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The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth

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In "The Fate of Nature" Charles Wohlforth asks the question: Do humans have it in themselves to live within their means? Are we connected to nature or set apart from it? Using Alaska history and culture, Prince William Sound and the Exxon Valdez disaster as a topic for discussion, Wohlforth does a great job of examining the current state of the ocean, the history of the Exxon Valdez and issues surrounding finite resource management. Readers of this book are asked to ponder some very important questions: Are we doomed to use up and destroy the very resources that allow us to live or can we overcome our instincts and arrive at a sane approach to resource management.

The subject matter is complex but Wohlforth does his homework laying out the story and breaking it into understandable pieces. The writing is beautiful and flows well. Wohlforth visits all of the places he writes about, getting to know the people to whom his questions matter the most, fishermen, biologists, native villagers and government officials. Each one has a different spin on the subject matter.

Wohlforth first introduces us to Alaska, describing the natives of Prince William Sound. He tells of the arrival of white people, first the Russians, then European explorers, followed by events like the gold rush, land reform, and then an oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. Wohlforth successfully paints a picture of how Alaska looked during those early days when sea life including otters, salmon and herring were plentiful.

This book examines the psychology of hunting and gathering cultures who manage finite resources in ways we may not have thought about. Wohlforth looks at psychological game theory to better understand why groups of individuals make the choices they do (sometimes in their own self interest and sometimes not).
Much of the last third of the book is devoted to a history of the Exxon Oil Spill and its after-effects. Wohlforth, at the time a "cub reporter" with the Anchorage Daily News revisits the spill twenty years later and rekindles relationships with people he hadn't seen since then. Some of Wohlforth's descriptions of the atmosphere surrounding the Exxon Valdez oil spill are quite haunting (Remember, they were written before the current BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.) Here is an excerpt: "As I spent more time in the sound, in oil, the press conferences and carnival of activity in Valdez seemed increasingly irrelevant and disconnected from reality. Exxon officials always announced numbers--miles of boom, numbers of skimmers, millions of dollars spent--facts that, if they meant anything at all, couldn't be checked....State officials, fishing groups and the like pointed out Exxon's faults, lobbing impotent verbal shells from bunker to bunker. ..The Coast Guard sent a series of admirals to take charge, issuing commanding statements to once and for all get the situation under control....Everyone adopted the metaphor of war. We were an army en route and we needed leadership and aggressiveness to meet the enemy and start taking back ground."

It is with fortunate yet horrific timeliness that this book is published now, given the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Although the book was written well before this current spill, it is full of important information for everyone facing this current disaster and future environmental disasters which may come

Wohlforth does an outstanding job of weaving the community, historical, economic, and scientific issues surrounding Prince William Sound, Alaska into a very readable book that is broadly applicable to issues affecting our environment. By sharing the stories of how people's lives have been changed by the damage to the Sound, particularly from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, he makes the abstract concrete. As we evaluate the long-term consequences in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how to avoid past mistakes and create a more sustainable future. I hope to use it this fall with a group of high school students exploring global citizenship and what it requires of us all.

This book was a really easy read for non-fiction. I enjoyed how the chapters unfolded logically with great transitions. By putting some of our current concerns in perspective gave me a sense of hope. It is good to take a look back and realize that every generation faces challenges and that it takes us all to put things right. Mr. Wohlforth did a wonderful job of highlighting just that. A great read for an environmental philosopher or just plain citizen of the Earth.

As I read this book we were in the midst of the BP oil disaster in gulf. The book evoked a lot of anger in me. Do you believe that a town and a community can be part of the ecosystem? Read what happened to the town of Cordova in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. When the fishing industry collapsed an Exxon executive promised "We will make you whole". Exxon then waged a 20-year court battle to have a $5 billion dollar judgment reduced to a fraction which many have still to collect. Many of the victims died or had moved away during the interval. But greater than the financial impact was the longer lasting and more devastating emotional and psychological damage to the community whose generational lifestyle was suddenly and perhaps permanently altered. By 1996 when the herring supply (that had always been abundant) in Prince William Sound had steadily dwindled. Exxon's predictable response was that there was no evidence that the oil spill caused the decrease in the fish population. Think this isn't going to happen to Louisiana and the Gulf States? BP's response thus far has eerily paralleled what happened in Alaska.

That tirade aside, author Charles Wohlforth does a terrific job of presenting the question of whether mankind is capable of destroying or saving the planet. I have heard people and politicians claim that it is man's arrogance to think that mankind is capable of changing or even saving the environment. Wohlforth's perspective is that we can, we must and it is even in our nature to do so because we are connected to the ecosystem. Wonderfully written and assuredly optimistic about the future.