When you’re climbing a mountain, and the distance before you seems overwhelming, it’s helpful to look back at how far you’ve come already. This book serves as a reminder that environmental activists have accomplished the seemingly impossible before, so it’s possible to do it again. Progress is being made in other corners of the earth, even if it’s not visible to you. Boyd manages to give the activist in us all a shot of adrenaline and hope without making the current problems seem any less daunting.
I think that the first chapter on animal species that have recovered is perhaps the most simplistic and his weakest, so it’s unfortunate that it came first. He definitely has a point, but doesn’t include the whole picture for the species he focuses on. His research just felt less thorough on that topic than on the others. But once he got going, it was informative. It was also a smooth read.
It’s intriguing to ask ourselves: what’s different now than when we banned CFCs and stopped the damage to the ozone layer? That was a big win. Can we do that again? There are pockets of renewable energy use all over the globe. Those are big deals. Can we make them bigger? If we were committed on the city-level to being green, what actions could we take? What impact would they have? A few people can make big change. Let’s do it again.
So if your inner environmental optimist needs a shot in the arm, this is a great way to do it. We should focus on building on the successes we already have, not despair at how far we have to go. Yes, it’s a long road. But we’ve trained for this race. We can go farther than we think we can.
I got a free copy of this from the publisher through Net Galley.
The post The Optimistic Environmentalist appeared first on Steeped In Science.