More bad news about climate change but an excellent education on ice.
A vivid appeal to save our rapidly diminishing glaciers.
Outraged to learn that a mining company planned to dynamite three glaciers to reach the gold underneath, Taillant, founder of the Center for Human Rights and Environment, became a “cryoactivist,” a word that hadn’t been invented but that finds meaning in these pages. Though not a scientist, the author is “a career environmental policy expert,” and he is dedicated to the preservation of Earth’s glaciers, a critical factor in fighting against accelerating climate changes. Taillant begins with an avalanche of statistics. The most familiar—namely, that our planet is 2/3 water and 1/3 land—is misleading. The reality, notes the author, is that it is 71% water, 19% land, and 10% ice. A minuscule 2% of the water is fresh, and 75% of that is bound in polar icecaps or high in mountains where it forms a critical part of our ecosystem. Mostly, Taillant describes what glaciers do. They provide perhaps 85% of “the water humans need,” from drinking to agriculture. They keep us cool. Ice is white, so it reflects most of the sun’s rays. When it disappears, brown earth or blue ocean absorb these rays and grow warmer. Ocean levels will rise by 200 feet if all the ice melts. They’re predicted to rise two to seven feet during the 21st century, and Louisiana and south Florida are already visibly suffering the effects. In the final chapters, the author outlines possible solutions. Some engineers are creating “artificial glaciers” or reviving old ones. Laws to protect glaciers should be a no-brainer, but, except in Argentina, all have failed. Of course, the author insists, this must change. Slowing global warning by eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning is essential. It’s not likely to happen in the coming decades, but in the short term, we can easily eliminate superpollutants such as methane and refrigerants and see immediate improvements.
More bad news about climate change but an excellent education on ice.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-008032-7
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
