| The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina Henry Holt and Co., New York, NY. $32.00, hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 978-0-8050-9040-6 (2011). Picador, New York, NY. $18.00, paperback, 416 pages, ISBN 978-1-250-00271-6 (2012). Reviewed by Lee Bumsted |
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With a title like The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World, one might expect a low-key book about a single location. But Carl Safina, a noted marine biologist and ecologist with five other books to his credit, combines vivid observations from his home base with others from very distant places. Over these, he layers forceful insights about our ethical obligations to the natural world.
A run-down beach cottage tucked behind the dunes of Lazy Point, six miles from the seaward end of Long Island, New York, provides Safina easy access to a vibrant coastal ecosystem. He and his dog, Kenzie, set out for walks along the shore in every season. He celebrates the appearance and behavior of resident and migratory birds, fish, and marine mammals. These beautifully written passages create a strong sense of place and demonstrate Safina’s reverence for this natural community. Trudy Nicholson’s wildlife drawings aptly accompany the text.
Over the course of the year, Safina journeys to the tropical locales of Belize and Palau, to Alaska and Svalbard in the far north, and to Antarctica at the southern extreme. During his travels, he witnesses the deleterious effects of climate change, such as the rapid decline of coral reefs and polar ice, and their negative impacts on human and marine life.
For instance, while visiting the Inupiat Eskimo community of Shishmaref, Alaska, he hears the sadness of residents making plans to relocate inland as sea level rise threatens to obliterate their homes. He cites much larger communities, such as entire Pacific island nations and populous Bangladesh, that are facing similar pressures, and asks how it is even possible for such large groups to move.
He does note some recent population recoveries, such as the coral reef in Palau and the stripers, ospreys and seals off Lazy Point. But the overall environmental trends he sees are dire.
We have been undergoing explosive growth of late, in human population and in our consumption of the earth’s resources. Safina states that this pace is unsustainable and that it is both delusional and irrational to think otherwise.
He finds our wisdom traditions and our economic systems surprisingly quiet on our moral obligations to the natural world. As the position of humans has shifted to one of great power and influence over the health of the planet, he argues that we need to develop ethical and economic practices that reflect this change.
Safina says we must take greater responsibility for the degradation of the earth and for thinking beyond our own time. He describes “intergenerational equity” as “the idea of explicitly saving and leaving things for coming generations.” He faults economic policies that exclude environmental costs when pricing fuel and durable goods and that let corporations off the hook for the damage associated with the production of their products.
“We occupy more than our fair share of space, and more still: we occupy a bigger-than-life chunk of time,” he writes. “By toxin and carbon, by chainsaw and fishing net, by appetite and sheer force of numbers, we survive by being way overleveraged on loans from generations yet to come, loans for which we the borrowers—not the lenders—dictate the terms. The downside exposure is so enormous, it threatens not just the civilization bubble we’ve created but Life, incorporated. The future, indeed, isn’t what it used to be.”
While he describes himself as a secular scientist, Safina believes the world to be sacred, and “what serves the continuity of life is sacred.” He notes that prominent in world religions is the concept of a widening circle of compassion, and believes we must incorporate this philosophy in our dealings with the natural world. No longer do we have the luxury of putting ourselves first.
In this inspiring, passionate book, Carl Safina challenges us to rein in population growth, to replace carbon-based energy with self-renewing energy sources, and to behave with the knowledge that we live on a finite planet. As he says, “the most appropriate response to the world is to realize, with awe, the ferocious mystery of being alive in it. And act accordingly.”
A link to a four-minute video of Carl Safina talking about the themes of his book:
http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9781250002716&m_type=2&m_contentid=3241325#video.
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