The Fate of Nature by Charles Wohlforth - Book Review

The Fate of Nature by Charles Wohlforth. I have no idea how this book crossed my path but it stared at me on the bookshelf for a while challenging me to open. I side stepped it with a Jimmy Buffet Biography and the excellent U.S. Grant Biography by Chernow. Slightly annoyed and finally out of fresh reads I opened her up thinking I had a preachy research book. I was wrong. What I didn't account for was the author's talent, his story telling ability and the unfolding adventures that fire out one right after the other chapter after chapter. "The Fate of Nature" reads like a novel and a damn good one.

 

Charles Wohlforth is a seasoned author beginning as a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News covering the Exxon Valdez oil disaster (spill my ass). His experience and research of nature, history, science, politics and adventure all coalesce in "The Fate of Nature"

 

The book proffers the question are humans even capable of correcting their greedy, piss in our well water, destroy our food system behavior of arrogance? But more than a screed about our knuckle dragging consciousness "The Fate of Nature" articulates and entertains with history, science, personality and context the vast array of interconnection that frames our collective lives.

 

We're talking about property rights versus community rights, the birth of conservation, the integration and survival of the indigenous populations living in harmony with their environment and the destruction of their way of life from unregulated capitalism, and it's nascent rebirth. 

 

This is not a romanticism but a look at the breadth of human activity impacting the entire globe with the Northern Gulf of the Alaska Coast and Prince William Sound as back drop. 

 

The book begins with the fascinating Killer Whale Culture and human spirituality, the spirits of Nature and the Chugach culture. Fur traders and Captain Cook then arrive followed by the Russian conquest of Alaska and then the equally egregious American conquest. Chapter after chapter it plows through history. It's an informative brisk page turner and you can't wait to see what the next chapter is going to hit upon. 

 

A book of this breadth could easily bog down in technical specificity and moralizing yet Wohlforth spins a narrative of anecdotes, adventures and events punctuated by short chapters building out his observations, research and thesis.

 

You are definitely going to want to visit Alaska after reading about the foreboding sumptuous landscape he pulls together. I'll be checking out his other work. In the meantime this is a good one folks from a guy you never heard of and a title that is unfamiliar. Dive in!

 

 

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A Message To Sportsmen, Hunters and NRA Members

 

Environmentalist here: We understand the individuals need for goodness sake Robert Redford made the beautiful movie A River Runs Through It about fly fishing.  Bob is a huge environmentalist.  What the middle and left oppose is violence for violence sake.  What we understand is the balance of nature.  With over 7 Billion people on the planet we have to keep run away degradation at bay.  What would be excellent is if the individual sportsmen and hunters came out against long line fishing the indiscriminate sweeping of the oceans, factory farming which spreads disease and destroys our waterways, or smokestack pollution which spreads mercury and lead poisoning, or even voluntarily took the lead out of lures, shot gun shells and buck shot.  Because as you know the woods and other predators feed on kill that's left behind.

Speak up for common sense regulation as passionately as you advocate for the right to carry a weapon and together the left, right and center can "govern" better.  It's not the individual its the permanent incorporation of individuals that create the biggest foot print.  Culling herds, actually using what you kill for food  its all part of the environmental chain.  But mass destruction like what occurred to the buffalo out on the great plains is short sighted.  We environmentalist also realize guns, weapons are a huge business but the bigger the business the more potential it has to do horrific destruction whether its Columbine, VCU or Monsanto altering our food with herbicides and pesticides.

Speak up for other issues as loudly as you can regarding the overall general well being and balance of the very environment that actually sustains us and then maybe more people will appreciate the individual sportsman's point of view.  Until then you just sound like your right to shed blood and wander around in the woods alone trumps everything else.  Remember these are public lands and as much as you ridicule the east and west coast cities that's where the majority of the population lives and the majority of the tax revenues come from.  Tax revenues that get dispersed throughout all 50 states. 

Government is not the problem pitting left versus right citizen against citizen is the problem and those that do that practice the art of deception.  Greed is the problem profit over health is the problem.  It always has been and always will be a question of balance.  Government is the cop on the beat that is supposed to manage that balance in the market place and keep it running smoothly for everyone.  Single issue campaigns/voters/advocacy groups screw up the works.  There's a bigger picture that needs to be taken into account its complex and interrelated and requires cooperation.