Alan Weisman has found an all-world cast of scientists, engineers and environmentalists who have dreamed big and worked passionately to repair some of the world’s wrecked ecosystems and also to develop processes that, for example, use far less energy than we get from oil.
Take Azzam Alwash, for example. An engineer, he lamented destruction of thousands of square miles of marshes in Iraq that date to Biblical times and were his birthplace. Birds, fish and other animals flourished in the wetlands until Saddam Hussein drained them to flush out enemies to his regime.
The wetlands in the world’s hottest region were thought beyond resurrection.
Weisman writes that to Alwash, however, “impossible often masks a lack of imagination.” He marshaled the resources to restore much of the wetlands and a miracle followed: wildlife returned..
Some of Weisman’s chapters will make readers wish they had paid more attention in high school science and chemistry classes.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made astonishing progress in developing commercial-scale fusion energy that could produce great quantities of clean energy. Such breakthroughs are critical on a planet now dependent on fossil fuels, which produce carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere.
To those who scoff at mentions of human-caused environmental catastrophe as a hoax or fake news, consider this: Weisman’s bibliography runs 74 pages. And the type is small. He spent several years researching and reporting on this book and visited a dozen countries.
“As long as we let them keep on, there is hope,” writes Weisman, referring to the people he writes about in this book.
News also has overtaken the publication of this book. President Trump’s threats to withhold money from Harvard and other universities would have a drastic effect because so many of the world’s brightest students come to study at American research universities, contributing to the steady stream of American scientific breakthroughs.
Weisman set out to find inspirational people doing extraordinary work to save the planet.
He found them and their work can save us from writing a catastrophic next chapter for our earth.
Global warming skeptics often assert that some of the people Weisman calls visionaries are misguided nature enthusiasts, but what could we lose in making the planet cleaner and greener?
Nothing, and our children and grandchildren will be grateful.
‘Hope Dies Last’ by Alan Weisman is out now, via Dutton.
