The Green Fuse: An Ecological Odyssey

Abstract

force that through green drives flower / Drives my green age; that blasts roots of trees / Is my destroyer, wrote poet Dylan Thomas. In this evocative book a widely respected ecological scientist and activist draws on poet's image and his own environmental research to demonstrate intricate interconnections among disparate ecosystems. He takes us from salmon runs of southwestern Alaska and marshes of Florida everglades to coral reefs of South Pacific and depopulated bleakness of Tibetan plateau. The result is that rare book that bridges cultures of science and art. Lyrical and vivid portraits of natural wonders and threats to them are combined with precise scientific accounts of natural processes and their disturbances. The Green Fuse will show nonscientists fascination of ecological detective work and renew scientists' love for beauty of world under their microscopes. Written from personal passion as well as intellectual analysis, Harte's stories illuminate, without sermonizing, damage to natural systems brought about by technological hubris and calculated political ruthlessness. To is to join together; the green fuse symbolizes basic unity behind natural diversity. But Harte observes that a green may also be weak link in an overloaded system or slow burning wick on an ecological bomb. The scientist's words echo poet's insight: as The Green Fuse reminds us, energies that created human liberation from nature can also be those that bring about human destruction of nature.