Book review: Last Chance: Preserving life on earth

Larry Schweiger opens his new book, "Last Chance," by sharing his mentor’s wise advice: “fight no little battles.” Since I first learned about climate chance science 10 years ago, it’s been pretty clear that it falls far outside the “little” category. Back then, a few minutes of every climate science discussion was devoted to worst case scenarios. Nasty feedback loops where some global warming led to more warming, magnifying itself in an ever-escalating climate system malfunctions. Climatologist James Hansen identified some of those tipping points, and while scientists acknowledged their risks, we had no data to prove they existed, or that we might trigger them.

Schweiger brings forward the sad truth that in the last year or two, the climate scientists and journalists have changed their tone on tipping points. The evidence increasingly suggests that our climate system is going to respond in a “nonlinear fashion” to the climate-forcing impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. This means change won't be slow and gradual. Rather, it will be sudden and abrupt, occurring at unpredictable times in sometimes surprising ways.

Stories and metaphors

Using stories from his childhood and common-sense metaphors, Schweiger illustrates what climate change will really look like at ground level at many places on Earth.

As a life-long fisher and hunter, Schweiger comes to issues of climate science with his boots dirty and his hands wet. He wants to know how climate change is going to affect the fish in the streams, the antelope on the plains, and the birds in the trees. He also wants to know what climate solutions will mean for us in our day-to-day lives. And Schweiger wants his readers to understand the climate crisis on that tangible level as well. His specific stories illustrate how non-linear climate change works in a way that should make any reader more able to communicate these issues.

For example, ocean acidification is the chemical process of change occurring in our oceans as global carbon dioxide levels increase. This is one of less-known impacts of carbon dioxide emissions, and Larry brings it home with stories of large numbers of shellfish suddenly dying and affecting fisher’s livelihoods.

With his background as a fisher, Schweiger’s brings insight into other little-known, but important, climate impacts. He tells stories of Lake Erie’s blue pike. This beautiful fish was pursued by generations of fishers on the shores of Lake Erie until industrial pollution drove them away. Schweiger vividly describes a pea green Lake Erie that was a national symbol of ecological destruction. While improved pollution management and lake cleaning have cleared the waters, the new ecosystem is dominated by the invasive zebra mussel.

Biodevastation lurks

As our world’s climate changes, this single-species ecosystem seems particularly vulnerable to change—a few degrees of difference might render the lake a totally different place, if the one remaining species cannot cope. There can be no gradual change here, only a radical shift. This compelling example of the dangers of lost biodiversity is made personal by the laments of fishers for the last blue pike. Here we have a biological non-linear change, where ecological devastation has totally changed the lake from a diverse ecosystem including blue pike to one dominated by algae and pea green water to the current domination of the zebra mussel. There were no gradual transitions between these states—just rapid shifts between static equilibria.

Abrupt changes of this type might feel as shocking as falling into a frozen pond. Schweiger’s story of doing just that as a child effectively reminds us of the current plight of polar bears threatened with a melting habitat. With no ice to stand on, they might die while suddenly having to swim longer distances than they are used to.

Schweiger, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, connects this single-species concern with the broader one that impacts all species—that the disappearance of ice sheets will trigger even more emissions of climate altering gases. Warming near the poles, according the Schweiger, threatens to release frozen methane hydrates into the atmosphere from permafrosts. This huge amount of gases would be the greenhouse gases equivalent of burning all global fossil fuel reserves, and it might happen in just a few years. This kind of shift seems to be like the one Lake Erie experienced, from one kind of climate to another.

In the face of this vast uncertainty and risk, Schweiger appeals for climate action from a “Christian moral perspective.” Regardless of faith, Schweiger’s clear-eyed assessment of climate change as threatening a “global catastrophe unprecedented in human history” is enough to wake anyone to the moral and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis.

Outlining positive steps

Schweiger hastens to describe solutions, from increased energy efficiency, to a smarter grid, to producing carbon-free energy. All are all narrated in the same clear voice and peppered with voices of hunters and fishers Schweiger speaks with, learns from, and represents. Birders concerned about wind turbines share space with farmers interested in making money from solar energy. His practical suggestions for action are concrete and achievable- he gives numbers to call, websites to visit, and things to do, that can all contribute to solving the climate challenge.

One of Schweiger’s best recommendations is to get your hands dirty. He tells the story of a grizzled old farmer asking whether a patch of soil is alive or dead. The farmer knows that well-managed soil is filled with countless microbes and is teeming with living creatures, all made out of carbon, surrounding themselves with dark carbon. What does this have to do with climate change? Schweiger uses Rodale Institute research and the words of Institute CEO Tim LaSalle to understand that our soils are an important part of the solution to climate crisis.

The carbon—the material that gives healthy soil its dark color— is pulled directly from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While chemical agriculture has depleted much carbon from our soils, regenerative organic farming has the capacity to return that carbon to the earth while sustainably producing crops and livestock for a hungry world.

Schweiger's concise turn of phrase sums up the work I believe in at the Rodale Institute. Its time to “put the black back in the soil.”

Eliav Bitan is the policy and partnerships associate for the Rodale Institute.

Essentials: “Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth,” Larry J. Schweiger, foreword by Theodore Roosevelt IV - September 2009. ISBN: 978-1-55591-717-3. 272 pages. 5.25 x 8.25 Hardcover $22.95