Troublemakers by Kevin Dunion, Edinburgh University Press, 拢15.99, ISBN 0748617817
Crimes Against Nature by Karl Jacoby, University of California Press, $21.95/拢14.95, ISBN 0520239091
The Silver Lining: The benefits of natural disasters by Seth Reice, Princeton, $15.95/拢10.95, ISBN0691113688 Reviewed by Maggie McDonald
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HOW big is the environment? The whole world? Or your backyard? Or, as Kevin Dunion sees it, both? He takes the slogan 鈥渁ct local, think global鈥� very seriously in his account of Scottish environmental injustices in Troublemakers.
The greedy importers of garbage to fill the dumps that plague Scottish neighbourhoods are pursuing profit across national boundaries. Roads are undermined by coal extraction, beaches are polluted 鈥� and all this can be traced back to international corporate pressures. So for a guide on how to kick up a stink about a stink, this is great stuff: foul deeds, telling successes and an end to helplessness in the face of environmental insults.
Karl Jacoby鈥檚 Crimes Against Nature traces the clash between rich landowners, fervent national park founders and the poor and middling poor who lived, often by hunting and fishing, in their way 鈥� the 鈥渟quatters, poachers, thieves鈥� of his subtitle. He sheds interesting light on modern controversies too, such as fire in forests: the Adirondack people burned bits of the forest they lived in, much to the horror of park keepers who wanted to keep them 鈥減ristine鈥�, as if uninhabited.
Perhaps they鈥檇 feel better if they read this Pollyanna-sounding book: Seth Reice鈥檚 The Silver Lining. Reice gives a fascinatingly argued case for taking the long-term view of fires and other elemental events.