My Green Manifesto

Starred review from June 6, 2011
In this funny and inspiring manifesto, Gessner (Return of the Osprey) canoes down Boston's Charles River with Dan Driscoll, an upbeat, pot-smoking, environmental planner, who has spent nearly 20 years fighting to revitalize the once famously polluted river. As they paddle, Gessner meditates on environmentalism (which he thinks has "lost its soul"), on global warming, and the "shrill warnings about our pending doom" sounding from the environmental community. Gessner sets out to find a new environmentalism, something "that is a part of everyday life, not running roughshod over it." For Gessner, environmentalism begins with a connection to a particular place. It needs advocates like Driscoll, "a stubborn guy who fell in love with a place and then fought like hell for it." And while his friend's fight to bring a bit of the natural world back to the banks of the Charles may not account for much in the long run, Gessner believes that committing to a lifelong environmental fight is an act of personal fulfillment. The book is an easy, pleasurable read, with an environmental message that seems true enough: there is still transcendence to be found in the "limited wild" of our own communities. So get out there, enjoy it, and fight for it before it's gone because, at least according to Gessner, this is the key to a better life.

June 15, 2011

Gessner (Creative Writing/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington; Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond, 2007, etc.) argues that true environmentalism starts in our own backyard.

The author debates the controversial views of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who contended in their 2007 book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility that the environmentalism of the past—shaped by figures such as Rachel Carson—cannot not address global warming, and that doomsday scenarios about the end of the world can be so overwhelming that they induce passivity. While Gessner agrees that "the old guilt-ridden, mystical envirospeak just isn't cutting it," he suggests that the lives of Carson and Henry David Thoreau offer an effective alternative. A living example of the kind of effective environmentalism that he espouses is the work of his friend Dan Driscoll, a planner who began working for the State of Massachusetts 20 years ago. Driscoll conceived and directed a program to clean up the Charles River and plant native plants on its bank, transforming it from a repository for trash to a green pathway through Boston and its environs. Gessner writes about a 26-mile canoe-and-camping trip that he and Driscoll took down the Charles, savoring mornings when the river was covered in mists; they spent days paddling and watching the hawks and herons and other small animals—an unexpected and enchanting wildness in an otherwise urban area. In the author's view, the first step in building an effective environmentalist movement is helping people fall in love with the natural world in their own backyards and recognizing their kinship with other animals.

An engaging book with a serious message.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011
Gessner distrusts the reverent mysticism, scolding, and doomsaying found in many works of environmental literature. Consequently, his enthusiastically received books are earthy and funny, frank and pragmatic. In his seventh, this John Burroughs Awardwinning nature writer attempts to formulate his own green manifesto while on a canoe voyage on the Charles River with River Man Dan Driscoll. An energetic nonconformist of affable straightforwardness with a gift for productive confrontation, Driscoll managed to overcome corporate, residential, and governmental resistance to reclaim the river and create a green corridor through the heavily populated Boston area. Always up for adventure and a beer break, the two river travelers revel in the remnant wildness flourishing in the midst of urban development. Bluntly realistic, Gessner asserts that nature is necessary for our well-being, that the most important wilderness is the one closest to home, and that effective environmentalism is rooted not in theory, renunciation, or gloom but, rather, in love and wonder, even anger. Take a good walk, he advises, and be willing to fight and hustle for the place you love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2011

Gessner (Creative Writing/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington; Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond, 2007, etc.) argues that true environmentalism starts in our own backyard.

The author debates the controversial views of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who contended in their 2007 book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility that the environmentalism of the past--shaped by figures such as Rachel Carson--cannot not address global warming, and that doomsday scenarios about the end of the world can be so overwhelming that they induce passivity. While Gessner agrees that "the old guilt-ridden, mystical envirospeak just isn't cutting it," he suggests that the lives of Carson and Henry David Thoreau offer an effective alternative. A living example of the kind of effective environmentalism that he espouses is the work of his friend Dan Driscoll, a planner who began working for the State of Massachusetts 20 years ago. Driscoll conceived and directed a program to clean up the Charles River and plant native plants on its bank, transforming it from a repository for trash to a green pathway through Boston and its environs. Gessner writes about a 26-mile canoe-and-camping trip that he and Driscoll took down the Charles, savoring mornings when the river was covered in mists; they spent days paddling and watching the hawks and herons and other small animals--an unexpected and enchanting wildness in an otherwise urban area. In the author's view, the first step in building an effective environmentalist movement is helping people fall in love with the natural world in their own backyards and recognizing their kinship with other animals.

An engaging book with a serious message.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)