, 2005 Reviewed by Margaret Pizer We tend to think of Chernobyl in the post-apocalyptic terms of abandoned cities, children with birth defects, and mutant animals. Although the first two elements of that stereotype may be true, Mary Mycio’s new book reveals the third to be a vast oversimplification of the state of wildlife near present-day Chernobyl. Mycio is a Ukrainian-American and a former Kiev correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who became personally obsessed with the 1986 nuclear disaster. During multiple visits to Chernobyl since the meltdown, she traveled with wildlife rangers and researchers within the “Zone of Alienation” around the accident site. What she saw was surprising: a profusion of plants and animals that have recolonized the zone since the departure of most of its human inhabitants. To be sure, not all of these organisms are entirely normal—there are misshapen pine trees and partially albino swallows—but many rare species, including red deer, European bison, raptors, and reintroduced Przewalski’s horses, seem to be thriving. A lack of research funding in Ukraine and Belarus means that little is known about how radiation is affecting the health of individual animals. The long-term effects of radiation on researchers and reporters also remain to be seen. But Mycio’s description of the “involuntary park” or “nuclear sanctuary” that has sprung up around Chernobyl reveals the results of an unrepeatable experiment in conservation—showing once again that human presence is the greatest threat to wildlife. Back to Books Index >>
Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America By Bruce Babbitt Island Press, 2005 Reviewed by Margaret Pizer Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt takes a more down-to-earth view of the problem of urban sprawl than the ambitious title of his new book suggests. Refreshingly, instead of issuing broad directives, Babbitt dedicates most of the book to first-hand accounts of environmental victories and defeats during the Clinton administration. From the Florida Everglades to San Diego sprawl to the tallgrass prairies of the Midwest, Babbitt offers lessons about how the federal government can foster better land-use policies and outcomes. Compelling details serve to make Babbitt’s optimistic vision of federal, state, and local authorities cooperating with environmentalists and developers seem surprisingly attainable. Back to Books Index >>
Climate Change and Biodiversity Edited by Thomas E. Lovejoy and Lee Hannah Yale University Press, 2005 Reviewed by Margaret Pizer This edited volume features the contributions of 66 researchers whose expertise spans the spectrum of climate studies—from climate modelers and geologists to wildlife biologists and conservationists. What sets it apart from the slew of other global-warming books is its focus on the impact of climate change on the diversity of life. The book describes the effects of climate change on past life, offers predictions for future effects of global warming, and suggests possible conservation responses. General chapters are interspersed with case studies of specific ecosystems and taxa. Although concrete attempts to incorporate climate change into conservation planning are as yet rare, this comprehensive survey of the field should form the theoretical basis for such work in the future. Back to Books Index >>
The Animal Series Reaktion Books, 2005 Reviewed by Margaret Pizer Conservation biologists spend much of their time pondering the effects of humans on animals, but a new series from Reaktion Books looks at those relationships from the flip side. Each book in this beautifully designed series explores the role of a group of animals in the history and culture of humans. The books are light on biology, but they are full of eclectic illustrations (from cartoons to electron micrographs), discussions of animal symbolism (from teddy bears to fertility charms), and examples of the use of animals in art (from Vermeer to Britney Spears). Conservationists and biologists with an interest in a particular group of animals will find these volumes to be a great source of tidbits and trivia about their favorite critters. Those with a general interest in the intersection of biology and culture will find the entire series enriching. Back to Books Index >>