If the political world is divided between the globalisers and the localisers, so too is environmental thinking. And never more so than in these two compelling tracts.
In Inheritors of the Earth, ecologist Chris Thomas says that we are witnessing a virtual recreation of the single continent that dominated the planet until 175 million years ago. The subtitle to his book invites us to celebrate how “nature is thriving”, rather than buckling under the strain, with extinctions more than compensated for by a sudden upsurge in evolution, driven by globetrotting migrant species.
On the other side of the environmental aisle is Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, a series of touchingly written, but deeply pessimistic essays. Here, former eco-activist Paul Kingsnorth retreats into a world of nativist angst, offering an extreme version of the environmental longing to protect what is local, whether it is an endangered species or a traditional way of living. He mourns “the breaking of the link between people and places”.
Both authors have been on a long road. In 2004, as a young ecologist, Thomas made front-page news for a prediction that up to a third of species would die out due to climate change. He stands by that apocalyptic forecast, but now reckons the plus side is even bigger. While most ecologists bemoan the sixth great extinction in the planet’s history, Thomas says we are also “on the brink of a sixth major genesis of new life”.
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