World Oceans Day and Rachel Carson

Review by Bill Doughty

Prose is poetry for Rachel Carson, whose "Silent Spring," published in 1962, awakened the ecology/environment movement in the United States. In "The Sea Around Us" (1951, Oxford University Press), she explains the oceans' relationship with the earth and our ties to the sea.

Perfect for World Oceans Day, June 8.

"The Sea Around Us" is a work of art. Carson's imagery is as fresh as when it was created mid-20th century. She shows how the earth and oceans formed and how life crawled from the sea, always dependent on "mother sea," but she presciently warns of a warming planet and rising seas.

Want to understand the science of the creation, tides, seasons and inhabitants of the oceans or how we are all connected by the oceans? Read Rachel Carson. 

Eventually after millions of years of evolution, "man, too, found his way back ..."

"And yet he has returned to his mother sea only on her own terms. He cannot control or change the ocean as, in his brief tenancy of earth, he has subdued and plundered the continents. in the artificial world of his cities and towns, he often forgets the true nature of his planet and the long vistas of its history, in which the existence of the race of men has occupied a mere moment of time. The sense of all these things comes to him most clearly in the course of a long ocean voyage, when he watches day after day the receding rim of the horizon, ridged and furrowed by waves; when at night he becomes aware of the earth's rotation as the stars pass overhead; or when, alone in this world of water and sky, he feels the loneliness of his earth in space. And then, as never on land, he knows the truth that his world is a water world, a planet dominated by its covering mantle of ocean, in which the continents are but transient intrusions of land above the surface of the all-encircling sea."

Carson predicts global warming based on natural phenomenon and cycles she observed and studied in the last century. In the 1950s and 60s she wrote about erosion, pesticides and pollution, invasive species, endangered species, and ocean dumping. What would she say about our impact on the climate and our effect on the planet today?

"Unquestionably, there are other agents at work in bringing about the climatic changes in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions," she writes in the mid-1950s. "We have therefore begun to move strongly into a period of warmer, milder weather. There will be fluctuations, as earth and sun and moon move through space and the tidal power waxes and wanes. But the long trend is toward a warmer earth; the pendulum is swinging."

She acknowledges the challenges of exploring the seas for fossil fuels and other resources.

"So our search for mineral wealth often leads us back to the seas of ancient times – to the oil pressed from the bodies of fishes, seaweeds, and other forms of plant and animal life and then stored away in ancient rocks; to the rich brines hidden in subterranean pools where the fossil water of old seas still remains; to the layers of salts that are the mineral substances of those old seas laid down as a covering mantle over the continents."

According to biographer William Souder, author of "On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson," among Carson's admirers was Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. (Both Nimitz and Carson were featured in the Great Americans series of stamps provided by the U.S. Postal Service in the 80s and 90s.)

Carson reminds us of the U.S. Navy's role in mapping and studying the oceans, especially by seafaring scientist Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury in the 19th century, prior to the Civil War. She writes of USS Ramapo's encounter with a 112-foot wave in 1933 while sailing from Manila, Philippines to San Diego. Carson shares discoveries in the Pacific by the U.S. Navy aboard USS Jasper, USS Henderson and USS Nereus in the Pacific during and just after World War II.

The ancients, she says, revered and respected the deep mysteries of the oceans.

"For the sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutation, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea – to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end."

Curiosity about navigating the oceans began thousands of years ago. "Of the methods of those secretive master mariners, the Phoenicians, we cannot even guess. We have more basis for conjecture about the Polynesians, for we can study their descendants today, and those who have done so find hits of the methods that led ancient colonizers of the Pacific on their course from island to island."

Ancient voyagers sailed by the stars, understood "the varying color of the water," read the clouds, felt the winds, interpreted the currents and followed the migration of birds to lead them to different lands.

Aboard the Hōkūle'a canoe, the Polynesian Voyaging Society's Malama Honua  voyagers are in New York this week during World Oceans Day, sharing their vision for a sustainable earth. No doubt the spirit of Rachel Carson sails aboard Hōkūle'a.

Rachel Carson with a feline friend and her 1951 book, “The Sea Around Us.” (A. Aubrey Bodine, Baltimore Sun file photo, 1954)

Rejecting Gilead, Embracing Carson

Review by Bill Doughty––

Retired Admiral James Stavridis writes this about author and environmentalist Rachel Carson, author of “The Sea Around Us”: “I’ve read many, many books that try to describe the power and glory of the deep ocean, but none eclipses the writing of Rachel Carson.”

Stavridis offers that highest praise to Carson in the first part of his four-part collection, “The Sailor’s Bookshelf,” reviewed late last year on Navy Reads. Great writers are drawn to other great writers.

Such is the case of Margaret Atwood, who also highlights Rachel Carson’s “The Sea Around Us” (as well as three other classics, including “Silent Spring”) in the final essay of her latest collection: “Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021.”

Just as Stavridis and Carson believe, Atwood writes, “The oceans are the living heart and lungs of our planet. They produce most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, and through their circulating currents they control climate. Without healthy oceans, we land-dwelling, air-breathing mid-sized primates will die.”

In her 2021 essay “The Sea Trilogy,” Atwood celebrates the republication of Carson’s first three books –– “Under the Sea-Wind,” “The Sea Around Us,” and “The Edge of the Sea.”

Atwood writes: “In all three of these books there is one underlying refrain: Look, see. Observe. Learn. Wonder. Question. Conclude. Rachel Carson taught people to look at the sea, and to think about the sea, in fresh ways.”

Atwood herself is perhaps best known for her fresh observations about the rise of authoritarianism and her imaginings of what might come. She is the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments.” She’s the mind behind the demented mind of Aunt Lydia and the darkness of Gilead. Her concern about the rise of authoritarianism continues.

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, she reflected, “Totalitarianisms were preoccupying me; the worldwide drift in that direction was alarming, as were various authoritarian moves made in the United States. Were we yet again witnessing the crumbling of democracy?”

Two years earlier Atwood wrote a scathing essay called “A Slave State” about the effects of restricting reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to an abortion. Here’s a timely excerpt, in light of today’s United States Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade after fifty years as established precedent in U.S. law:

“Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It’s not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions either. What to do?

“Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?

“Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance of men is conscription into the army…

“No one is forcing women to have abortions. No one either should force them to undergo childbirth.“

In a gripping 2015 essay, “Reflections on The Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood writes this:

“As a generalization, let us say this: absolutist governments have always taken an inordinate interest in the reproductive capabilities of women. In fact, human societies have taken such an interest. Who shall have babies, which babies shall be ‘legitimate,’ which shall be allowed to live, and which shall be killed (in ancient Rome it was up tot he father, etc.), whether abortion shall be allowed or not, or up to what month; wither women should be forced to have babies they didn’t want or couldn’t support, and so forth.”

While many fundamentalists want to restrict a woman’s right to choose, most Americans, according to numerous polls, are not in favor of overturning 1973’s Roe v. Wade. As today’s SCOTUS decision sinks in, so does anger and resentment.

Atwood discusses the anger she witnessed in the early 1970s, “at the time of the second-wave feminist movement.”

Atwood and Le Guin

In her 2018 obituary essay “We Lost Ursula Le Guin When We Needed Her Most,” Atwood turns to Le Guin to explain the outrage women felt after decades of “suppressed anger” from “being treated as lesser –– much lesser…” Atwood quotes from Le Guin’s 2014 essay, “About Anger”:

“Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a a weapon –– a tool useful only in combat and self-defence … Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice … Valued as an end in itself, it loses its goal. It fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness.”

About Le Guin, Atwood writes, “The long-term goal, the dogged pursuit of justice –– that took up a lot of her thought and time.”

Le Guin was a premiere voice in science fiction and speculative fantasy. She's the author of "The Left Hand of Darkness" and the "Earthsea" series.

Atwood’s collection of essays is a tribute to a wide spectrum of iterature and free-thinking wisdom. Readers will be rewarded with deep dives into the works of Shakespeare, Alice Munro, Ray Bradbury, Gabrielle Roy, Homer, Dickens, Graeme Gibson, Richard Powers, and, of course, Rachel Carson.

Three Navy-blue Green Presidents

Review by Bill Doughty––

Six United States presidents in my lifetime were Navy veterans: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Each in his own way and to varying degrees was an optimistic champion of the environment.

Efforts of the first three –– JFK, LBJ and RMN –– led to the first Earth Day in 1970, now Earth Month in April.

The environmental movement is sometimes overshadowed by the other tectonic shifts during that era: The Cold War, Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War. But Douglas Brinkley takes the history of the green movement out of the shadows by centering on the three presidents of the era, as well as highlighting the life and work of ecologist-writer Rachel Carson, in “Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening” (HarperCollins, 2022).

Sailor JFK

The Navy had a large part in shaping the vision of the presidents who defended pristine wilderness, clean air and water, and preservation of the environment.

For Kennedy of Massachusetts, it began with a deep love of the sea and shoreline, according to Brinkley, who opens the book with this:

“Beguiled by the way sea and sky played together, almost always unpredictably, John F. Kennedy was enthralled by the complexity of the Atlantic Ocean: the moody sky, the invisible might of the tides, shifting clouds, and the yaw and pitch of movement. To be on the water in a sailboat, even in a cruel wind, provided him with a profound connection with nature.”

Kennedy saw, in his own words, the human “biological fact that all of us have, in our veins, the same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean,” he said.

Johnson of Texas, was saddled with fighting the Vietnam War, poverty, segregation, and voter suppression. Environmentalism took somewhat of a back seat to other priorities. Brinkley writes:

“On the conservation front, Johnson probably should have been aware of of the importance of intelligent land stewardship. His favorite novel –– John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1939) –– was based on a man-made ecological catastrophe during the Great Depression that destroyed ranches and farms in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. It was soil depletion that led to the Dust Bowl. Johnson, however, was left wanting to help the rural poor, without setting an equal priority on nurturing the natural world around them. Johnson liked Bureau of Reclamation dams, because he knew first-hand how electricity lit up forgotten regions, literally and figuratively.”

LBJ’s penchant for dam-building, both at home and abroad, as well as his escalation of the Vietnam war, caused consternation for environmentalists.

LBJ

Yet, in 1968, Johnson signed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. “Rivers, Johnson believed, from the far-flung waterways of Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming to those coursing through the rural countryside of Vermont and Maine were the lifeblood of America,” Brinkley observes.

Johnson “forged ahead on conservation legislation to protect wild places because it was part of America’s frontier heritage.” LBJ is responsible for bringing about the Wilderness Act, Highway Beautification Act, and a commitment to “a green legacy for tomorrow.” According to Brinkley, Johnson should be given more credit for his advocacy to conservation, particularly of America’s rivers (just as President Eisenhower is recognized for the national highway system). As regards LBJ, “His Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was a visionary law passed purely on behalf of the aesthetics of rivers.”

Nixon of California, was captivated by the Pacific Ocean, as a child in Orange County. In 1969 he would make his home, as Kennedy did, next to the ocean. In Nixon’s case, it was in San Clemente, where he enjoyed whale watching. Though facing his own corruption issues that would eventually lead to his expulsion from office, Nixon still managed to achieve positive global initiatives such as rapprochement with China and arms control talks with Russia. And he not only supported the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, but he also created the Environmental Protection Agency.

“If Nixon’s signing of NEPA and his Everglades protection were the first big time indications of the administration’s serious commitment to environmental protection, the State of the Union address on January 22, with its plea that ‘Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions,’ was seen by surprised Democrats as the Great Reconfirmation that Nixon indeed harbored a genuine TR streak … When Nixon delivered a Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality on February 10 (1970), he listed fourteen executive orders and twenty-three legislative proposals to combat pollution and provide parkland. ‘The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done,’ he told Congress.”

Brinkley notes several times that Nixon was “suspicious” of liberal traps, so he did not appear on TV for the first Earth Day. He even asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to spy on high-profile Earth Day events on college campuses, fearful of their ties with the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Yet, Nixon’s support of conservation, preservation, and a clean environment persisted.

Nixon

In 1970 he created the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and he signed the Clean Air Act.

On October 21, 1972, Nixon signed the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, an achievement to the legacy of Rachel Carson. He signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

And he signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act (limiting nationwide speed limits to 55) and the Federal Energy Administration Act in 1974 (the same year he was forced to resign because of Watergate).

Brinkley briefly shows how the Navy stopped pumping sewage into San Francisco Bay while in port. He also discusses how, during the Nixon administration, Marines at Camp Pendleton helped protect endangered wildlife. In coordination with the Department of Interior and NASA, the Navy sponsored the first all-women team of aquanauts in Tektite II to study the ecosystem at the bottom of the sea.

All three Navy-veteran presidents –– two Democrats and one Republican –– were following the lead of conservationist Republican President Theodore Roosevelt of another generation, and who had his own strong ties to the Navy and who championed nature and national parks. 

In two appendices Brinkley lists scores of national wildlife refuges and national parks created or authorized by Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

One of President Nixon’s many environmental preservation initiatives included establishing a federally designated Wilderness area, the Cumberland Island National Seashore. “Because Cumberland National Seashore encompassed twenty-three different ecological communities, Nixon agreed that only three hundred tourists at a time be allowed on Cumberland Island. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a moderate Democrat, played a major conservation role regarding the saving of Cumberland…"

Rachel Carson talks about "Silent Spring" in April 1963

This massive book (857 pages!) includes dozens of evocative photos, memorable stories, and captivating personalities of the people who created the environmental enlightenment and “awakening” in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s.

Rachel Carson provided much of the inspiration for the environmental movement leading up to the first Earth Day and the public’s demand for clean water, air, and land. She wisely connected the long-lasting danger of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons with the hazards related to DDT, a pernicious pesticide that altered ecosystems. We have referenced or featured Carson’s works several times here on Navy Reads.

Carson’s “Silent Spring” and her Sea Trilogy inspired John F. Kennedy. Family matriarch Rose Kennedy gave a copy of “Under the Sea-Wind,” published in 1941, to JFK in the mid-1950s.

“Although ‘Under the Sea-Wind’ sold in low numbers, perhaps because Pearl Harbor occurred right after it debuted, it became celebrated by marine biologists and other lovers of the animal kingdom,” Brinkley writes.

Carson was, in turn, inspired by Albert Schweitzer. And it seems everyone was inspired by Henry David Thoreau. 

Brinkley also follows the influence and positive impact of artists, writers, scientists, and politicians: Ansel Adams, John Muir, Carl Sandburg, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, William O. Douglas, Linus Pauling, Harold Ickes, Wallace Stegner, Robert Frost, Ted Sorensen, Robert F. Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Jacques Cousteau, Sylvia Earle, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Lady Bird Johnson, Howard Zahniser, Ralph Nader, Robert Boyle, John Saylor, Katherine Ordway, Chief Luther Standing Bear, Laurance Rockefeller, Russell Train, Stewart Udall, Ronald Dellums, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Frank Church, Philip Hart, Gaylord Nelson, Edmund Muskie, William Ruckelshaus, Walter Hickel, Al Gore, and John Ehrlichman.

In the book’s preface, Brinkley praises those “serving a cause bigger than oneself” and warns against the ostrich syndrome of ignoring ongoing threats to the environment, including climate chaos. 

He writes: “The poisonous climate cocktail of ravaging wildfires, mega floods, and monstrous blizzards costs American taxpayers billions of dollars every year (soon to climb to trillions), disrupts lives, causes vast displacement, ruins communities, and kills countless citizens.”

Brinkley says, “In some small way, I hope this book illuminates how an engaged citizenry can bring America’s natural beauty back from the brink.” He writes, “Optimism must remain in our oxygen.”

I remember the feeling of optimism, hope, and activism of the first Earth Day in 1970, the first recognition that something needed to be done to confront pollution, overpopulation, and other ecological threats.

Among more than a dozen books, Brinkley is the author of “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America” (2009) and “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House” (1998).

Women Who Changed the World

Review by Bill Doughty

"Throughout history many women have risked everything in the name of science. This book tells the stories of some of these scientists, from ancient Greece to the modern day, who in the face of 'No' said, 'Try and stop me.'"

With cool-weird drawings and sparkling insights, writer-illustrator Rachel Ignotofsky profiles some of the women who stand out in fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in "Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World" (Ten Speed Press, 2016).

Among the 50 women featured are Wang Zhenyi, Ada Lovelace, Karen Horney, Marie Curie, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Rachel Carson, Katherine Johnson, Valentina Tereshkova, Jane Goodall, Maryam Mirzakhani, and Grace Hopper, "Navy admiral and computer scientist."

"Grace Hopper was ... a relentless trailblazer, recognized as the mother of computer programming," Ignotofsky writes. The author spices her profiles with one-liners like: "Invented the first compiler, forever changing how we use computers," "Her great-grandfather was also in the Navy," and "Pioneered the standards for testing computer systems."

Grace Hopper, born in 1906, was fourteen years old when women in the United States achieved the right to vote, a step toward greater equality for women. She earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale fourteen years after passage of the 19th Amendment. Hopper joined the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in 1943, bringing her mathematics skills to the war effort.

"After the war, Grace joined the private sector. At the time, programmers needed the skills that came with an advanced degree in mathematics and used binary code to program. Grace Hopper thought it would be easier to just 'talk' to a computer in English. Everyone thought Grace was nuts, but she proved them wrong when she invented the first compiler. This led to create COBOL, the first universal computer language. Thanks to Grace just about anyone can learn to code! Grace returned to the Navy in 1967. Even after she retired as the oldest person on active duty (just a few months short of turning 80), she continued to lecture, consult, and teach – always reminding the world that 'the most damaging phrase in the language is 'we've always done it this way.'"

Along with the short biographies of the fifty featured women are a timeline, statistics in STEM, an illustrated list of lab tools and a glossary. While this book appeals to young readers it, like the works of Mary Roach and Hope Jahren, can inspire any readers to see how women have contributed to progress in the world.

The author's other books (this one was her first) include "I Love Science" and "Women in Sports."

Ignotofsky, who supports critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making exemplified in the "March for Science," writes in her conclusion:

"Women make up half of our population, and we simply cannot afford to ignore that brain power – the progress of humankind depends on our continual search for knowledge. The women in this book prove to the world that no matter your gender, your race, or your background, anyone can achieve great things. Their legacy lives on. Today, women all over the world are still risking everything to discover and explore."

Don't try to stop them.

‘It Got Me Thinking’ … More!

Review by Bill Doughty––

Hope Jahren quotes a bit of eye-opening graffiti at the very end of her latest book, “The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here” (Vintage Books, Penguin Random House; 2020).

Jahren –– gifted scientist, teacher, painter of words, and author of “Lab Girl” –– looks all around for inspiration, and she finds it in trees, fish, cornfields, slaughterhouses, sanitation systems, memories, history, prehistory, and, yes, graffiti. More about the graffiti in a moment.

Ford, Edison, and Firestone –– and trees.

In this beautiful, funny, but melancholy personal reflection on climate change, Jahren examines the survivability of our species and the choices we make. Can we help each other and the planet we share? She’s not sure. But Hope drives her points home: use less, share more.

“The Story of More” opens with a meeting between Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and tire magnate Harvey Firestone. Edison said, as a brilliant insight, “The sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Then, Jahren imagines Ford and Firestone, after listening to Edison’s insight, “nodded politely, finished their drinks, and went straight back to motorizing the planet.”

By the way, Jahren admits her disdain for the automobile:

“While pursuing the ever-elusive more, we inadvertently trapped ourselves into metal boxes. Now we spend our mornings and our evenings maneuvering among the other metal boxes, watching each other through the glass.”

But she really, really hates “crap cars.” She’s convinced, rightfully so, that most Americans (especially those over the age of forty) have a story of a “crap car” from college with doors that would fall off, windows that wouldn’t crank open, starters that wouldn’t start, or, as in the case of Jahren's car described in "Lab Girl," where you could look down while driving and see the street whizz by.

Hope and beloved dad celebrate her birthday.

There are other ties to her wonderful first book “Lab Girl” –– her childhood in the heartland; Coco, the family Chesapeake Bay Retriever; co-worker Bill; and loving memories of her scientist dad who loved to always say, when served a Coke with lunch, “Coke with chow; wow!”

Of course, her fond memories and other ties to the past are her way to tie in science. “Coke with chow; wow!” leads to discussion of sugar production and consumption. When Coco jumps into Kailua Bay and swims toward the waverider buoy, it’s a disarming way to discuss a scientific instrument that measures sea levels and shows a rise of seven inches since 1969, the year Jahren was born. That's around the time I read Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” and Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”

The 1960s is when “ecology” first became a buzzword in high school and college campuses, and a year before Earth Day started, recognizing the damages of overpopulation, fossil fuel production and consumption, and a decline in forests and animal species.

Jahren speaks frankly that we are on the way toward a sixth mass extinction, with 25 percent of species expected to be extinct by the year 2050:

“All species will go extinct eventually, even our own: it is one of nature’s imperatives … [but] we still have control over our demise –– namely, how long will it take, and how much our children and grandchildren will suffer. If we want to take action, we should get started while it still matters what we do.”

What can we do?

Jahren provides the answers in one of the book’s several appendices, with steps to examine values, gather information, consider personal activities, evaluate personal investments, and see how to move institutions “toward consistency with your values.” Imagine how big a difference can be made if each person makes enlightened decisions to doing something to counter climate change, environmental destruction, and mass extinctions.

“Knowledge is responsibility,” Jahren says, and people can have hope, but “having hope requires courage” not fear or “lazy nihilism” as an excuse not to roll up our sleeves and make personal choices –– even as simple as what foods we choose to eat, how much water we use, and where we get our energy and how we use it. 

It’s also important to consider the source of information we receive. What’s believable? What’s backed by science –– even if scientists can be “both right and wrong,” as she illustrates early in the book. She examines claims by Aristotle, Thomas Malthus, M. King Hubbert, and Henry George, who “came the closest to being right about population growth” –– population kept up with food production (at least so far). Also, according to George:

“Most of the want and suffering that we see in the world today originates not from Earth’s inability to provide but from our inability to share.”

Jahren also examines claims from a Norwegian explorer and U.S. Navy experts.

“Back in 1969, the Norwegian explorer Bernt Balchen noticed a thinning trend in the ice that covered the North Pole. He warned his colleagues that the Arctic Ocean was melting into an open sea and that this could change weather patterns such that farming would become impossible in North America ten to twenty years hence. The New York Times picked up the story, and Balchen was promptly shouted down by Walter Whittman of the U.S. Navy, who had seen no evidence of thinning during his monthly airplane flights over the pole.

“As is the case with most scientists most of the time, Balchen was both right and wrong in his claims. By 1999, the submarines that had been cruising the Arctic Ocean since the 1950s could clearly see that polar sea ice had thinned drastically during the twentieth century –– thinned by almost half. Nevertheless, it’s been fifty years since Balchen graced the pages of the Times and American agriculture has yet to feel the full effect of any melting. Which, technically, means that Whittman was also both wrong and right.”

Jahren says that it’s not good science or good strategy to incite panic about fossil fuels running out. “Scientists have been accused of crying wolf since 1939, when the director of the Naval Petroleum Reserves informed Congress that America’s oil reserves would not outlast another world war.”

Scientists are better off when they maintain their skepticism, humility, and sense of awe in the face of chaos and the unknown. “Studying biology,” Jahren writes, “is like studying a Hieronymous Bosch painting: The chaos that you sense from a few steps back only increases as you lean forward to examine it more closely.” Case in point: Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights":

And it’s important, Professor Jahren says, to teach and not preach. “My own goal is to inform and not to scare you, because teaching has taught me to know and respect the difference. I’ve found that fear makes us turn away from an issue, whereas information draws us in.”

“An effort tempered by humility will go much further than one armored with righteousness,” she concludes.

Which brings us back to the humble line of graffiti she credits in the acknowledgements at the end of “More.” Along with tons of scientific papers, journals, and other sources she cites is this random bit of wisdom at the corner of Blindernveien and Apalveien in her home of Oslo, Norway:

“We worship an invisible god and slaughter visible nature –– without realizing that this nature we slaughter is the invisible god we worship.”

Jahren thanks the anonymous author and concludes, “It got me to thinking.”

In “The Story of More” Hope Jahren presents a wake up call to people who might otherwise prefer to sleep through reality without thinking –– or deny the nightmare of environmentally devastating climate change.

(It was a career highlight to sponsor Hope Jahren for a visit to Pearl Harbor in 2017, where she spoke at NOAA's Daniel K. Inouye Regional Center about many of the same themes in this book and the need to address climate change. Jahren toured USS Halsey (DDG 97) and learned how the Navy helps protect the environment while protecting the nation.)

Above: Dr. Hope Jahren, a geobiologist and New York Times bestselling author, speaks to audience members during a science and leadership seminar April 10, 2017 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility in Pearl Harbor. Jahren's visit was part of an open discussion on science, leadership and facing challenges in the workplace, as well as readings from her book "Lab Girl,"which documents her adventures studying plant life throughout the course of her career. (MC2 Jeff Troutman)

Top photo: Airman Apprentice Nicole Duquet, aviation machinist mate, left, and Seaman Kimberly Usrey, boatswain's mate, both assigned to Transient Personnel Unit Norfolk, plant flowers during a base-wide Earth Day cleanup in 2009 at Naval Station Norfolk. (PO3 John Suits)