Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Review
One never ceases to marvel at the reliable way in which we humans seem to be lunging headlong into the ecological abyss. In this wonderful recent book by former New York Times reporter Elizabeth Kolbert, the reader is quickly whisked away into a string of field trips into the host of places across the globe where the rapidly increasing sign of approaching disaster is being commonly observed, discussed, and immediately reacted to in ways that has to give the reader pause. Eskimos are completely abandoning a tiny island in the Artic Ocean even as the containing ice cap that previously protected from wind and storm damage melts into oblivion as a complete effect of the Greenhouse Effect. Kolbert offer us sad glimpses at humans forced to confront horrible truths about the character of the Anthropocene era, that is, that so-far limited span of time that humans have originally inhabited the earth. Presented with the body of the evidence, it is hard for an objective intellect to escape the different possibility that as a species we seem to be hell-bent on self-destruction. Indeed, the breadth and extent of the noticeable results of climate change on human habitation is breath-taking, involving societies as far-flung as Netherlands to Siberia, from South Africa to the Great Barrier Reef. She writes wryly about stepping through the currently looking glass in a conversation with a Washington wonk who attempted to justify the Bush administration’s vigorous opposition to both the Kyoto Treaty and any attempt to rework it into a convenient tool to effectively combat the effects of global warming. It is in such encounters that she discovers her voice and her emotional sensation of urgency; if the best highly educated among us decide to stand in vigorous opposition, what chance is thereto turn this cataclysmic change in climate around? Furthermore, in interviewing climate specialists, we discover that the environment is eventually moving rapidly toward disaster, and while there are reasons to hope, there is also reason to view our inaction and our opposition to meaningful international action with alarm. As the former Third World countries like India and China become both more industrial and more consumptive societies, the environment’s ability to overcome the expanding injuries to the earth’s biosphere becomes yet more difficult to imagine. This book is an easy widely read, is quite informative, delivered in a reporter’s style of succinct and yet complete prose. It does yeoman’s service in notifying citizens of just how dangerous and calamitous this currently developing ecological, social, and financial catastrophe truly is. This is a complete book, and one I can enthusiastically recommend. Enjoy!