The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016

Edited by Amy Stewart

This is a book that comes out annually – being a digest of the previous year’s popular science writing. My review is a digest of that digest, so I guess it’s a kind of rumination.

I’d previously read the 2012 and 2013 publications. They’re good. Some of the stuff is by scientists and some by journalists, but either way it’s often very interesting. At times the journalism can be too formulaic. To frame her subject (most of the articles are by women) the journalist will often tell you what people were wearing, if the sun was shining, and how she had to drive down a long, dirt road to get there. That’s how they frame the story. The scientists are different: they can start digging right away.

Standing out was Rotten Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, published in Harper’s Magazine, about the melting of the Greenland ice cap. The author is someone who has spent a lot of time in Greenland over 25 years and made Inuit friends and loves its wilderness. Firstly she spoke about the sea ice, which is a seasonal thing, and for the Inuit and their dogs a ‘super-highway’ up and down the coastline. Due to global warming, this sea ice is now completely unreliable. Secondly she spoke about the inland ice, the glaciers, which were melting in front of her eyes. The whole article was shot through with disappointment – the reality of global warming.

Part of my reaction to Rotten Ice was regret: that I personally hadn’t travelled more of the world’s wild places. Greenland, man! When I was younger and did have more chance to travel, I was stuck on a loop of Manchester, London, New York and Johannesburg, anywhere that might have a Benetton, trying to decide which of those mothers owned me. What I yearn for now – now I’m fifty-three – is to escape seven billion great apes and their non-stop racket and put foot to the planet’s quiet places.

The Siege Of Miami by Elizabeth Kolbert (The New Yorker) was another report from the front line of global warming. Kolbert is the author of The Sixth Extinction – about the ‘anthropocene’ era in which, to our horror, we’re now living. This piece was about the weird happenings in Miami Beach, Florida, where the rising sea level means that floods are now a fact of daily life – the salty water mostly bubbling up from below. Most people, although a little disconcerted, tend to deny the problem, believing there must be a technical fix. Property prices are still buoyant.

The last time I came across Miami Beach was viewing Flip Schulke’s great photographs of Cassius Clay, 1961-1964, when the boxer was young, beautiful and unmarked – metamorphosing into Muhammad Ali. Then the beach was the chrysalis of champions. Now the beach reclaims the town.

The False Gospel of Alcoholic Anonymous by Gabrielle Glaser was another good one, published in The Atlantic. It exposes the fact that the main treatment on offer for alcoholism – joining Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – has little evidence base, low success rates and an antiquated dogma. The author explains that Naltrexone, the opiate antagonist, can alter drinking habits – yet few patients get the offer. Likewise controlled drinking is not on the table – not at AA. Then there’s the cult to which you have to submit. Failure? That’s because you’ve not accepted the program. So while alcoholism is called a disease, it’s treated as a moral problem. In Sweden, however – where Glaser travels on her researches – Naltrexone is available, controlled drinking is allowed as a treatment goal, and patients have far more individualized programs.

Some of my friends have been to either NA or AA. John went to NA for a while, but now says, ‘It doesn’t work for everybody’. I think he baulked at the social requirements. Gail goes to NA for her drinking – she says because it’s a “stronger fellowship” than AA. In Johannesburg last year she took me to a meeting – in a beautiful church on a starry night, where the atmosphere was easy, supportive, religious. I thought, Oh lucky guys! But what about the rest of us? David, on the other hand, has been attending NA for his cannabis issues. He’s been gripped by the drama of the meetings – and impressed by the wisdom and serenity that many members attain.

The Bed Rest Hoax by Alexandra Kleeman (Harper’s Magazine) was useful. It explained that bed rest is a disaster for the human body. The muscle wasting it causes is terrible – it’s worse than space travel – and there really are very few indications. Yet somehow it is deeply embedded in our culture, especially in obstetrics. People want bed rest! They like the idea of being told to stay in bed.

I enjoyed Telescope Wars by Katie Worth, published in the Scientific American. In the world today, there are not one but three giant telescopes under construction, two American, one European, all exorbitantly expensive and all in real danger of incompletion. If ever there was a case for cooperation! In other fields of big science – take particle physics – there is cooperation. But these telescope ventures are in competition, and as the author explains, that competition goes back an awfully long way – and specifically to the early C20 rivalry between (I think) the Rockerfeller (East Coast/Harvard) and the Carnegie (West Coast/CalTech) institutes. It’s all very stupid.

My Periodic Table, by Oliver Sacks (The New York Times), was something Sacks wrote at the end of his life. There’s something about Sacks that always got on my nerves. Not only was he a doctor – bad enough – but also a weirdo. In this pre-mortal piece (which was very good) he confesses to finding material sciences more interesting than psychology – and avidly consuming the Scientific American every time it arrived. To be honest, I’m getting to be the same. I’ve started buying the Scientific American as I pass through Euston Station. Seems like science is the only real news. Everything else just goes and round. Recently Oliver Sacks’ partner brought out a memoir of the life they had together – and there was a review in the Guardian by Edmund White. It was brilliant – the review I mean – very simple, personal and lightly mocking – just what a review ought to be.