Volume 56, Number 4 · March 12, 2009
The Ecstasy of John Muir
By Robert Pogue Harrison
A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir
by Donald Worster
Oxford University Press, 535 pp., $34.95
In the West we conceive of tragedy as involving catastrophic downfall. That is one reason why Al Gore has had such astonishing success in drawing our attention to global warming, a development that, if some of his scenarios come true, will provoke a cataclysmic series of events that our civilization may or may not survive. (Another reason is that Gore is a famous politician, and a tragic one at that, hence his crusade captures our attention in ways that a mere scientist's could not hope to rival.) Equally serious environmental threats, such as resource depletion, deforestation, land erosion, species extinction, groundwater contamination, and loss of biodiversity, do not have nearly the same claim on the public imagination, no doubt because the prospect of the worst consequences of global warming induces terror, while the reality of environmental degradation induces demoralization.
Review, 3514 words
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