Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the World's Environmental Hotspots

This book was a refreshing look at the environmental devastation happening on earth. It is a book that gives hope and I don't believe is meant to speak on a scientific level about these problems. It is one woman's journey and how she has connected global warming, deforestation etc. with the teachings of Darwin and the importance of oral histories and legends.

At first glance, this seems a foolish question. All creatures strive for survival. None have ever been known to vote for extinction. Alanna Mitchell, disturbed by what she has observed around the planet, still poses the question to the researchers she meets. Will we soon go extinct through our own thoughtless activities? Will we continue to denude forests of their trees? Will we allow our auto exhausts to melt the polar ice fields? How many other species will we drive into extinction before we follow? These aren't new questions. Nor does Mitchell pose them in any particularly unique way. However, her personal anguish comes through vividly in this string of powerfully evocative essays. As a "new learner" in observing ecological disaster, her concern is one we should all share. Mitchell is almost unique in her descriptives prowess as she tours the planet's ecological "hot spots". She has discovered Charles Darwin, followed some of his travels and drunk deeply of the wisdom he imparted. The Pierean spring, cautions the cliche, scorns the shallow questor, and Mitchell has followed that dictum. In some haste, she turns to those on the sites for further information. They don't fail her as she watches attempts to restore trees in Madagascar, where only ten percent of the original stands survive. She learns that ancient cultures aren't easily cast aside - the Malagasy think the trees will go on forever. They spend more time and energy following the shrinking forest without considering the possibility that the trees may not be there someday. A familiar outlook, reflecting the energy use in our own society, she reminds us. Her study of Darwin leads her to compare his ordeal in bringing natural selection to a skeptical Victorian England to today's outlook about nature's resources. Where the Victorians believed life couldn't change, our society views the Earth's assets as infinite - "it will always be there". Mitchell contests this fallacy with vigour, as she visits sites displaying contrary evidence. Darwin explained how everything undergoes constant change. She uses an ancient example to express her warning. Returning to Canada, paleontologist Phil Currie takes her into the Alberta Badlands to refute the popular notion that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. 'Where are the fossils that should be near the impact time?' is his rhetorical question. His answer is that the dinosaurs, life's most successful lifeform, were lost due to climate change. If they couldn't survive, Mitchell contends, can we? Further north, she sees the effect of climate change in Canada's Arctic. Climate experts know the warming atmosphere will have earlier and more drastic impact here. Already the effect is showing in mild winters, earlier Spring and diminished hunting. The story is repeated endlessly - humans have soiled their nest with overcutting of trees, pumping too much water from limited acquifers, and emissions of gases choking the atmos

This book is an entertaining and often sobering look at environmental degradation that is occurring around the world. Author Alanna Mitchell, who was named the best environmental reporter in the world by the World Conservation Union and the Reuters Foundation, writes about several environmental catastrophes that are taking place including the effects global warming is having on the Arctic, the destruction of wetlands in Jordan where species are going extinct "at the rate of about one a year," and deforestation in Madagascar which, according to Mitchell, "is the world's top extinction hotspot." While some of Mitchell's observations of how our species is destroying the very ecosystems we depend on for life are depressing, other prominent people's views on how destructive our species is are further disturbing. "Leakey, the eminent Kenyan paleoanthropologist and authority on human evolution, is convinced that humans are poised to become 'the greatest catastrophic agent' the world has ever seen, a highly intelligent, highly lethal species set to destroy billions of years of evolutionary advances." Much of Mitchell's book looks at how humans have decimated the planet, but she also writes about some environmental success stories including how Suriname's rainforest, thanks to conservationists, is almost entirely intact. Mitchell, in the chapter "Iceland's New Power" reports on how Iceland is "doing away with fossil fuels in favor of harnessing the mythical energy of hydrogen," and how, in the next couple of decades, they will switch their cars and ships to hydrogen and then won't require any oil. Dancing at the Dead Sea is a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, book, but it is one which needs to be read. If we are to overcome our destructive, short-sighted ways and begin living in harmony with the other species, we need to be fully aware of what we're capable of - both in terms of causing environmental catastrophes and healing the planet. --Glenn Perrett

Having won an international award for environmental journalism, Alanna Mitchell benefited from a study time-off included with the prize. She used her time well. Pursuing research topics close to her heart, she investigated what environmental hotspots can teach us about our past and the future of human evolution. Combining scientific curiosity with enthusiasm for "adventure", her travels have taken her to somewhat remote places - in Jordan, Iceland, Madagascar, the Galapagos and the high Arctic among them. She accompanied numerous specialists in biology, marine ecology, anthropology and other fields, plus local experts, on explorations in their field of study. She meets extraordinary people, confronting delicate and sometimes dangerous situations. She skillfully explains some of the complex climatology and other science for the non-specialist reader. The result is an engaging book, part travelogue, part environmental analysis, within a historical context. With Darwin's journals of his voyage on the Beagle in hand, she traces his footsteps on the Galapagos. There and elsewhere she maintains an internal dialogue with Darwin wondering what he would have made of the ecological destruction she witnesses. Like the local people in Evatraha, Madagascar, who believe that trees "carry their own magic of regeneration", we are destroying precious resources somehow believing that "there will always be another tree". The evidence, Mitchell warns, attests to the opposite. Today, more species are endangered than ever before and some fragile ecosystems are beyond recovery. Reflecting on the five mass extinctions on our planet, she casts some doubt on our "shelf life" in the grand evolutionary scheme of the planet. Unless, that is, we can learn the lesson that nature's resources are finite and we are not in control of the ecosystems. Mitchell draws comparisons between Darwin's contemporary critics of his new theories of evolution and our own society's inability or unwillingness to "understand evolution as it applies to the future". In personal encounters with her travel companions Mitchell has a series of questions to pose. The most fundamental one among them is: "Is the human species suicidal? What could help us pull back from the brink? What can we learn from past experiences?" While most of the findings expose the serious threats to our habitat and even question long term survival, Mitchell finds also encouraging trends. There are signs, she eagerly records, that people are learning lessons and are working together to make a difference. The most spectacular of these positive development she finds in Suriname, where large areas of tropical rainforest are being protected as part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The point is, explains primatologist Russ Mittermeier, for rainforest conservation to be sustainable it has to make economic sense to the local people. "Environmentalists who are innocent of economics have no audience." He's the motor drivi