best american science and nature writing 2010 excerpt

8/7/2019 Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010 Excerpt

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The Best American Science

and Nature Writing2010

Edited and with an Introduction

byFreeman Dyson

Tim Folger, Series Editor

A Mariner Original

houghton mifflin harcourt

boston * new york 2010


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Copyright 2010 by Houghton Miin Harcourt Publishing CompanyIntroduction copyright 2010 by Freeman Dyson

all rights reserved

The Best American Science and Nature Writingis a trademark o Houghton Miin Har-court Publishing Company. The Best American Series is a registered trademark oHoughton Miin Harcourt Publishing Company.

No part o this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any orm or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any inor-mation storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission o the copy-right owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by ederal copyright law.

With the exception o nonproft transcription in Braille, Houghton Miin Har-court is not authorized to grant permission or urther uses o copyrighted selec-

tions reprinted in this book without the permission o their owners. Permissionmust be obtained rom the individual copyright owners identifed herein. Addressrequests or permission to make copies o Houghton Miin Harcourt material toPermissions, Houghton Miin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park AvenueSouth, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

issn 1530-1508

isbn 978-0-547-32784-6

Printed in the United States o America

doc 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Alpha Accipiter by Gustave Axelson. First published in Minnesota Conserva-tion Volunteer, March/April 2009. Copyright 2009 by Minnesota Department oNatural Resources. Reprinted by permission oMinnesota Conservation Volunteer, bi-monthly magazine o the Department o Natural Resources.

Hearth Surgery by Burkhard Bilger. Originally published in The New Yorker, De-cember 21 & 28, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Burkhard Bilger. Reprinted by permis-sion o Burkhard Bilger.

India, Enlightened by George Black. Originally published in OnEarth, Sum-mer 2009. Copyright 2009 by George Black. Reprinted by permission o DouglasBarasch, editor in chie, OnEarthmagazine.

Purpose-Driven Lie by Brian Boyd. Originally published in The AmericanScholar, Spring 2009. Copyright 2009 by Brian Boyd. Reprinted by permission oGeorges Borchardt, Inc.

Still Blue by Kenneth Brower. First published in National Geographic, March2009. Copyright 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permissiono the National Geographic Society.

All You Can Eat by Jim Carrier. First published in Orion, March/April 2009.Copyright 2009 by Jim Carrier. Reprinted by permission o Jim Carrier.Brain Games by John Colapinto. First published in The New Yorker, May 11,


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2009. Copyright 2009 by John Colapinto. Reprinted by permission o The NewYorker.

The Believer by Andrew Corsello. First published in GQ, February 2009. Copy-right 2009 by Andrew Corsello. Reprinted by permission o Andrew Corsello.

Cosmic Vision by Timothy Ferris. First published in National Geographic, July2009. Copyright 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permissiono the National Geographic Society.

Seeking New Earths by Timothy Ferris. First published in National Geographic,December 2009. Copyright 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted bypermission o the National Geographic Society.

The Superior Civilization by Tim Flannery. First published in The New York Re-view of Books, February 26, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Tim Flannery. Reprinted bypermission o Tim Flannery.

The Lazarus Eect rom Hope for Animals and Their World, by Jane Goodall with

Thane Maynard and Gail Hudson. First published in Discover, September 2009.Copyright 2009 by Jane Goodall and Thane Maynard. By permission o GrandCentral Publishing.

The Monkey and the Fish by Philip Gourevitch. First published in The NewYorker, December 21 & 28, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Philip Gourevitch. Reprintedby permission.

The Catastrophist by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker, June29, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission o Eliza-beth Kolbert.

The Sixth Extinction? by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker,May 25, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission oElizabeth Kolbert.

Scraping Bottom by Robert Kunzig. First published in National Geographic,March 2009. Copyright 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by per-mission o the National Geographic Society.

Dont! by Jonah Lehrer. First published in The New Yorker, May 18, 2009. Copy-right 2009 by Jonah Lehrer. Reprinted by permission o Jonah Lehrer.

Graze Anatomy by Richard Manning. First published in OnEarth, Spring 2009.Copyright 2009 byOnEarth. Reprinted by permission o Richard Manning.

Out o the Past by Kathleen McGowan. First published inDiscover, July/August2009. Copyright 2009 by Kathleen McGowan. Reprinted by permission o the au-thor.

Green Giant by Evan Osnos. First published in The New Yorker, December 21 &28, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Evan Osnos. Reprinted by permission o The NewYorker.

Darwins First Clues by David Quammen. First published in National Geographic,February 2009. Copyright 2009 by David Quammen. Reprinted by permission oDavid Quammen.

Modern Darwins by Matt Ridley. First published in National Geographic, Febru-

ary 2009. Copyright 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permis-sion o the National Geographic Society.A Formula or Disaster by Felix Salmon. Originally published in WiredMaga-


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zine, March 2009. Copyright 2009 by Felix Salmon. Reprinted by permission othe author.

A Lie o Its Own by Michael Specter. First published in The New Yorker, Septem-ber 28, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Michael Specter. Reprinted by permission oThe

New Yorker.Flight o the Kuaka by Don Stap. First published in Living Bird, Autumn 2009.

Copyright 2009 by Don Stap. Reprinted by permission o the author.Not So Silent Spring by Dawn Stover. First published in Conservation Magazine,

JanuaryMarch 2009. Copyright 2009 by Dawn Stover. Reprinted by permissiono the author.

The Missions o Astronomy by Steven Weinberg. First published in The NewYork Review of Books, October 22, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Steven Weinberg. Re-printed by permission o Steven Weinberg.

One Giant Leap to Nowhere by Tom Wole. First published in The New York

Times, July 19, 2009. Copyright 2009 by Tom Wole. Reprinted by permission othe author.


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Contents

Foreword xi

Introduction byFreeman Dyson xv

Part One: Visions o Space

andrew corsello. The Believer 3rom GQ

tom wolfe. One Giant Leap to Nowhere 16rom TheNew York Times

steven weinberg. The Missions of Astronomy 23rom The New York Review of Books

timothy ferris. Cosmic Vision 32rom National Geographic

timothy ferris. Seeking New Earths 40rom National Geographic

Part Two: Neurology Displacing Molecular Biology

jonah lehrer. Dont! 47rom The New Yorker

kathleen mcgowan. Out of the Past 61romDiscover

john colapinto.Brain Games 73rom The New Yorker


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viii Contents

Part Three: Natural Beauty

gustave axelson. The Alpha Accipiter 99rom Minnesota Conservation Volunteer

don stap. Flight of the Kuaka 106rom Living Bird

matt ridley. Modern Darwins 114rom National Geographic

tim flannery. The Superior Civilization 122rom The New York Review of Books

kenneth brower. Still Blue 133rom National Geographic

jane goodall. The Lazarus Effect 144romDiscover

david quammen. Darwins First Clues 149rom National Geographic

Part Four: The Environment: Gloom and Doom

j im c arrier. All You Can Eat 161rom Orion

felix salmon. A Formula for Disaster 172rom Wired

dawn stover. Not So Silent Spring 182rom Conservation Magazine

elizabeth kolbert. The Catastrophist 188rom The New Yorker

elizabeth kolbert. The Sixth Extinction? 202rom The New Yorker

Part Five: The Environment: Small Blessings

robert kunzig. Scraping Bottom 229rom National Geographic


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Contents ix

michael specter. A Life of Its Own 239rom The New Yorker

brian boyd. Purpose-Driven Life 259rom The American Scholar

philip gourevitch. The Monkey and the Fish 272rom The New Yorker

Part Six: The Environment: Big Blessings

richard manning. Graze Anatomy 301rom OnEarth

burkhard bilger. Hearth Surgery 311rom The New Yorker

evan osnos. Green Giant 334rom The New Yorker

george black. India, Enlightened 352rom OnEarth

Contributors Notes 377

Other Notable Science and Nature Writing o 2009 383


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Foreword

Remember the way the uture was supposed to be? The pathto tomorrow once seemed so clear, its trajectory limned or theentire world to see in billowing plumes o rocket exhaust in theblue sky over Cape Canaveral. We would become, President Ken-nedy declared in 1962, a spacearing nation, destined even obli-gated to explore what he called this new ocean. I had barelyentered grade school at the time, but I vividly remember watchingthe launches o the Mercury and Gemini missions and the equallydramatic splashdowns in those days all manned American space-crat landed in the ocean, their descent slowed by enormousorange-and-white-striped parachutes. By the late 1960s, astro-nauts and cosmonauts had walked in space; the frst moonlanding was at hand. We had come so ar so quickly: less than sixty

years separated the Wright brothers frst ight and John Glennssolo orbit o Earth inFriendship 7, his closet-size Mercury capsule.No doubt wed make even greater leaps in the next sixty years. Bythe year 2000? A spinning, spoked space station staed by hun-dreds was a given; travel to the moon routine; ootprints on the redsand o Mars o course. To my second-grade mind it all seemedcloser and more imaginable than my own adulthood.

The space odyssey that once seemed so inevitable never came to

pass. Today, more than orty years ater Neil Armstrong steppedonto the moon, were unable to ollow him there. The thirty-six-story-tall Saturn rockets that made such trips possible no longer


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xii Foreword

exist, and nothing o comparable power has replaced them. Fornow perhaps quite a long now were confned to orbiting Earth.Mars, the moons o Jupiter and Saturn, and destinations beyond

will have to wait or their frst human visitors. My eight-year-old selwould have been sorely disappointed. He certainly didnt get theuture he expected. On the other hand, he would have been aston-ished to learn that he would one day own a computer ar morepowerul than the ones carried aboard the Apollo spacecrat.

Science has a seemingly bottomless capacity to astonish, a qual-ity unmatched, I think, by any other human endeavor. It thrives onunanticipated results and anomalous data. Some months ago, be-

ore I knew that Freeman Dyson would be the guest editor or thisanthology, I had the pleas ure o interviewing him while workingon an assignment orDiscover. Toward the end o our conversationI asked i any single discovery had most surprised him during hislong career. (He will turn eighty-seven in December 2010.)

Everything has been surprising, he said. Science is just organ-ized unpredictability. I it were predictable it wouldnt be science.Everywhere you look . . . I didnt expect personal computers. Like

you, I thought by now we would be tramping around on Mars withheavy boots. I did not oresee that wed be sending unmanned in-struments with huge bandwidth into space. Its all been a surprisein a way. Its even more true in biology. I had no conception o theact that we would actually read genomes the way were doing itnow. I remember when it took a year to sequence one protein. Nowits done in a ew seconds. I would say theres almost nothing in sci-ence that Ive predicted correctly. I hope it will continue that way; Ithink its very likely it will. Really important things will happen in

the next fty years that nobody has imagined.Tom Wole, one o the con tributors to this years anthology,

would argue that we should resume our pursuit o the uture weimagined orty years ago. In One Giant Leap to Nowhere, he de-cries the premature end o the greatest, grandest . . . quest in thehistory o the world: Americas manned space program. Even i

you dont agree with Wole that humanity must travel to the stars,its impossible ater reading his spirited and witty story not to won-

der what the world would have been like today i the Apollo mis-sions to the moon had marked the beginning rather than the endo a dream.


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Foreword xiii

While a large part o me yearns to embrace Woles vision, mysensible side yields to the arguments Steven Weinberg makes inThe Missions o Astronomy. Weinberg is an eminent physicist; he

won a Nobel Prize or his work in describing some o the unda-mental orces o the universe. He is also a passionate and eloquentessayist. In these pages he writes that manned missions to other

worlds would hinder rather than advance science. But his remark-able article covers a great deal more than the merits o mannedspace exploration, ranging graceully rom Socrates to sextants tothe Standard Model o physics.

Well probably never reach the stars our astest existing space

probes would need tens o thousands o years to get to the nearestone but we may well be close to discovering whether lie existselsewhere in the universe. To date astronomers have ound morethan 370 planets orbiting other stars. None o those exoplanets re-semble Earth most are gassy giants, ar bigger than Jupiter. Butmost astronomers believe that Earthlike planets must be airly com-mon in our galaxy. In Seeking New Earths, Timothy Ferris writesabout the search or planets like our own and how a new genera-tion o telescopes may be able to fnd signs o lie on some othem.

The remaining stories in this collection are all about one planet,which is acing challenges that no one conceived o orty years ago.Elizabeth Kolbert, who edited this anthology last year, describes adangerous organism that threatens all lie on Earth: us. Several ar-ticles collected here show how we might yet reverse some o the

worst aspects o the catastrophes weve set in motion. Freeman Dy-son has much more to say about that in the next ew pages, but I

cant help wondering which o these stories will, decades rom now,turn out to have accurately glimpsed our uture and which will berelegated to the what-might-have-beens.

I hope that readers, writers, and editors will nominate their avor-ite articles or next years anthology at http://timolger.net/orums. The criteria or submissions and deadlines, and the ad-dress to which entries should be sent, can be ound in the news

and announcements orum on my website. Once again this yearIm oering an incentive to readers to scour the nation in searcho good science and nature writing: send me an article that I


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xiv Foreword

havent ound, and i the article makes it into the anthology, Illmail you a ree copy o next years edition, signed by the guest edi-tor. Ill even sign it as well, which will augment its value immeasur-

ably. (A true statement, by the way, there being no measurable di-erence between copies signed by me and those unsigned.) I alsoencourage readers to use the orums to leave eedback about thecollection and to discuss all things scientifc. The best way or pub-lications to guarantee that their articles are considered or inclu-sion in the anthology is to place me on their subscription list, usingthe address posted in the news and announcements section o theorums.

Years ago, at about the same time that I was watching the adven-tures o the frst astronauts, I read a ascinating article about Dy-son Spheres. (Look them up; you wont be disappointed.) I neverthought I would have a chance to work, however briey, with thelegendary physicist who came up with the idea. A manned Marslanding seemed ar more likely. Its a bit o unpredictability thatIm extremely grateul or. Once again this year Im indebted to

Amanda Cook and Meagan Stacey at Houghton Miin. And Ihope to remain indebted or many years to come to my beauteous

wie, Anne Nolan.

tim folger


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Introduction

The job of editing this collection o papers was made easy orme by Tim Folger, who did the hard work o scanning the entirescientifc periodical literature or the year 2009 to select 122 arti-cles that he ound interesting. My job was only to read his 122 arti-cles, make the fnal choice o 28 to put in the book, and write theintroduction to explain my choices. I am grateul to Tim or doingthe lions share o the work. Unortunately, the raction o Ameri-can magazines that publish science writing is small. The science

writing that is published mostly consists o brie news items ratherthan thoughtul essays. Not many years ago, John McPhee used topublish in The New Yorkerwonderul pieces, twenty or thirty pageslong, giving readers a deep understanding o geological science.Such pieces no longer appear, in The New Yorkeror anywhere else.

Science writing has become brieer, sparser, and more superfcial.The title o this volume gives equal weight to science and nature.In act, it is one third science and two thirds nature. Nature is nowashionable among readers and publishers o magazines. Science isunashionable.

I have divided the book into six parts, each with a commontheme. The frst two parts are concerned with science, the last our

with nature. The two sciences that receive serious attention are as-

tronomy and neurology. Both are rightly valued by the public ashaving some important connection with human destiny. Part Onedeals with astronomy, and its central theme is proclaimed in Steven


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xvi Introduction

Weinbergs article, The Missions o Astronomy. Weinberg paintsin our pages a glowing picture o the history o astronomy, the sci-ence that or 2,500 years led mankind to a true understanding o

the way the universe works. From the beginning, instruments werethe key to understanding. The frst instrument was the gnomon, asimple vertical post whose shadow allowed the Babylonians and theGreeks to measure time and angle with some precision. The legacyo Babylonian mathematics still survives in the sixty-old ratios oour units o time, hours, minutes, and seconds.

Ater the gnomon came the sundial, the telescope, the chro-nometer, the computer, and the spacecrat. Now we are living in a

golden age o astronomy, when or the frst time our instrumentsgive us a clear view o the entire universe, out in space to the re-motest galaxies, back in time all the way to the beginning. Our in-struments, telescopes on tops o mountains and on spacecrat inorbit, are increasing their capabilities by leaps and bounds as ourdata-handling skills improve. It takes us only about ten years tobuild a new generation o instruments that give us radically sharperand deeper views o everything in the sky. Weinberg ends his articleby contrasting this ongoing triumph o scientifc instruments withthe abject ailure o the American program o manned missions inspace. Our unmanned missions to explore the planets and starsand galaxies have made us truly at home in the universe, while ourmanned missions ater the Apollo program have been scientifcallyruitless. Forty years ater Apollo, the manned program is still stuckaimlessly in low orbit around Earth while politicians debate what itshould try to do next.

The remaining articles in Part One discuss manned and un-

manned activities separately. Andrew Corsello sees a bright utureor private manned ventures in space, while Tom Wole explainshow our public manned ventures ailed. Timothy Ferriss articlesdescribe two vivid scenes rom the world o modern astronomy,one using instruments on the ground and the other using un-manned instruments in space. All three authors con frm Wein-bergs judgment. I you want humans in space, let them go upthere to enjoy a human adventure, preerably at their own expense,

and do not pretend that they are doing science. I you want to doserious science, keep the humans on the ground and send instru-ments to do the exploring, a job they can do tirelessly, efciently,and much more cheaply.


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Introduction xvii

The view o space activities in Part One is a purely American one.The whole book suers rom the same limitation. By selecting only

American writing, we have narrowed the ocus o the collection,

ignoring more than hal o the worlds thinking and dreaming. Wehave missed a great opportunity to broaden our contacts with therest o the world. I hal o the articles in this book had been trans-lated rom French or Russian or Arabic or Chinese, its value orour understanding o the world would have been ar greater. Forpractical and economic reasons, it might be difcult to preparetimely translations or an annual publication. But we could at leasthave included articles rom the many countries around the world

that publish magazines in English.The Americans writing in this book about space all tell us thatunmanned exploration is a success and manned exploration is aailure. I was lucky to be exposed to a dierent view when I was in-

vited to Baikonur in Kazakhstan to observe a Russian space launch.In March 2009, Charles Simonyi took o or his second trip in aSoyuz launcher to spend two weeks on the International Space Sta-tion. To qualiy as a crew member on the ISS, he had spent threemonths at the Russian cosmonaut training center near Moscow. Mydaughter Esther went through the same training and was at Bai-konur as his backup, ready to y in case he came down with swineu or broke a leg. Charles did not get the u or break a leg, andEsther did not y, but my wie and I were there or the launch andgot a glimpse o the Russian space culture, which is very dierentrom ours.

American space culture is dominated by the tradition o Apollo.President Kennedy proclaimed the mission as Get a man to the

moon and back within ten years, and so it was done. Ater that,there were fve more missions, but the decision to terminate theprogram had already been made. The program was unsustainableor longer than ten years. It was aordable as a ten-year eort butnot as a permanent commitment. Ater Apollo, various other mis-sions, manned and unmanned, were undertaken, always with atime scale o one or two decades. American space culture thinks indecades. Every commitment is or a couple o decades at most. A

job that cannot be done in a couple o decades is not consideredpractical.

Russian space culture thinks in centuries. Baikonur, the originalhome o the Soviet space program, now belongs to Kazakhstan, but


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xviii Introduction

Russia rents it rom Kazakhstan on a hundred-year lease, as Britainin the old days rented Hong Kong rom China. The lease still haseighty years to run, and Baikonur eels like a Russian town. Histori-

cal relics o Russian space activities are careully preserved and dis-played in museums. The three patron saints are the schoolteacherKonstantin Tsiolkovsky, who worked out the mathematics o inter-planetary rocketry in the nineteenth century; the engineer SergeiKorolev, who built the frst orbiting spacecrat; and the cosmonaut

Yuri Gagarin, who frst orbited Earth. Korolev and Gagarin livedside by side in Baikonur in simple homes, which are open to thepublic. In a public square is a ull-scale model o the Soyuz launcher

that Korolev designed. It is a simple, rugged design and haschanged very little since he designed it. It has the best saety rec-ord o all existing launchers or human passengers. The Russianspace culture says, I it works, why change it?

The day o Charles Simonyis launch was rainy and windy. I thelaunch had been in Florida in such oul weather, it would certainlyhave been postponed. At Baikonur, it went up within a second othe planned time. The launch was a public ceremony in which the

whole town participated. The cosmonauts paraded through thetown at the head o a procession o dignitaries including an Ortho-dox priest, with townspeople carrying umbrellas on either side. Inthe main square, the mayor was waiting with other dignitaries. Thecosmonauts stood acing the mayor and ormally announced thatthey were ready to y. Then, ater a couple o speeches, they pro-ceeded to the launch site. The whole perormance had the ambi-ence o a religious sacrament rather than a scientifc mission. InRussia you do not go into space to do science. You go into space

because it is a part o human destiny. To be a cosmonaut is a voca-tion rather than a proession. Tsiolkovsky said that Earth is ourcradle, and we will not always stay in the cradle. It may take us a ewcenturies to get to the planets, but we are on our way. We will keepgoing, no matter how long it takes.

The Russian view o the International Space Station is also di-erent rom the American view. The biggest museum in Baikonurcontains a ull-scale model o the ISS and also a ull-scale model o

the Mir space station, which the Russians had built twenty yearsearlier. The Mir was the frst space station built or long-durationhuman occupation. When you look at the two space stations, you


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Introduction xix

can see that the ISS is an enlarged version o the Mir. The Russiansare proud that they built the essential parts o the ISS as well as theMir. The ISS is a part o their culture. They welcome American pas-

sengers, who help to pay or it, but they still eel that they own it.American scientists and space experts mostly consider the ISS tobe an embarrassment, a costly enterprise with little sci entifc orcommercial value. They regret our involvement with the ISS andlook orward to extricating ourselves as soon as our internationalcommitments to it are ulflled. To an American visitor, it comes asa surprise to see the ISS enshrined at Baikonur together with theMir, two emblems o national pride.

I learned at Baikonur that the American space culture as it isportrayed in this book is only hal o the truth. The Russian spaceculture is the other hal. I you think as Americans do, on a timescale o decades, then unmanned missions succeed magnifcentlyand manned missions ail miserably. Even the grandest unmannedmissions, such as the Cassini mission to Saturn, take only one dec-ade to build and another decade to y. The grandest manned mis-sion, the Apollo moon landing, ends ater a decade and leaves theastronauts no way ahead. The decade time scale is undamentallyright or unmanned missions and wrong or manned missions. I

you think as Russians do, on a time scale o centuries, then the situ-ation is reversed. Russian space-science activities have ailed toachieve much because they did not concentrate their attention onimmediate scientifc objectives. Russian manned-mission activities,driven not by science but by a belie in human destiny, keep mov-ing quietly orward. There is room or both cultures in our uture.Space is big enough or both.

Part Two contains three articles about neurology, the science ohuman brains. For the last fty years, most popular writing aboutbiology was concerned with molecular biology, the study o thechemical constituents o lie. This tradition began soon ater thediscovery o the double helix by Francis Crick and James Watson in1953 and rose to a brilliant climax with the publication o Watsonsbook The Double Helixin 1968. For fty years, popular writings de-

scribed how biologists explore genes and genomes and how genet-icists identiy the molecular machinery that guides the develop-ment o an egg into a chicken. For fty years, the prog ress o


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xx Introduction

molecular biology was driven by the invention o marvelous newtools, allowing the explorers to handle and dissect individual mol-ecules with ever-increasing precision. But in recent years the tools

have become too complicated and the ideas too specialized to beeasily explained. Molecular biology has become a mature science

with many subdivisions, each with its own jargon. The readers andwriters o popular science are moving rom molecular biology toneurology.

Neurology is now entering its golden age, with new tools answer-ing simple questions that ordinary readers can understand. Thethree articles in Part Two describe three basic questions that neu-

rologists are on their way to answering. How do our brains give usrational control over our actions? How do our brains give us ratio-nal control over our memories? How do our brains give us rationalcontrol over our sensations o physical pain? The tools o neurol-ogy are beginning to come to grips with the working o the brain asan organ o rational control. Each o the questions is not only im-portant scientifcally but also directly illuminates our personal ex-periences o thinking and deciding. Within the next fty years, thetools o neurology will probably bring us a deep insight into ourown thought processes, with all the good and evil consequencesthat such insight may bring. The three stories, about real people

with real problems, give us a oretaste o the eects o deeper in-sight on our lives. The stories are told with a minimum o scientifc

jargon and a maximum o human sympathy.

The longest section is Part Three, with seven articles describingwonders o nature. Here the quality o the writing is as important

as the subject matter. The pieces are written or nature lovers, notscience lovers. There are many other nature articles o equal qual-ity in the thick pile that I discarded. In making my choices, I triedto choose pieces that were as dierent as possible rom one an-other. I chose some that are outstanding in style and some that areoutstanding in subject matter. But I have to coness that or me,The Flight o the Kuaka is in a class by itsel. It is a celebration onatures glory, going beyond science and beyond poetry.

Parts Four, Five, and Six deal with the environment, the most ash-ionable subject o popular writing in recent years. Environmental-


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Introduction xxi

ism has now replaced Marxism as the leading secular religion oour age. Environmentalism as a religious movement, with a mysti-cal reverence or nature and a code o ethics based on responsible

human stewardship o the planet, is already strong and is likely togrow stronger. That is the main reason why I am optimistic aboutthe uture. Environmentalism doesnt have much to do with sci-ence. Scientists and nonscientists can fght or the environment

with equal passion and equal eectiveness. I am proud to stand with my nonscientist colleagues as a riend o the environment,even when we disagree about the details. The act that we all sharethe ethics o environmentalism, striving to step lightly on the Earth

and preserve living space or our ellow creatures, is one o themost hopeul eatures o our present situation. Each o the writersin this collection shares those ethics in one way or another.

I divided the articles about the environment into three parts:gloom and doom, small blessings, and big blessings, to emphasizethe ways in which their authors disagree. Everyone agrees that hu-man activities are having a huge impact on the environment andthat the impact could be substantially reduced by various remedialactions. The articles in these three parts emphasize dierent as-pects o the problem. The orthodox belie o the majority o cli-mate experts is climate alarmism. Climate alarmists say that cli-mate change is mainly caused by humans burning o ossil uelsand that our present patterns o uel burning are already leadingus to disaster. Elizabeth Kolberts two pieces in Part Four are strongstatements o the climate-alarmist position. The articles in Part Fivedo not concern themselves with global climate; they describe localenvironmental problems that may have local remedies. The Mon-

key and the Fish gives us a wonderully vivid picture o an in-tractable environmental situation in Mozambique. Finally, Part Sixpays attention to climate problems but asks new questions thatthe orthodox climate alarmists have ignored. Richard Manningspiece, Graze Anatomy, is to me the most illuminating o the

whole collection.Beore I discuss Mannings piece in detail, I must frst declare

my own interest in climate and the environment. Thirty years ago,

it was already clear that ossil-uel burning would cause climatechange and that this was an important problem. It was also clearthat ossil-uel burning would have large eects on the growth o


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xxii Introduction

vegetation. Carbon dioxide is an excellent ertilizer or agriculturalcrops and or natural orests. Commercial ruit growers were en-riching the air in greenhouses with carbon dioxide in order to ac-

celerate the growth o ruit. From the experience o greenhousegrowers, we can calculate that the carbon dioxide put into the at-mosphere by ossil-uel burning has increased the worldwide yieldo agricultural crop plants by roughly 15 percent in the last fty

years. In addition, when there is more carbon dioxide in the atmo-sphere, plants will put more growth into roots and less into above-ground stems and leaves. These eects o carbon dioxide on vege-tation might in turn cause large eects on topsoil. Ater they decay,

roots add carbon to the soil, while stems and leaves mostly returncarbon to the atmosphere. The plowing o felds by armers all overthe world then exposes topsoil to the air and increases the loss ocarbon rom soil to atmosphere. The ows o carbon among soiland vegetation and atmosphere may be as important as the owsbetween ossil uels and atmosphere.

Thirty years ago, the place where all these ecological eects ouel burning were studied was the Oak Ridge National Laboratoryin Tennessee. I went to Oak Ridge to work as a consultant, and Ilistened to the experts. They understood uid dynamics and cli-mate modeling, but they also knew a lot about orestry and soil sci-ence, agriculture and ecology. I learned two basic acts rom them.First, the natural environment contains fve reservoirs o carbon oroughly equal size: ossil uels, the atmosphere, the upper level othe ocean, land vegetation, and topsoil. Second, these fve reser-

voirs are tightly coupled together. Anything we do to change anyone o them has important eects on all o them. The carbon that

we add to the atmosphere by burning ossil uels has major eectson the growth o ood crops and orests. The carbon that we sub-tract rom the atmosphere by building up topsoil has major eectson climate.

The orthodox climate-alarmist view describes the problem o cli-mate change as involving only two reservoirs o carbon, ossil uelsand the atmosphere, ignoring the other three. This simplifcationo the problem makes predictions seem more certain and more

dire. Nothing is said about the large ertilizing eects o carbon inthe atmosphere and in topsoil upon ood crops. Nothing is saidabout the large uxes o carbon into the atmosphere caused by the


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Introduction xxiii

plowing o soil. For reasons that are not clear to me, the public de-bate about the environment is dominated by climate scientists whoare expert in uid dynamics, while experts in soil and land man-

agement remain silent. The problems o climate change becomemuch more tractable i we look at them through a broader lens.

Having lived or thirty years with these unorthodox opinionsabout the climate-change debate, I was amazed and delighted toread Mannings article. Here is a story about two armers in Min-nesota who actually make a living by raising bee on grass insteado on eedlots. This is just what I have been hoping or the lastthirty years. The prevailing method o raising bee is to keep the

animals in eedlots and to grow corn and soybeans to eed them.This method is prevalent partly because it is proftable and partlybecause it is subsidized by the United States government. It hasat least six seriously harmul eects on the environment. First, itrequires massive amounts o ertilizer to keep the corn growing,and the ertilizer carried o by rainwater causes excessive growtho green algae in rivers and lakes, using up the oxygen in the waterand fnally killing fsh in the Gul o Mexico. Second, it decreasesthe ability o the land to retain water and increases the requencyo serious ooding. Third, it increases the erosion o topsoil.Fourth, it destroys habitat or birds and other wildlie. Fith, itraises the price o corn or poor countries that need corn to eedhumans. Sixth, it is cruel to the animals and creates a stinking at-mosphere or human arm workers and their neighbors. When theMinnesota armers switch rom eedlots to grass, all six environ-mental insults disappear. The grass is efciently ertilized by theanimals, the rainwater mostly stays in the ground instead o run-

ning o, and the erosion is reduced to zero.These two armers are not the only ones. It turns out that many

others in dierent parts o the country are doing similar things.This might be a growing trend, and it might have a major eect onthe environment. Raising bee on grass without plowing means re-

versing the ow o carbon out o the soil into the atmosphere. Itmeans pushing big quantities o carbon down into the roots o thegrass and turning a substantial raction o it into topsoil. Instead o

shouting, Stop burning coal! the climate alarmists might shout,Stop plowing soil! The eects on climate o plowing less soilmight be as large as the eects o burning less coal, while the eco-


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xxiv Introduction

nomic costs might be smaller and the ancillary ecological beneftsmight be greater.

For a armer, it is not enough to be environmentally virtuous. A

arm must be fnancially proftable, and it must be economical inits use o land. Manning brings us the splendid news that the arm-ers who switched rom eedlots to grass are doing well. On the aver-age, they are making net profts about eight times larger than thegovernment subsidies that they received or their eedlots. Sincethe quality o their bee is superior, they have no difculty selling itor good prices to ood stores and restaurants. In addition, they areusing less land in grass than they used or the same number o ani-

mals in eedlots. They can raise roughly two steer per acre on grassinstead o one steer per acre on corn and eedlot.We do not know whether the switch rom eedlot to grass could

be practical or a majority o Midwestern armers. Farming on grassrequires skills and motivation that an average armer may not pos-sess. It is at least possible that a massive switch to grass arming maybe practical and proftable, with or without a change in govern-ment subsidies. Until we explore these questions, we cannot saythat reducing consumption o coal is the only remedy or climatechange. Richard Manning estimates that switching the entire Amer-ican Midwest rom eedlot to grass would remove rom the atmo-sphere to topsoil about one quarter o the total greenhouse emis-sions o the United States. Raising bee on grass will not solve allour environmental problems, but it might give us a powerul pushin the right direction. Even the reddest-blooded Americans do notlive on bee alone. Additional environmental ben efts will comerom raising pigs and chickens or vegetable crops on unplowed

land in other parts o the country.I fnd another eature o Mannings story attractive. The key to

the efcient raising o bee on grass is low-tech rather than high-tech. No genetic engineering or other controversial biotechnologyis required. The key technical innovation is polywire, a simple andcheap electric-encing material. Polywire makes it possible to movethe animals requently rom place to place by moving ences, sothat they eat the grass more uniormly. This simple technology will

be easily adaptable to big and small arms and to rich and poorcountries. It will not raise religious or ideological opposition. I alsofnd attractive the act that the switch to grass came rom the bot-


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Introduction xxv

tom up and not rom the top down. Social changes that come romthe bottom up are usually more solid and more durable. In theeyes o most ordinary citizens, Minnesota armers have more cred-

ibility than proessors o economics.The last two stories in Part Six are staged in India and China.

They reinorce the evidence that Mannings story brings rom Min-nesota. India and China are now the center o gravity o the worldspopulation and o the worlds environmental problems. The ateo the planet, rom an ecological point o view, is being decided byIndia and China and not by the United States. These two stories,one in India and one in China, bring us good news. Neither India

nor China is about to stop burning coal, but both countries are tak-ing environmental problems seriously. Each in its own way is put-ting big eorts into the healing o natures wounds. Indian en-trepreneurs and Chinese government ofcials are like Minnesotaarmers. When they see something obviously wrong, they are will-ing to take responsibility and work hard to put it right. They take along view o the uture and try to solve only one problem at a time.They do not despair. They are happy i they leave their piece o theplanet a little healthier than they ound it. The lesson that I learnrom these stories is that our uture is in good hands.

freeman dyson

best american science and nature writing 2010 excerpt

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