Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2011

Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2011, edited by Mary Roach

The Best American… series are some of my favorite to pick up at the library book sale. They’re often there, usually only a couple of books, and they’re reliably interesting. I tend to go for the Science and Nature ones in particular. And this one was edited by Mary Roach, which seemed as good a reason as any to pick it over others.

This one was excellent, as always, with several essays that have stood out and had me thinking about them long after. Burkhard Bilger’s “Natures Spoils”, about the strange underground world of trading in raw milk and extolling the virtue of eating ‘high meat’ was bizarre and fascinating. “The Chemist’s War”, by Deborah Blum, taught me a piece of history I hadn’t previously known about, wherein the federal government systematically tried to poison people during prohibition to stop them from drinking alcohol. And Atul Gawande, common in many essay collections, has an amazing essay, “Letting Go,” that had me crying in the corner of a diner while I was reading it.

Many of the essays here, though, are about the destruction we have wrought and are continuing to wreak on the Earth. As is to be expected—there’s almost nothing else to talk about if you’re on the topic of nature. This one isn’t quite as full of such topics as the collection edited by Elizabeth Kolbert, but it still includes an essay on the tradition of eating migrating song birds in the Mediterranean that has all but wiped out several bird populations, the jumping Asian carp overwhelming midwestern lakes, and the destructive nature of fracking. And an essay on space debris that, while not as directly related to ecology, is still a symptom of the same problem as the others—a belief that one well, one person shooting song birds, one dumping of space debris, can’t have that much of an impact, ignoring that this decision is being made over and over and over again by a huge number of people.

I have never wholly subscribed to Kant’s categorical imperative, that one can only act according to the maxim that that action would become a universal law to be done by all, it seems increasingly clear that, in environmental issues this does need to be the rule. It’s the only way to govern the tragedy of the commons problem. Because whatever negative actions one takes, or actions done thinking it can be allowed because it is only one person, will be done so often that they may as well be universal laws.

The recent special report by the International Panel on Climate Change has highlighted again that we are in the midst of the most dangerous crisis humanity as a whole has yet faced, with unknown consequences if we cannot rapidly decrease or emissions starting immediately. And this can only be done by everyone taking action, and everyone recognizing that the universality of our actions is killing us.

This is obvious by perusing the news, but reading several environmental essays in a row drives it home. The common thread in all of them is each of us ignoring that our actions have consequences and that we are never just one. Hopefully we’ll realize that before it’s too late.