The Vanishing Earth by James Crawford review: 'challenging and unpatronizing'
James Crawford’s exploration of environmental politics may lack the poetic insight of Robert Macfarlane or the fervour of Paul Kingsnorth, but it makes up for it with a straight-talking clarity, writes Stuart Kelly
There are certain topics I naturally shy away from – gender identity, the conflict in the Middle East and ecological politics forming a trinity of subjects where someone somewhere will always think you are in the wrong and possibly malicious and bigoted as well. As such, James Crawford’s new book is a pretty good corrective. It does not hide from the very real problems, but nor does it descend into apocalypse fetishism. Towards the end of the book he quotes the writer Edwin Dobb, a resident of the former copper mining town of Butte, who says the city “offers something more valuable than hope – clarity”. Crawford may lack the poetic insight of Robert Macfarlane or the almost Old Testament fervour of Paul Kingsnorth, but I think clarity is a worthwhile exchange.
The book is divided into two not-quite equal halves. The first concentrates of the consequences of extraction over four areas. He deals with the radioactive, artificial mountains created as a consequence of fertiliser production, particularly phosphates, in Florida – which look almost like Michael Heizer’s monumental “City” artwork in Nevada. He turns to the salt flat or “salar” in Atacama, Chile, and their necessity for lithium. Crawford is not unaware that the move to electric vehicles (and a great many other green technologies) may seem “green” but is dependent on the scrabble for rare minerals. (He doesn’t mention lithium’s other great use in pharmaceuticals for serious depression and suicide prevention).
When he turns to Greenland, it is not as another site where various countries are eyeing up minerals, but in terms of sand. This has some of the best “jaw-drop” moments. Of course I knew sand was used in concrete and glass, but not that it is a commodity so valuable whole beaches have been stolen. Finally he looks at water, and the desertification (a term he is challenged over) in Spain as droughts bite. He also deals with the idea of towing icebergs to provide potable water in places like South Africa and India. The thinker John Gray wrote very eloquently about water management being, in his opinion, a major potential flash point for future international conflicts. I’d also heartily recommend Joanna Kavenna’s The Ice Museum on this topic.
Throughout these chapters there is a sense that a tipping point has already been passed, whatever speculative figures were given in Paris, Kyoto, Glasgow, Baku or Antalya. Part of this contention is based on the simple proposition that almost every form of extraction is irreversible. It is also supported by a kind of delusion of the inexhaustible: in Part II of Goethe’s Faust he becomes a miner, and builds a kind of pyramid scheme based on paper credit and the promise of yet-to-be-uncovered mineral wealth. But it is also bolstered by a kind of technological optimism that too often seems like a game of chicken. What if new forms of carbon capture or fusion-based energy or microbial plastic devourers don’t come about? It’s all a bit Micawber-ish. Something might not “turn up”.
As a corrective, the latter part of the book covers potential repair; from the legal battles in both Ecuador and America – endlessly deferred though they might be, and seemingly immune to implementation – to new CO2 capture plans, the potential for wooden architecture and – well, rewilding is not the word, but a kind of damage limitation where possible, and a hope of reversal. Though a tocsin sounds across this: solutions must be “forever solutions”.
The bridging section to me is the least convincing. Crawford turns to the “infinite mind” of knowledge. It begins with the idea of “mining” human thought in terms of neuroscience and even that most speculative of ideas, the upload. I think there are some deep philosophical mis-steps here. A lot of popular science doesn’t take consideration of philosophy, and it is not a kind of “ghost of Descartes in the machine” to advance that mind and brain are not the same. As Raymond Tallis has written, it flies in the face of Leibnitz’s indiscernibility of identicals: to what extent can the transfer of an electron from a sodium ion be “the same” as toothache or love or the smell of Lapsang Souchong. The map is not the territory here, nor is the technology the phenomenology. Two laptops might have the same plasma screens, but it’s a different experience if you’re using it to watch the Proms or Glastonbury. The medium ain’t the message. That said, he is very good on the environmental damage inherent in the data centres, and the rather naïve hope that the more algorithms and processing power we give them, the more likely it is that they will magically redeem us all from our own selfishness.
One quote stood out for me in this challenging, unpatronizing book. Mark Thompson of Montana Resources was berated by a woman who said “how could you let this happen?” following the death of a flock of migrating geese that had been drinking from the Berkeley Pit, a former open-pit copper mine now filled with toxic water. After pointing out he was eight when the waste started to be pumped into a lake, he muses on saying “You’re emailing me on your computer, or a mobile device made of copper, probably in your house that’s wired with copper, and that has copper pipes for your water. You, as consumer, also made the Berkeley Pit”.
This is my major problem with the hypocrisy of many protest groups: not that they shut down book festivals, but their inability to grasp that your ethical standpoint stands or falls on how much you are willing to sacrifice for change.
The Vanishing Earth, by James Crawford, Scribe, £25
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