SECOND NATURE

The author of Losing Earth returns with further assessments of climate change and environmental destruction.

In this outstanding collection of pieces, some of which were published in different forms in the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, Men’s Journal, and other outlets, Rich provides vivid, often disturbing portraits of individuals and events contributing to “the death rattle of the romantic idea that nature is innocent of human influence.” The author hits the ground running with a gripping account of the stubborn lawyer who, since 1999, has been suing DuPont for massive dumping of toxic perfluorooctanoic acid (a component of Teflon) into landfills, streams, and water supplies. His article led to the highly praised film Dark Waters (2019), but the victory was modest. DuPont settled with the Environmental Protection Agency for a paltry $16.5 million (“less than two percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year”) and slowly phased out PFOA but admitted no liability and maintains that its closely related substitute is safe. Sadly, in this and other stories, readers learn that the EPA is largely toothless. The author chronicles the 2015-2016 Aliso Canyon methane leak, the largest in American history, which drenched a wealthy Los Angeles community with methane and other far more toxic gases. The company paid a fine and is still fending off lawsuits, but unsurprisingly, politicians and regulatory officials looked after their own interests. In other essays, Rich explores Louisiana and the Mississippi River, ecologically fragile even before Hurricane Katrina, which triggered an immensely expensive reconstruction that is not improving matters. The author doubts that genetic manipulation will save the environment, but he does offer entertaining stories about the efforts to restore the extinct passenger pigeon, create a rabbit that glows in the dark, or get people to “buy burgers composed of cultured animal cells, if they tasted good enough.”

Another disheartening but important book from Rich.