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The mission of our program, which began in 2019, is to empower emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet. The program, founded by Dr. Ami Zota of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, began with a small group of eight fellows and has grown into one of the premiere national fellowships focused on increasing science communication and public engagement among early career scientists from marginalized backgrounds.
We have trained more than 30 scholars-researchers who are advancing environmental and climate justice, and are broadly disseminating their voices, stories and research contributions. Our fellows have published 40 original essays in EHN, which are freely available in English and Spanish, and have reached 1.4 million readers (nearly 200,000 readers in Spanish). We also started a popular podcast where we dive into the career paths and big ideas from fellows and other leaders in the field.
Vision realized
Our vision—to foster a new cadre of diverse and inclusive leaders in environmental justice who can help create systemic change—is increasingly becoming realized:
- Senior fellows now hold faculty positions at prestigious institutions across the U.S.
- Professors are integrating Agents of Change essays and podcasts into university curriculums.
- Senior fellows are collaborating beyond the program in research projects and efforts to center justice in state and federal policy.
- Agents of Change fellows have participated on webinars through partnerships with Collaborative on Health and the Environment, International Society of Exposure Science, the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
Leadership team grows
Our diverse leadership team is growing in dynamic ways. Dr. Veena Singla, our new associate director and senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, will help enhance our training on science communication for community and policy engagement. Three alumni of the program — Dr. Yoshira Van Horn, Dr. Max Aung, and Dr. Lariah Edwards — have also joined the leadership team as Assistant Directors. Finally, María Paula Rubiano A., a journalist, editor and translator based in Medellín, Colombia, is our new assistant editor.
Our new cohort, which features 14 scholars from universities, NGOs and government agencies, will carry forward this work in new and exciting directions.
The new fellows will bring expertise in varied topics, including mental health impacts from climate change, Indigenous water sovereignty, toxics and retail redlining, urban planning in the Global South, energy justice, and agroecological practices and resilience. They will still produce podcasts, first-person essays and social media takeovers — but we’re aiming higher, with collaborative audio projects and community partnerships aimed at on-the-ground impact.
We are excited to watch this program grow and remain humbled at the support and engagement from readers and listeners. Keep your eye on this space — or visit theprogram’s homepage — to catch all of their science, their ideas and their stories.
Our new fellows
- Jan-Michael Archer, M.S., doctoral student at the Maryland Institute of Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health
- Robbie M. Parks, Ph.D. NIH NIEHS K99/R00, postdoctoral fellow at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
- Alexa White, M.S., Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Valerisa Joe-Gaddy, Ph.D., postdoctoral research associate at the Water Resources Research Center - University of Arizona
- Denise Moreno Ramírez, Ph.D., M.S., a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health
- Gabriel I. Gadsden, M.S., second year Ph.D. student and teaching fellow at the Yale University School of the Environment
- JoRee LaFrance, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona Department of Environmental Science
- Candis M. Hunter, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., R.E.H.S., an environmental health officer/ public health advisor at the United States Public Health Service (USPHS)/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Lisbeth Iglesias-Rios, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.A., a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health
- Kevin Patterson, M.P.H., a Ph.D. student at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
- Carolyn E. Ramírez, Ph.D., a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council
- Sabah Usmani, M.C.P., a Ph.D. student at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
- Marissa Chan, M.S., a Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- Nsilo Berry, M.S., a health impact researcher at the Healthy Building Network
I show my photos of them either with fish in their orange, yellow, and blue-black beaks, gathered in kaleidoscopic multitude, or nuzzling in affection. I always get oohs, ahhs, and a choral, “sooooo cute.”Then I show images that are not so cute.
They are of mothers and children of southeast Chicago, with toxic industries at the end of their block. They live in what environmental justice advocates decry as “sacrifice zones.” In the last decade alone, this primarily brown and Black community has suffered choking clouds of dust from oil refining byproducts, lead in lawns, and neurotoxic manganese dust in the air. Just last month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development blasted an attempt to relocate here a scrap metal recycling facility ousted from the predominately white north side. HUD said it was an example of “shifting polluting activities from white neighborhoods to Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
Environmental justice
Activists march to stop an industrial metal shredder from relocating half a mile from two public schools in Southeast Chicago.
Credit: Chicago Teachers Union
I then give the audience a glimpse of the shift that should be happening. I show images from my coverage of offshore wind farms and facilities in Europe. I show them families of color from San Diego to Washington, D.C., who enjoy rooftop solar power through various programs. I show them Black and brown workers in the green economy, installing solar panels on roofs.
I then return to puffins. I say if you really care about the threats to them and whether they’ll be around for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, then you must care about those families in southeast Chicago. Like thousands of birdwatchers, my journey with puffins began with simple admiration of a beautiful bird. Today, I see that their destiny is directly bonded to dumped-on families. They are bonded to the speed we curb the fossil emissions that scorch the planet and sear the lungs.
Puffins come back
A puffin takes flight
Credit: Derrick Z. Jackson
My first story on Atlantic puffins was 36 years ago for Newsday, where I reported from Eastern Egg Rock, a tiny 7-acre island 6.5 miles out from Pemaquid Point in Maine. The rock was the site of the world’s first restoration of a seabird to an island where humans killed it off.
It was almost a fairy tale. Puffins were slaughtered off the island in the 1880s for meat and eggs. Nearly a century later, Steve Kress, a young summer camp bird instructor for the National Audubon Society, got it in his head to bring them back.
Beginning in 1973, he and colleagues brought chicks from Newfoundland more than 800 miles away. They fed them until they fledged into the Atlantic. Kress hoped that years later, when puffins seek islands to breed, they would pick Eastern Egg Rock instead of Newfoundland. To make the birds feel at home, his team put up decoys and mirrors.
Climate change warning
A pair of puffins at the Gulf of Maine
Credit: Derrick Z. Jackson
Kress succeeded. Puffins returned and began breeding in 1981. During my 1986 visit, I contributed to the cause by spotting a puffin zoom in off the ocean with herring in its mouth for a chick. The parent disappeared under a boulder to a nest not yet charted. Kress considered my discovery a big deal as the nest count in those days was still under 20.
Today, the bird is 1,300 pairs strong in the Gulf of Maine and an economic engine. Last year, 20,000 people circled Eastern Egg Rock on tour boats for a glimpse of the bird. But the fairy tale is now a drama. A symbol of what we can restore from 19th-century destruction, puffins are now a canary of 20th- and 21st-century self-destruction. Climate change is making these waters perhaps the fastest warming major body of ocean on the planet, as the Gulf Stream strengthens against weakening currents coming down from the Arctic.
Resilient puffins
Credit: Derrick Z. Jackson
Last year was a nightmare with the warmest waters on record and intense storms also associated with a warming planet. Warm water drove the fish puffins and other seabirds need to feed chicks too deep or too far out to catch. Relentless rain triggered hypothermia. Between starvation and shivering, seabird islands were a climate war zone, with bird carcasses everywhere and some of the lowest chick productivity recorded by researchers.
Conversely, this current summer brought calmer weather conditions and plentiful fish. It was a reminder that there is still a chance of a forever-ever-after. In a recent conference call, researchers in the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group reported record numbers of tern species across many islands and a rebounding of puffin nesting. In my visit to the islands, I held a symbol of resilience in my hands, a puffin chick being raised by a 33-year-old parent. The parent is one of the last-known puffins that was plucked off Newfoundland as a chick and hand reared by Kress’s team.
'Injustice anywhere'
The question now is whether we assist such resilience with a resolve to cool their waters. It requires the same effort needed to preserve ourselves from deadly heat, storms, floods, desertification, and the daily soot shortening our lives. As one who covers many angles of the environment, formerly for the Globe’s editorial board and currently for the Union of Concerned Scientists, I no longer see a distinction between traditional notions of environmentalism and environmental justice.
Curbing carbon pollution for families in Chicago calms the climatic conditions that drive fish away from puffins. Every new wind turbine and solar panel installed is one less mountain of fossil fuel waste fouling city blocks and rural rivers and one less set of emissions inflaming the ocean. With the majority of the under-18 population now people of color, the conservation world by necessity must recruit new caretakers for puffins and threatened species from communities living with Superfund sites, lead poisoning, and asthma-causing particulates. That surely would spawn a new generation of environmentalists who cease to make distinctions between the climate threats to animals and us.
Just as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote nearly 60 years ago that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” stopping climate change for people on land saves puffins at sea. The puffin fairy tale can still have a happy ending, if we realize we’re all in the same sacrifice zone.
This story was originally published in the Boston Globe and is reprinted here with permission of the author.
Derrick Z. Jackson is co-author and photographer of Project Puffin and The Puffin Plan. He is a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent contributor to Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate.
At Environmental Health Sciences, we put news and science into context. What we're seeing right now is optimism:
Those in the trenches working on climate mitigation, climate solutions, clean energy and climate justice say goals that felt impossible yesterday feel achievable today.
There are caveats of course – and we will get to those in a minute. But today's not a day to let the bad news overshadow the good.
So much is happening, so quickly, you need a way to keep up. Our team works around the clock across 11 time zones to find the most consequential news about our health and environment.
Here's a quick roundup of some reporting you may not have seen amid the torrent of coverage.
Inflation Reduction Act, explained
Start with the basics.
One of the better overviews comes from vlogger Hank Green, who in 23 minutes dissects the bill, its flaws, the history of climate obstruction and how the Inflation Reduction Act overcomes them. There's even, as a friend noted, "a bit of cathartic rage" at the end as a bonus.
Green captures the optimism of the moment: "Nothing gets done if you don't believe it can get done. And I, for the first time in decades of this, have started to believe it can be done."
It's long, but graphics, factoids and an interview with EPA administrator Michael Regan make it worth your time.
How the Inflation Reduction Act helps you
The Inflation Reduction Act contains a number of provisions for home efficiency credits
Credit: Bluewater Sweden/Unsplash
How does the bill help you?
- Yahoo Finance's Ben Werschkul looks at four ways it kicks in right away, notably on home energy efficiency credits and health care costs (it is, after all, an anti-inflation bill).
- Vox's Rebecca Leber looks at underrated parts of the bill.
"One of the most damaging legacies of the intersection between racism and fossil fuels is how highways were built to cut through Latino and Black communities…. The Inflation Reduction Act includes a federal infusion of cash for community projects aimed at addressing some of the harmful effects of these projects."
- To ensure that point doesn't get missed, the White House put out a fact sheet on how the bill helps Black communities.
- Indeed, the White House's virtual briefing room is breaks apart how the bill helps rural America, young Americans, environmental justice and individual states.
Helping Nature … and the GOP
A hiker crosses an alpine meadow in Montana's Lee Metcalf Wilderness
Credit: Douglas Fischer/EHS
Major news outlets have flooded the zone with coverage, and Politico and the Washington Post are no exception. They have two fine sidebars worth attention:
The Post's Brady Dennis looks away from high-tech solutions to focus on how the bill helps … Mother Nature.
"The Inflation Reduction Act includes an acknowledgement that land is a profound ally in the fight against climate change," he writes.
And Politico's Catherine Morehouse has a delightful little poke of GOP governors opposing the Democrat-driven climate bill – and how their states stand to gain.
- A key stat: "Republican-led states are some of the largest wind and solar producers in the U.S. and have benefited greatly from the past decade of green energy expansion not only through job growth, but through lower ratepayer prices."
The 'Battery Belt'
North America's new 'battery belt' largely overlaps its old 'rust belt.'
Credit: Axios
Axios has a sharp piece looking at how investments in battery tech promise to revive America's heartland.
- Why it matters: "The package is a major economic jolt for a big swath of the country — being called the new Battery Belt — where manufacturers are building lots of electric-vehicle-related factories."
Reality check: Dark clouds
All is not roses.
This is a compromise bill, and while it pours $360 million into climate change efforts, people in neighborhoods already dealing with a lot of pollution fear they will face more harm, not less, NPR's Rebecca Hersher cautions in a piece worth reading.
- "There are some parts [of the law] that are good, and there are some parts that are really bad," Mijin Cha, a professor at Occidental College, told NPR. "And the parts that are really bad are pretty significant."
EHS founder Pete Myers is particularly alarmed at funding for largely discredited carbon capture and sequestration technologies
- "Many of our allies in the environmental justice community feel betrayed, especially because the huge amount of money that is going toward CCS will allow heavy polluters in their neighborhoods to get excuses and political cover as this false solution claims billions of dollars and lets the polluters keep going."
Charles Harvey and Kurt House, who launched a carbon capture venture 14 years ago, say as much in a NYT op-ed: Every Dollar Spent on This Climate Technology Is a Waste
Juice Media, an Australian political satire group, skewers the concept in an entertaining 2021 video:
Honest Government Ad | Carbon Capture & Storage
The Australian Government has made an ad about Carbon Capture and Storage, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.
The bigger picture from Congress
A tweet thread from Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, puts the Inflation Reduction Act in a larger perspective.
The scale of legislative productiveness out of Congress, Schatz notes, is hard to portray accurately "without sounding a bit left-leaning."
The climate bill is just the latest in a string of legislation that includes an infrastructure package, postal reform, reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, veterans support.
"When you add all of this up, it’s not just a lot of bills. Each one of these was thorny, complicated, difficult, and ambitious," he tweeted.
The full tweet threadThe power of our aggregation
We work hard to get you the top news when you need it. Environmental Health Sciences publishes two websites:
For the top aggregated news on climate change, visit DailyClimate.org. The "politics" tab gets you a pile of political coverage.
EHN.org focuses more broadly on our environmental health. But it also keeps those climate stories in one place.
And EHS delivers top stories to your inbox daily, free of charge:
- Above the Fold for broader environmental health news.
- The Daily Climate for climate change-specific coverage.
Disagree with our optimism? Or have a story to recommend?
Is our optimism overrated or clearly biased? Did we miss a story you found insightful?
We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts on the climate bill – or pass along a story URL or informative tweet thread: feedback@ehsciences.org
This story is developing. We'll update this page and share relevant suggestions.
Our staff has picked and reviewed some of their favorite books to help you find a good read for the summer. Some picks are environmental ... some not so much. Some are light, some are heavy. No matter your preference, you're sure to find something you like here.
Enjoy the list and, as always, we'd love to hear some of your suggestions.
Brian Bienkowski’s pick: Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese
I read "Indian Horse" in the throes of winter here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The book’s sparse prose, bleak landscapes, and hockey talk were an appropriate fit for short, dark days when temperatures were hovering around zero Fahrenheit. But this would be just as captivating a read on a sunny beach or in a camp chair fireside.
Wagamese is a master of brevity and paints a painful picture of an Indigenous youth, Saul Indian Horse, who briefly experiences the fulfilling intersection of family, tradition, and sustaining natural resources before it all goes to hell. The book gives the ugly details of boarding schools, and Wagamese doesn’t let the reader look away. Saul, however, excels at hockey, and it propels him out of the boarding school abuse into a life of bouncing around industrial and logging towns drawing cheers and jeers, depending on the race of the fans. But despite this short-lived redemption, the boarding school scars never fully leave him.
It’s not a lighthearted read, but it’s a realistic portrayal of an ugly period in North American history — one that is seldom taught or thought about. With a light touch, and no wasted words, Wagamese brings you to the cedars and freshwater lakes, concrete boarding schools, warm Indigenous living rooms smelling of home cooked meals, sweaty hockey locker rooms, and on a journey of personal discovery across Canada’s far North.
Kristina Marusic’s pick: The Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians (or your local wildflower guide)
I follow lots of foraging accounts on TikTok, and one of my favorite foragers introduced me to this book while they were hunting for edible wildflowers.
“The Wildflowers of Tennessee” is the most comprehensive field guide to wildflowers published for the 16 states it covers. It’s heavy on color photos and has a handy, rainbow-hued guide at the beginning for quickly identifying flowers by color. Each flower’s entry includes detailed notes on edibility, medicine, Native American traditions, folklore, and the origin of flower names.
On a short walk around my Pittsburgh neighborhood this spring, I was able to identify several types of wildflowers I’d never before known the names of, like moth mullein (Verbascum blattaria), small white flowers with magenta centers and sunny yellow anthers growing by the side of the road. The guidebook taught me that these flowers got their name because their hairy stems “resemble the insect’s antenna and tongue,” and that they’re cunning little blossoms: The long hairs and knobs on their stamens make insects think they’re flush with pollen, attracting lots of pollinators even though their pollen reserves are actually quite small.
I also spotted Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), bright orange-red, star-shaped blooms with a delightful list of nicknames including Bird’s Eye, Eyebright, Wink-a-Peep, and, in England, Poor-Man’s Weatherglass since the flowers close when bad weather approaches.
While it might not be your go-to beach read, delving into the wildflower guide for your region is sure to help you slow down and smell the roses this summer (literally and figuratively).
Douglas Fischer's pick: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
Chosen and the Beautiful
Credit: Tordotcom Publishing
I know: NOBODY wants to read (or reread) "Gatsby," that staple of high school English class, over summer.
But hear me out.
First, in this day of gross income inequality and insane CEO pay, Fitzgerald's masterclass on society and power has never felt more relevant.
And then there's the weather: With so many of us today suffering through suffocating, hot, smoky air from wildfires, or suffocating, unrelenting heat waves, the "Gatsby" scenes where stultifying Long Island summer heat drives characters into frenzy and madness come as a gut punch.
The "Gatsby" of your youth may have been all about love, power, and class. The "Gatsby" for our climate-changed world shows how oppressive, inescapable heat slowly drives us all insane.
***
But the real reason to read "Gatsby"? To enjoy dessert: Nghi Vo's "The Chosen and the Beautiful."
Vo's debut novel retells "The Great Gatsby" from the perspective of Jordan Baker, the golf star and girlfriend of "Gatsby" narrator Nick Carraway.
Except that, in Vo's hands, Baker is a queer, Vietnamese adoptee looking in at a world where so many doors remain closed. And the story is pure confection, filled with magic and mystery, fun, and spice.
You can enjoy "Chosen" without (re-)reading Fitzgerald's Jazz-Age classic. But with "Gatsby's" details fresh in mind, Vo's through-the-looking-glass twists become all the more entertaining, wry, and witty.
Plus, you'll have something to talk about this fall when your child comes home with "The Great Gatsby" on her AP English reading list.
María Paula Rubiano A.’s pick: On Time and Water, by Andri Snær Magnason
It is said that climate change represents an existential threat to all life on Earth. Why, then, are we not thinking about this crisis on an existential note — the nature of time, change and water?
This is the guiding question of Andri Snær Magnason’s “On Time and Water.” Perhaps because he was born in a land that could exist in mythological tales – a magnificent planet's frozen island north, where hundreds of volcanoes erupt frequently – the writer gives poetic and spiritual weight to climate science without losing simplicity in its prose.
A meeting with the Dalai Lama is the catalyst for Magnason’s quest. As a grandma would tell her grandchildren the tales of Prometheus, Bachué, or any other mythological figure, Magnason tells us the story of time and water on Earth – and how humans are rewriting it. His narration intertwines the personal story of his family’s generations (his grandparents’ life-long fight to study and protect Iceland’s glaciers, his uncle’s quest to save crocodiles) with the discovery of fossil fuels and the ecological crisis of glaciers in the Himalayan plateau, home of the Dalai Lama and his political struggles. It sounds all over the place, I know! But as with poetry, this book really can’t be explained. Its impact can only be felt upon reading.
Towards the end, the author presents several possible solutions to the climate crisis. But, sadly, he omits the pivotal role that Indigenous peoples might have in our path towards a livable future. After all, they have long understood that the spiritual and the scientific might sit closer than western culture believes. As a result, they have conserved most of Earth’s remaining biodiversity (as a complimentary reading, I suggest "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer).
Despite this shortcoming, the book is worth a read, as it provides a complex look at our mythological era: an era when, as Magnason puts it, we need to turn away from the Black Sun and its fossilized deposits and reconnect “with the Earth and the glowing Sun above our heads.”
Autumn Spanne’s pick: The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s "The Warmth of Other Suns" captures the horror of Jim Crow and excavates both the hope and unfulfilled promises of the Great Migration, when some six million Black Americans migrated from the South to northern and western cities between World War I and 1970. More than a decade after its publication, her book remains instructive for anyone seeking greater context about the United States’ current moment of racial reckoning.
Wilkerson vividly retraces the journeys of three compelling characters from different states — Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana — in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, respectively. They are escaping dire situations, but Wilkerson also makes clear the extreme risks and sacrifices associated with leaving. Ultimately, her three protagonists face an America beyond the Jim Crow South that is far less welcoming than they imagined, from employment discrimination to redlining to straight-up terrorism perpetuated by white people intent on keeping Black families from integrating suburban neighborhoods at any cost.
Wilkerson documents the experiences of her protagonists with deep compassion — her own parents were part of this exodus — but also with great skill as a journalist who elevates individual stories into powerful vehicles for understanding the deep roots of America’s persistent racism and inequities today. Wilkerson has spoken about the incredible responsibility she felt to tell the sweeping story of the Great Migration through these characters in a way that would encompass the experiences of all who shared their tales of exclusion, trauma, and triumph. Ultimately, she presents stories of survival, of people who faced adversity and physical danger and persisted nonetheless to enrich their adopted communities in a multitude of ways.
Wilkerson compels her readers to step back and consider how the uniquely American system of segregation and oppression known as Jim Crow continues to taint our democracy. She also shows how less formal versions of Jim Crow flourished outside the South, casting a shadow over not just the economic prospects, but the basic safety and wellbeing, of millions. No journalistic account I’ve read about the Great Migration has felt as intimate or as powerful as Wilkerson’s beautiful, exhaustively-researched storytelling. Next on my list is Wilkerson’s 2020 book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent," a followup of sorts to "The Warmth of Other Suns" that places the United States’ systems of racial and class hierarchies in a more global context.
Gwen Ranniger’s pick: Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
I’m a library patron 99% of the time: Not only do the librarians typically have excellent recommendations, but I also rarely read a book twice, so the library is a wonderfully economical, wallet-friendly resource.
However, last fall (really winter up here in Anchorage, AK) I purchased "Cloud Cuckoo Land" on a whim when I was very pregnant and needed something different to pass the time. I do not regret purchasing this book; it is one of the rare ones that I will read again.
But that doesn’t tell you much — so here’s my argument as to why this book needs to wind up on your lap this summer:
"Cloud Cuckoo Land" is a novel that spans past, present, and future. It follows the lives of individuals in Constantinople during the siege of 1409; a boy, Seymour, in present-day Idaho who through life circumstances is a burgeoning environmental terrorist; an elderly man who happens to be in the library where Seymour plants his bomb; and a girl on an extraordinary, sacrificial space station mission hundreds of years after the end of the Earth.
How on earth do these narratives connect? By way of a bygone myth interwoven in all five lives: Aegon, a shepherd who longs to find a better world, the fabled Eden.
The book is hard to put down. From ancient war to homegrown terrorists to disease plaguing an isolated experiment to save humankind, the stories are intriguing and heartbreaking at times. Together, they are a masterful depiction of individuals looking for ways to live on a better Earth.
I’ve read many a book with multiple storylines running synchronously, but never have I read one written with such deeply creative and seemingly random storylines that inexplicably fit together. You may have heard of Doerr for his Pulitzer Prize winner "All the Light We Cannot See," which is also an excellent novel. However, I cannot recommend his latest book, "Cloud Cuckoo Land," enough.
Jim Germond’s pick: Encounters with the Archdruid, by John McPhee
John McPhee needs no introduction as a writer. His bona fides and accolades are many and easy to find: a decade with Time, sixty years with The New Yorker (still contributing at age 90), thirty books, and a Pulitzer.
Sometime during the '70s, between the gonzo journalism espoused by Hunter S. Thompson and the metaphorical mashups of Tom Robbins, I discovered McPhee in a pile of used books outside the Student Union at Western Washington University.
That book was "Encounters with the Archdruid." It was at once engaging, insightful, and informative. Who was this guy? My immediate impressions of McPhee suggested a meticulous writer — a craftsman of considerable skill and powers of observation. The structure of the book — indeed, every McPhee I’ve read — suggests a man with a thoughtful plan, so it came as a surprise to me when I ran across a piece from 2011 in which McPhee reveals that "Encounters" began as a complete abstraction.
Weary of writing profile after profile, the form that was defining his career, and mindful of a rut he feared he might not escape, McPhee was moved to pin a piece of paper to his bulletin board that read simply, “ABC/D.” He professed that at the time and for sometime after, he had no idea what “ABC/D” might come to represent. He knew he wanted to up his literary game — put more balls in the air — but he had yet to define the variables.
As it happened, the “D”— the common denominator — would come to represent David Brower, the controversial first executive director of The Sierra Club. The “A” would denote Charles Park, a mining geologist sent to evaluate the feasibility of the Kennecott mining company's claim to a mile-wide copper deposit in Washington State’s Glacier Peak Wilderness. “B” would be personified by Charles Fraser, a real estate wunderkind, flush with cash and confidence and intent on leaving his mark on Cumberland Island. “C” would constitute the headliner, the Archdruid’s arch-nemesis Floyd Dominy, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and passionate impounder of water.
"Encounters with the Archdruid" was to become a narrative detailing three journeys, presented in sections aptly titled A Mountain, An Island, and A River, in which Brower went toe to toe (at times literally) with his ideological foes. Brower searched out the copper deposits in Glacier Peak Wilderness with Charles Park, toured Cumberland Island with Charles Fraser, and rafted the Colorado River with Floyd Dominy. McPhee bore witness. The results might surprise you.
Brower and Dominy had in the recent past clashed bitterly over dam proposals from Arizona to Alaska. Brower used the Sierra Club to wage expensive, high-profile, take-no-prisoner campaigns which kept proposed dams out of the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur National Monument, but failed to stop Glen Canyon Dam and its backwater, Lake Powell. Brower mourned the loss and took it to the grave as his biggest failure while Dominy counted Glen Canyon among his greatest achievements and celebrated Lake Powell as the crown jewel of Reclamation and his legacy.
That McPhee managed to get these sworn enemies in the same room together, let alone put them in a raft on a multi-day excursion through the Grand Canyon, speaks to his considerable powers as an honest broker and facilitator of discourse. He recalled later that while on the river, the two had settled into a routine of “tearing each other in half once a day and being pals the remainder of the time.”
"Encounters with the Archdruid" was published in 1971, before human-driven climate change had so perverted planetary systems and permeated the social fabric. Yet a half-century later, the three issues central to the book remain topical and contentious because as we’ve come to understand, climate change is a threat multiplier and multiply they have. Charles Park, the geologist, frets over a future without enough copper; today we face the uncomfortable truth that our electric future will require massive amounts of it. Charles Fraser, visionary coastal developer, decries the ugly smear of barrier islands packed with tiers of ticky-tacky beach houses, but cannot fathom sea level rise, land subsidence, and saltwater intrusion. Floyd Dominy wants to dam the Colorado River from Mexico to the Rockies, generating endless hydropower and recreation dollars while failing to imagine ever running out of water.
"Encounters with the Archdruid" urges us to confront the myth of inexhaustible resources and holds a mirror to our hypocrisy. We fly, we drive, we buy stuff. And then we buy more stuff. "Encounters" continues to inform and endure in the five decades since publication. If you’ve read it in the past, consider reading it again. If you’ve never read it, you just might have a hole in your cultural literacy that needs filling.
“He was feisty, heaven knew. And arrogant, possibly. And relentless, certainly. And above all, effective…” - John McPhee, “Farewell to the Archdruid,” Sierra magazine, 2000.
Ashley James’ Pick: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, by J. Drew Lanham
"The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature" by wildlife ecologist J. Drew Lanham is a great pleasure to read for summer. Lanham opens the book introducing himself as many things – including identifying as a Black man and drawing attention to the fact that while society might think he is out of place in nature, nature has never questioned him. He also identifies as a scientist and expresses that conservation scientists have failed to capture the hearts and minds of society. He hopes to do so by sharing his story.
The first memoir immerses the reader in nature and Lanham’s relationship with the natural world as he describes in intricate detail the landscape, plants, and wildlife where he grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina. In the following memoirs, Landhan takes the reader on a vivid journey through his life and family history, sharing personal stories and relating his life to his love for birds and nature. The way Landhan captures the natural world and uses it as a storytelling tool is so captivating that you can’t help but fall in love with nature reading it. "The Home Place" reminded me why I’m so passionate about storytelling and journalism as a way to champion environmental science and health.
Do you have summer reading suggestions for us? We'd love to hear from you, email us at feedback@ehn.org.
