Mr. McCarthy argues that over the past few decades two approaches have been made to stop the destruction of the natural world：the idea of sustainable development (sometimes referred to as “green growth”) and the idea that ecosystems have a financial value - so-called environmental economics, which means that price tags are put on the natural world：$375 billion for coral reefs；$131 billion for pollination；and $5 trillion for rain forests. According to Mr. McCarthy, the first approach has ended in failure and the latter creates a problematic commodification of nature - and in any case, how do we value birdsong or the unfurling of spring flowers? He therefore proposes a third way：“defense through joy.”
And so he takes his readers on an idiosyncratic and wonderful walk through his joy of nature. Like some of the greatest nature books, from Thoreau's “Walden” to Annie Dillard's “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” it's a personal book that describes Mr. McCarthy's own journey while at the same time folding his experiences within a broader context. He writes about his delight of the dawn chorus or dolphins dancing in the water but also about the Romantics, agricultural devastation, the magnificent color range of American warblers and London's Victorian sewage system.
He talks about the cadences of nature, the cycle, the rebirth and rhythm. He writes beautifully about the winter solstice - the glorious point when the days finally stop getting shorter, the turning of the year and the “unstoppable movement back toward the light.” Then come the snowdrops, the harbingers of the annual rebirth of nature. The world wakes up again and Mr. McCarthy's joy jumps off the page. There's his vivid sketch of the mad March hares, when he sees them standing upright on their hind legs, hitting and circling one another like boxers in their ring. They leap, chase and clash, paws flailing and frenzied. It happens only in March, and for Mr. McCarthy it was “like seeing the sap rising at supersonic speed.” This section is one of the most evocative descriptions I have ever read about the joy of spring.
He revels in his elation and emotions. “I have thought of spring birdsong as blossom in sound,” he writes, and later rhapsodizes about the mesmerizing swaths of bluebells in English woodlands - a hundred thousand flowers growing so close together that they are no longer individual plants but an ocean of blue.
To understand this joy, he turns to evolutionary psychology and explains how our unbreakable bond with the natural world is the legacy of 50,000 generations of the Pleistocene. “It lies buried in the genes,” he writes. It might be covered over by 500 generations of civilization, but it's not destroyed. For nature is where we come from and evolved, he says. “It is where the human imagination formed and took flight,” not in cities, in front of computers or in cars.
As much as I would like it, I doubt that joy will really be the solution to climate change and environmental destruction, but I believe Mr. McCarthy is right that this ancient bond makes nature not a mere luxury or a delightful bonus some of us might enjoy. It is, rather, “part of our psyches.” If we destroy nature, we destroy an elemental part of ourselves. “The Moth Snowstorm” is an inspiring book, and I salute Mr. McCarthy for his boldness. Rather than the dire, dry statistical projections often heralded to make the case for conservation, he turns boldly to joy - to imagination and emotion.
