Double feature book review: "Taming the Apocalypse" and "The New Wild"
Spoiler-lite
Today’s article is contains two book reviews. The first is from a book that greatly influenced my thoughts on conservation (written by my good friend
) and the second is a review of his excellent upcoming book. Please visit his substack if this review intrigues you.
Book Review 1: Taming the Apocalypse
is a good friend of mine. He kindly lent me a copy of his new book before publication for proof reading. This is a small spoiler-lite review of his book, to whet your appetite. I have a feeling that a lot of my readership will enjoy his work, and of course, I encourage you to purchase a copy.
“Taming the Apocalpyse” is a book written by Dr Shane Simonsen. I find it difficult to remain objective on the subject matter because I dabble heavily in the contents as a (sometimes all-consuming) hobby.
The main thesis of his work is that the modern, world spanning, fossil fuel powered society will fade and another system will rise from the decaying corpse.
He lays out a chain of claims that leads to this conclusion, and I heavily encourage you to fact check and debate his reasoning. I’m not saying his claims are wrong. I am emphasising the need to think critically about everything you read, and importantly, even if you don’t agree, to keep an open mind. Something that you consider flawed will still have some nuggets of truth buried within.
This claim of collapsing society may sound like “Doomerism”, but Shane offers a very powerful and refreshing take on how common-folk like you and I can participate in shaping the future that our offspring will inherit. There’s a very vivid section that keeps replaying in my head: of where the modern fossil fuel economy is likened to a sick and dying colossus from which we must quickly pluck the critical morsels of survival before being crushed.
Shane writes elegantly and obviously from a position of deep understanding. He doesn’t drop a beat as he valiantly surveys the entire tree of life for likely domestication candidates. He reasons that a harmonious relationship between the tree of life and humanity is a beautiful and sustainable future worth shaping the present for. To that end, the domestication of megafauna to replace diesel powered machinery is a striking image that has not left me. This is just one example. His tour doesn’t stop at plants and animals (hat tip to the Silverweed mention), he also covers fungi and microbes.
As we near the end of the book, he describes some remarkable systems of symbiosis between human and domesticated wildlife. Striking ideas such as Megaherbivores replacing diesel trucks, beaver’s teeth (which contain iron) replacing metal extraction.
There is some practical, general advice that he offers on how to choose which species to domesticate. As an amateur plant breeder myself, I think this advice is sound. We are also led through some case studies taken from his learning on his own 40 acre plot, just to show you that he isn’t all rhetoric.
Overall, “Taming the Apocalypse” is a short book. I’ve read it twice, cover to cover. If you read quickly it should take you half a day to a day, depending on how many times you back track to consider the implications of his reasoning (and you probably will).
I remember closing the hypothetical cover after the final sentence, feeling as though I was taken through a tour de force of coherent ideas unlike any I’d seen before.
I encourage you to read this book and unashamedly hope that you will be bitten by the plant/animal/other domestication bug.
I will father no children. The same will be true for many people alive today. But just as I can consider my nieces and nephews as an approximation of personal Darwinian “success”, I can also view the dozens of species that I have moulded in concert with my local landscape to be my true successors. Me and my children are of one flesh, woven from A, T, C and G, encrusted with lightning and sunshine and summer rain.
“Taming the Apocalypse”, Dr. Shane Simonsen
Book Review 2: The New Wild
The most impactful books you read aren’t the ones that change your mind so much as bring into focus something that has been staring you in the face your entire life.
Fred Pearce is a science writer who has made a speciality in taking outsider perspectives on a range of environmental topics. In this book he got to travel around the world, visiting locations where recently introduced species are causing dramatic ecological changes. The popular narrative around this topic is more or less “native good, foreign bad”, and this position crumbles to dust when put under scrutiny.
Much of the extinction statistics of the last few centuries were driven by the age of exploration, with ships crossing the oceans encountering previously isolated islands with their own unique assemblage of species. These weird, tiny ecosystems have since revealed themselves to be unstable and volatile, with species coming and going at regular intervals. The book explores the ecological evolution of an entirely new island created near Iceland by volcanic activity. All the classic models of ecology failed with this simple experiment with species arriving from all sorts of original locations in a crazy shifting patchwork of interactions that did not resemble the simple, linear model of succession and climax so often taught in biology classes.
The book also explores how foreign species often perform vital ecosystem services, and usually come to dominate because they are actively repairing damage caused by humans. The dynamics of water hyacinth and zebra mussels in lakes around the world demonstrate this point, with populations collapsing once the polluted water has been sufficiently cleaned. I have seen this on my own property- often the worst weeds just need to be left to do their own thing and will leave of their own accord in time. Often introduced plants end up forming habitats that support endangered animals, causing a headache for parties who insist on removing foreigners to “save” the natives. Eradication programs usually end up proving to be expensive, ineffective and cause massive collateral damage with widespread unintended consequences. The statistics used to argue for the contribution of foreign specie to extinctions and the economic costs of invaders are also proven to be completely made up and exaggerated.
He concludes the book with a tour of the “brown field” sites of the UK, abandoned industrial wastelands that have often turned into havens for rare plants and animals due to their patchwork of habitats. These locations get almost no protection under the current environmental legislation, despite housing countless rare and endangered species. He also mentions that hybridisation (between native species, and often between invaders and natives) should force us to seriously re-examine our devotion to the artificial concept of nativeness and purity. The demonisation of particular “evil” species is a modern-day witch hunt, with equally disastrous results.
This book opened my eyes to the notion of sincerity in ecology. I have visited many relatively pristine locations in Australia during my studies, and observed communities of species that have occupied the landscape for millennia. There is a kind of genuineness about how they occupy the landscape. But I have also visited many sites that have been heavily impacted by human activity in recent times. Sometimes a few natives are left hanging on after the changes, but their vigour is lost. I have also seen the well-meaning people entering such locations to remove the newly arrived species, applying poison, running machines around, artificially propagating and replanting. While I applaud their devotion to nature, their methods seem completely pointless to me. Even if they succeed, they are creating a weird unalive museum of species that would rather not grow in that place anymore. And I can’t imagine a more depressing fate for a species that having to rely on the continuing attention of humans (gripped by the current fads for ecological “purification”) to avoid extinction. Culture changes, economics change too, and I cannot see humans maintaining these efforts for more than an eyeblink in terms of ecological time.
My own experiments have proven there is some ineffable factor that makes a particular plant want to grow in a particular place at a particular time. Organisms are suited to a particular time and place, not an arbitrary region on a map. In my mind this sincere vigour is the essence of belongingness. Past experiences don’t guarantee future results. Absent strong allelopathic effects, a community of plants left to their own devices will maximise the net photosynthesis of an ecosystem. Human intervention can only get in the way of that as we try to “pick winners” like an oppressive authoritarian state. Animals and the disturbance they bring to an ecosystem can be a vital and beneficial force, but like all things the devil is in the details and perfect balance is an illusion.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone open to reassessing their outlook on the whole invasive species story (or maybe as a gift to irritate/stimulate someone close to you who foams at the mouth over invasives). It is a short and accessible read, thought provoking, vivid and entertaining.