CLIMATE CHANGE
The Garden of Vegan How Plants Can Save the Animals, the Planet and Our Health
Cleve West, Pimpernel Press (SEP 3) Softcover $27.95 (224pp) 978-1-910258-47-7, AUTOBIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Acclaimed garden designer Cleve West’s The Garden of Vegan is a heartfelt, knowledgeable discourse on diet, gardening, farming, ethics, environmental issues, and animal welfare. It is a persuasive call for adopting more compassionate and environmentally friendly vegan practices.
West, who went from a carnivore to a vegetarian to a vegan, faces personal challenges in a world that exploits nature and normalizes animal violence. A self-avowed nonconfrontational person, he’s an advocate for change who notes that, while changing his diet was easy and enjoyable, it is very hard to daily witness careless consumerism in the face of accelerating environmental destruction.
West is more enthusiastic than strident in his messages, but this is still a provocative book that challenges traditional dietary and consumer habits. It includes many ideas for incorporating vegan principles into daily life and expounds on the benefits of vegan gardening methods, which avoid animal and chemical fertilizers. These alternatives range from heavy use of compost, mulch, and green manures to planting beetle belts between crops. West argues that home and market gardeners can increase profit margins, reduce carbon footprints, increase crucial insect and invertebrate populations, and eliminate toxins and pathogens from food and water supplies.
West’s vision for new ways of farming and utilizing land includes reforesting and rewilding grazing lands to decrease soil erosion and soak up greenhouse gases. His detailed visions for more localized and self-sufficient farms, bio-energy producers, and environmentally conscious communities are thought provoking and inviting. Gorgeous color photographs of West’s garden designs attest to the success of his vegan garden principles, while tender livestock portraits from West’s wife, Christine, are meaningful illustrations.
The Garden of Vegan is reflective and inspiring in its examination of vegan garden principles and of vegan living as an important catalyst for change.
The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal The Political Economy of Saving the Planet
Noam Chomsky, Robert Pollin, Verso (SEP 22) Softcover $18.95 (192pp), 978-1-78873-985-6 POLITICAL SCIENCE
Behind social and economic tumult lurks the threat of catastrophic climate change. Intellectual powerhouse Noam Chomsky and progressive economist Robert Pollin examine how we got here and provide a detailed action plan for mobilizing necessary political and cultural power.
In spirited conversation, Chomsky and Pollin break down the interconnections of capitalism’s quest for eternal growth and “werewolf hunger for profits,” postwar neoliberal economic and political policies, deforestation and industrialization of developing countries, and the erosion of climate stability. In response, the Global Green New Deal calls for reductions in carbon emissions and subsidies (with stringent enforcements), coupled with public and private subsidies for full employment, renewable energy production, and energy efficient retrofitting.
The book’s economic and political verbiage is dense, though offset by Chomsky’s colorful, no-holds-barred criticism of “savage capitalism” and characterizations of selfish and dangerous political and corporate elites. Pollin’s contributions focus on how Green New Deal programs would operate and be financed, and they are more elegant and polite. However, he also delivers impassioned analyses of how a coordinated international effort needs to unfold, transforming the “current interregnum between neoliberalism and neofascism” into a more humane, environmentally conscious world.
The book is clear-eyed in its recognition of the monumental challenges to implementing such comprehensive reforms and to overcoming the political muscle of the fossil fuel industry and entrenched government officials. Buoyed by the surge of youthful activism and climate change policies, Chomsky and Pollin are hopeful that their book is the all-important blueprint that could take the movement through to the hard work of sustained follow-through and consensus building.
Polar Tales The Future of Ice, Life, and the Arctic
Fredrik Granath, Melissa Schäfer Rizzoli (SEP 1) Hardcover $50 (272pp) 978-0-8478-6884-1, PHOTOGRAPHY
Fredrik Granath and Melissa Schäfer spend months each year documenting wildlife in Norway’s Svalbard region, a “ground zero of global warming” Arctic environment that they characterize as the “roughest and toughest,” but also “the most fragile place you could imagine.” Through Polar Tales, their observations and astonishing color photographs record images of the endangered landscape.
Powerful visual stories portray an environment on the brink of collapse, where melting ice shrinks animals’ habitats, and food and shelter are vanishing. Polar bears, on top of the Arctic food chain, are the most visible symbols of climate change. Granath and Schäfer’s magnificent bear portraits capture bears being playful, tender, and terrifying. Gut-wrenching shots show a newborn seal’s brutal, short life; because there’s no shelter left on its ice patch, after a few hours it is eaten by a bear, itself stressed and starving.
Schäfer’s photographs display an amazing and vibrant landscape: countless shades of blue are frozen in ribbons of ice formations; every hue of white and yellow shimmers in polar bears’ fur against the snow. Most images are gorgeous, but there are also realistic wildlife portraits complete with blood-soaked snow. The showstopper is a rare, ethereal image of a bear den, shot hours after it was abandoned by a ravenous mother bear and her cubs after months of nesting.
The coda reveals Granath and Schäfer’s personal experiences and shots of their bathroom-sized hunting shack, where they take turns sleeping while the other stokes the furnace and guards against bears. Despite the hardships, they cherish their time in Svalbard, describing how time slows down and “we are always present.”
Polar Tales is an eloquent portrayal of a unique place that calls for swift action on climate change—to save Svalbard and its bears, and to keep winter from “fading from our planet.”
Watermelon Snow Science, Art, and a Lone Polar Bear
Lynne Quarmby, Mcgill-queen’s University Press (SEP 23) Hardcover $24.95 (184pp) 978-0-228-00359-5, NATURE
Biologist Lynne Quarmby sailed on a two-week Arctic Circle expedition to document global warming, and Watermelon Snow juxtaposes descriptions of that voyage with reflections on her career, her climate change activism, politics, and the fascinating evolution of microbes, Earth’s “machines of life.”
Watermelon snow refers to red algal blooms among snow colonies of microorganisms. Normally green, the algae adapt to warmer temperatures by using red pigments as sunscreens. Unfortunately, this also speeds up snow melt, setting up one of the many feedback loops that magnifies polar warming. Quarmby researched these jewellike, intricate microbes with wonder; the text communicates how exciting scientific discovery can be.
Quarmby also reveals her anger, grief, and frustration about global warming. Her climate activism includes civil disobedience and arrest over pipeline construction; she campaigned as a Green Party politician. She participated in the expedition to witness the impact of climate change on the Arctic, and to help other voyagers understand the science behind the changes, but admits “I am also feeling the emotional weight of being here, at the soft heart of global melting.”
The expedition becomes a way for Quarmby to recharge for the long fight against the selfish, doomed strategies of corporations and the “cheater class” that supports the dying fossil fuel industry. Inspiration comes from the creativity of her diverse shipmates, who translate their emotions, images, and sounds into art. Composers record bearded seal songs, dancers and photographers observe emaciated polar bears, and artists fashion installation components, all to communicate the significance of climate change to the public.
Channeling passion and science into a “search for life beyond despair,” Watermelon Snow is a powerful book. Quarmby warns of the devastating, facts-based inevitability of climate change, with guarded hope that human beings will act in time to avert the worst scenarios.
#futuregen Lessons from a Small Country
Jane Davidson, Chelsea Green Publishing (AUG 20) Hardcover $19.95 (224pp), 978-1-60358-960-4 POLITICAL SCIENCE
Wales, though small, is a vanguard when it comes to integrating sustainable development via government policies and actions. The chief architect of its Well-being of Future Generations Act, Jane Davidson, chronicles the law’s enactment in the lively #futuregen, which encompasses both her personal evaluations and the sweeping policy shift’s intriguing processes.
The Well-being of Future Generations Act is the world’s first legislation to “enshrine the rights of future generations alongside current ones.” It requires that Welsh political leaders and organizations integrate regenerative, sustainable principles in every policy, regulation, and action. Davidson acknowledges that this kind of revolutionary paradigm shift was made possible by Wales’ small size and ability to move with speed and flexibility, as well as by the historic opportunity to craft bold legislation left when the United Kingdom began to transfer self-governing powers to Wales in 1999.
Davidson’s background and personal epiphanies enliven this history of the landmark law. Her childhood in Zimbabwe and years as an educator fueled her love for the natural world and her passion for social and environmental change. She underscores the “importance of personal experience as a driver of action.” Her narrative is strengthened by inspirational pull quotes from Welsh voices and contains useful appendices full of policy statements, documents, and other resources.
#futuregen is an informative, animated account of a singular law, from the vital first steps in envisioning a more socially equitable and environmentally balanced country, to the nitty gritty of networking, collaborating with disparate parties, and civil service oversight. While its tone is most often positive, it notes that cultural change and long-term “cathedral thinking” are not easy; they require the work of many. Still, it declares, “[t]ackling our consumerism and the unicorn of infinite growth is absolutely key for us and future generations.”