By Charles Wohlforth

North Point Press, 2004

Reviewed by Jonathan Beard

For most of us, the threat of global warming seems vague, distant: winters getting half a degree, even a whole degree, warmer over a decade may even sound appealing. But for the Eskimo of Barrow, Alaska, climate change is as clear as the water at the edge of town in May. The ice that used to enable them to reach out into the sea to hunt whales now thaws long before summer. Charles Wohlforth, an Alaskan writer, begins this fascinating portrait of native cultures, scientific studies, wildlife, and politics on just such thin ice.

Wohlforth spent two years dividing his time between two worlds: that of the Inupiaq natives of Barrow, the northernmost town in Alaska, and that of scientists studying climate change. With his sharp eyes and ears always open, he goes out on whale hunts, eats chunks of fried blubber, and listens to National Public Radio with the Inupiaq—some who have never left the Arctic and others who know every Metro stop in Washington, DC. Chapters about native life and the impact of long summers and mild winters alternate with chapters about scientists trying to understand the same phenomena by counting the leaves of tundra plants, measuring snow depth, and most ambitiously constructing global climate models—no two of which seem to agree.

Although these two worlds sometimes overlap, they are divided by different ways of knowing and different priorities. Consider the case of bowhead whales. According to government scien-tists, they had reached the brink of extinction. So in 1977, the International Whaling Commission banned bowhead hunting. The Inupiaq, relying on a thousand years of experience and on their own sightings, insisted the whales were abundant. The Eskimo (the term they prefer) were right in the end. But Wohlforth points out that it cost scientists US$10 million to “discover” something the Eskimo already knew.

He finds a rich trove of ironies as he talks to people in Alaska and many of the 48 contiguous states. For the conservation-minded reader, these will be both eye-opening and disconcerting. Scientists, for instance, frequently arrive in Barrow with a “wilderness ethic” that inspires them to wear Polartec® and travel light. For the natives—and Wohlforth’s sympathies lie almost entirely with them—such an ethic is ridiculous. They no more want to keep the Alaskan wilderness pristine than most landowners in New Jersey want to keep their holdings pristine. They want to survive, be warm indoors in the winter, and hunt and eat the whales and caribou that their ancestors ate. And when they set up camp before whaling, they bring doughnuts, cookies, soda, and space heaters for the tents.

The larger irony here is that burning fossil fuels, as Wohlforth notes in his preface, is driving the climate change that is destroying the Alaskan winter—but the natives are scarcely helpless victims. For one thing, they owe their prosperity and political power of the past few decades to the Alaska Pipeline and to their cut of revenue from the oil it carries south. When the sea, its power unbroken by ice, sweeps closer to their homes in Barrow, the Eskimo worry. But going back to the bad old days of cold homes and months of isolation is not an option.

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In Search of the Rain Forest

Edited by Candace Slater

Duke University Press, 2003

Reviewed by Jonathan Beard

Biologists look at rain forests and see ecosystems—trophic webs turning the tropical sun into tissue. But the social scientists in the seminar that gave birth to this book considered what the public and politicians see—icons, they say. One rain forest icon is the “forest of Eden,” a primeval paradise of endangered species. Its evil twin is the “viral forest,” source of Ebola and HIV—a modern “Heart of Darkness.” Those who want to preserve forests (rain, old-growth, or saguaro) may gain useful insights into these entirely different ways of seeing both the forest and the trees. Images, the contributors argue, do matter. The green-garden icon leaves no room for the human populations that inhabit every forest, whereas the “viral forest” is something to shun, not protect. Caring about sustainable forests, one says, means going beyond biophysical processes to the messy social processes that shape the rain forest today. (Note: This book is part of the New Ecologies for the Twenty-first Century series.)

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New Consumers: The Influence of Affluence on the Environment

By Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent

Island Press, 2004

Reviewed by Jonathan Beard

When environmentalists decry the huge “footprints” of affluent consumers, they typically focus on the usual suspects: America, west-ern Europe, and Japan. But Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent point out the elephant in the room. There are 20 “new consumer” countries with rising middle classes who want and expect to eat meat, drive cars, and travel—and there could be 1.6 billion such people by 2010. These people are, of course, entitled to enjoy the goods that First-World populations take for granted, but they will hit scarcity barriers much sooner than Americans. For example, Russia already imports grain, the bulk of it for livestock feed to produce meat for its new rich. Mexico, in a similar fix, is running short of water for its cattle. If China with its fast-growing car fleet were to approach American standards of car ownership, it would have more cars than the rest of the world combined. The authors end this book, which is brightly written albeit saturated with statistics, with a plea to all consumers to consider what they really want out of life.

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For Love of Insects

By Thomas Eisner

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003

Reviewed by Jonathan Beard

Chemical ecology. Admit it, the first thing you think when you see those words is “coffee table book.” And after 45 years of publishing articles on insect defense mechanisms in Science, Nature, PNAS, and other top journals, Tom Eisner has capped his career with this dazzling book. Thanks to splendid photos by Maria Eisner, the explanations of how lubber grasshoppers, nasute termites, and stink bugs spray, ooze, or throw up on predators come alive. Written in a friendly and accessible, yet not dumbed-down way, For Love of Insects will fascinate anyone interested in insects or arachnids. Readers with a chemistry background will find structure diagrams for many of the noxious, if not lethal, compounds that bugs unleash on other arthropods—not to mention biologists. Harvard has done this Cornell team proud.

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