{"id":6348,"date":"2015-06-11T06:13:26","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T06:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6348"},"modified":"2015-06-11T06:13:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T06:13:26","slug":"the-moth-snowstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/06\/11\/the-moth-snowstorm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moth Snowstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The publisher's blurb<\/a> for Michael McCarthy's\u00a0new book, The Moth Snowstorm: nature and joy<\/em>, begins like this:<\/p>\n

Nature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide - feelings stemming ultimately from our own unbreakable links to nature, which mean that we cannot be fully human if we are separate from it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"isbn9781444792782-detail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That this is a gift is without doubt, but surely not the greatest. \u00a0That has to be our continuing\u00a0existence as a species. \u00a0Despite our significant effort to disrupt nature's support of humanity, we remain part of its nurturing, if rather edgy, web, and it would be well were more people to understand just how embedded and dependent we are. \u00a0This ought to be\u00a0one of the prime goals of any environmental education worthy of the name.<\/p>\n

But, you may say, all that's rather rational, and joy is quite a different sort of response. \u00a0And, you might add, our attempts to be rational about the sustainability problematique<\/em><\/a> have not got us very far. \u00a0Inded, this inadequacy is part of what McCathy's writes about. \u00a0Here's the blurb again:<\/p>\n

... Michael McCarthy ... proposes this joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened, and which, he argues, is inadequately served by the two defences put forward hitherto: sustainable development and the recognition of ecosystem services.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There's a reminder in all this\u00a0of John Foster's After\u00a0Sustainability<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0<\/em>McCarthy's\u00a0book has been well-received. \u00a0Here are a taste of the comments c\/o the publisher:<\/p>\n

\"Impassioned, polemical and personal ... In the autobiographical passages nature is a marvel and a solace. [McCarthy's] descriptions of the night-time clouds of moths \u2013 the moth snowstorms of the title \u2013 that we saw in the days before farming ruined so much natural habitat are unforgettable, and his recollections of boyhood bird-watching on the River Dee Bay a delight ... At its heart, this is a book aiming to persuade those who are broadly sympathetic to think in a different way, and in that it is surely a success \u2013 and a joy\"<\/em> \u00a0\u2013\u00a0Independent<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"McCarthy has for years been the doyen of environmental correspondents ... he is conversant with the hard facts, the political realities and the moral complexities of the conservation world. But he writes also as a man inspired by the beauty, diversity and abundance of the natural world that we are destroying. This combination of worldly wisdom and deeply felt personal experience makes this a highly original and refreshing account of our current predicament\"<\/em> \u2013\u00a0TLS<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I've read the full review in the Spectator<\/a>. \u00a0This is by Mark Cocker, author of Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet<\/a>.<\/em> \u00a0It\u00a0<\/em>begins:<\/p>\n

\"Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain's foremost journalists on the politics of nature. \u00a0Michael McCarthy was the\u00a0Independent\u2019s environmental editor for 15 years, and his new work is really a summation of a career spent pondering the impacts of humankind on the world\u2019s ecosystems.\u00a0The case he lays bare with moving clarity in the opening chapters is compelling stuff. Essentially he argues that the world of wild creatures, plants, trees and whole habitats \u2014 you name it \u2014 is going to Hell in a handcart as a consequence of what he calls \u2018the human project\u2019.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and ends:<\/p>\n

\"Alas, neither joy nor biophilia is making too much head way in altering our relations with nature. One wonders if shock and shame might be necessary for us to undergo a collective change of heart. Either way, McCarthy gives us both barrels in this powerful, heartfelt and compelling book.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After all this, I'm still undecided\u00a0about whether to read this book. \u00a0Not because it's poorly\u00a0written, or that its arguments are unsound \u2013 quite the reverse by the feel\u00a0of it. \u00a0Rather, I wonder whether my time would be better spent either in nature, or agitating on its behalf. \u00a0The former sounds more appealing of course because, as McCarthy says, there's much more joy to be found there. \u00a0But that's the trouble with joy, its appeal can feel\u00a0self-centred, and where would we be if we all pursued it all the time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The publisher's blurb for Michael McCarthy's\u00a0new book, The Moth Snowstorm: nature and joy, begins like this: Nature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}