Viewer Discretion Advised

With art, the viewer has a license to interpret. Opinion matters. The same can’t be said of science.

Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change

By David Buckland, Ian McEwan, Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Max Eastley, Nick Edwards, Gretel Ehrlich, and Dan Harvey
Cape Farewell, 2006

Reviewed by Natalie Jeremijenko

Climate change, perhaps the most far-reaching and significant issue of this century, is no stranger to the bestseller list, the red carpet, the floor of the Senate, or the corporate agenda. But another realm has also been involved in the dialogue—contemporary art.

The book Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change compiles the largely somber work and journal entries from the Cape Farewell expeditions. These expeditions are the brainchild of artist David Buckland. Buckland, along with other artists, scientists, a poet, and a writer, sails aboard the 100-year-old schooner Noorderlicht to Svalbard—an archipelago midway between Norway and the North Pole. This peculiarly warm-watered yet northern site allows them access to an extreme arctic landscape. There is no particular research question fueling their expeditions—just the idea that a group of artists should be among those who experience and witness the changing arctic landscape. The artists are not required to produce work, and there are no funding-agency reports—just an expectation that the artists may have some insights in representing climate change. Can these people show us again what we know we know?

Can they offer anything when we are focused on alternative energy, CO₂ trading quotas, and glacial retreat? Why not just leave it to trusted scientists? Artists don’t give answers; they don’t operate within a structure of credentials reinforced by formal peer review. They explore nuance and subjective experience and accept multiple answers to the same question. And that’s precisely the point.

Artists reflect a relationship with nature that is often obscured and muddied by our urban existence. We “know” about climate change, but there has been no en masse abandonment of cars, no mass migration to dense urban centers to shrink our carbon footprint, no sudden antishopping spree—in fact, no significant lifestyle changes. A fundamental conceit of the Enlightenment is the conviction that knowledge leads to action. And it is the artists who are producing the post-Enlightenment strategies.

The artist’s view is invaluable precisely because artists are not experts and do not have the authority granted by science. They are only as persuasive as their images. As nonexperts—though interested and knowledgeable—they stand in for the view of Everyman. They transcend boundaries; they transcend disciplines, issues, and expertise. With art, the viewer knows that she has a license to interpret and critically evaluate the work and that her opinion matters. The same can’t be said of science. Scientific arguments are presented in the public imagination as faits accomplis. When definitive terms such as “discovered” and “understood” are the norm, science is often a one-way conversation.

Although Burning Ice does not survey the wide range of contemporary artwork on climate change, it does play into the public imagination differently than the computational model, the quantitative risk analysis, or other summative representations used by environmental agencies to inform public decision-making. The art invites interpretation without oversimplification or unnecessary precision. And by combining legibility (“I don’t know much about art but I know what I like”) with a diverse viewership, works of art provide the opportunity for evidence-driven discussion. They invite skepticism (who trusts an artist?) and critical engagement (“a child could do that”). They incite participation, not passive consumption of facts. In a participatory democracy, strategies that raise the standards of evidence used in public debate and that engage diverse publics are worth attention. And as much as climate change is a phenomenon of the environmental commons—we are all subject to it, layperson or expert—it necessitates, and deserves, a response from the commons.

For more information visit www.capefarewell.com.

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A Naturalist and Other Beasts: Tales from a Life in the Field
By George B. Schaller
Sierra Club Books, 2007

Although less expansive than The Richness of Life, this anthology of George Schaller’s writings also provides new insights into the career of the prominent field biologist. Schaller himself has written a commentary before each chapter, reflecting on his work studying large mammals all over the world—from gorillas in Rwanda to herons in Alaska to yaks in Tibet. The excerpts document a life of intense research and high adventure in Schaller’s quest to understand and protect the animals he studies.

Reviewed by Margaret Pizer

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The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould
By Stephen Jay Gould
W.W. Norton, 2007

Encapsulating in one anthology the work of an author who penned over 300 popular essays and a 1,000-plus-page tome on evolutionary theory seems like an impossible task. But this compilation provides an even more valuable service—selecting a manageable and diverse array of Gould’s work and, with a preface by Oliver Sacks and an introduction to each section by editor Steven Rose, providing some fascinating context for readers. The uninitiated will find a very readable introduction to a legendary figure in modern evolutionary thought, and those more familiar with Gould’s work may gain new insight into his most controversial and celebrated ideas.

Reviewed by Margaret Pizer

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The Unnatural History of the Sea
By Callum Roberts
Island Press, 2007

It’s a familiar scenario: hook-and-line fishermen clamor against industrial fishing; the government appoints a commission of scientists to determine whether bottom trawling damages fish habitat, kills young fish, and causes population declines. But this series of events took place in 1863; as Callum Roberts reports, fishermen were aware of the interdependence between fish species and the importance of complex bottom habitats long before scientists invented the concept of food webs or ecology. Objections to trawling from fishermen date back to the fourteenth century, but a surprising cast of biology’s heroes—from T.H. Huxley to Rachel Carson—were on the wrong side when it came to fisheries management, arguing that marine species were inexhaustible.

Roberts uses first-hand accounts dating back to the Middle Ages to paint a picture of seas that were once brimming with fish, turtles, whales, seals, oysters, and every other marine critter imaginable. All that changed long before the advent of modern fishing technology, he argues, deftly and repeatedly illustrating how shifting baselines have allowed the inexorable decline of marine resources to continue nearly unnoticed for hundreds of years. This is fascinating but very bad news, and Roberts’ proposed solution is a tall order politically and practically. He argues that nearly 30 percent of the world’s oceans should be set aside as Marine Protected Areas, and his vivid accounts of centuries of relentless harvesting suggest that drastic measures are in order.

Reviewed by Margaret Pizer

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The Most Important Fish in the Sea
By H. Bruce Franklin
Island Press, 2007

Nineteenth-century fisheries biologist George Brown Goode wrote of menhaden that “their mission is unmistakably to be eaten.” Bruce Franklin follows scientists and fishermen from New York to the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone to illustrate how being eaten by larger fish is only half of what makes menhaden so important. By vacuuming up phytoplankton, menhaden prevent harmful algal blooms and keep waters clear enough to support marine plants such as eelgrass.

Franklin’s book reads like a microcosm of Callum Roberts’ broader account of the long decline of marine species worldwide. In 1870 the New Jersey legislature considered a ban on purse seining for the small, oily fish, but did not enact one until 2001. Franklin argues that menhaden may be resilient enough to outlive more than a century’s overfishing, partly because turning them into fertilizers, industrial oils, animal feed, and nutritional supplements is economical only if the fish are plentiful. Now that populations are perilously small, the industry is in danger of bankruptcy. Franklin concludes with a glimmer of hope for what could happen if the menhaden fishery goes out of business by describing fishing for striped bass among the churning schools of menhaden that have returned to New Jersey since the ban on menhaden seining was enacted there.

Reviewed by Margaret Pizer

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