Anyone with an interest in environmental activism and environmental law will take pleasure in this vigorous account of...
Give a hoot, don’t pollute—and sue anyone who does.
According to this account by British writer Goodman (Chair, Creative Writing/Univ. of Hull; Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J.S. Haldane, 2007, etc.) and ClientEarth CEO Thornton, an American innovation ranking up there alongside jazz is the fine tradition of taking despoliators of the environment to court; that the New World could teach the Old World something about public-interest law, they add, is “a significant postcolonial act.” Thornton and his team of environmental lawyers have taken the American ethic and run with it, their overriding premise being that “without talented lawyers’ intense scrutiny of legal language on the Earth’s behalf, ecosystems will continue to vanish.” The brief of those lawyers is to “assert planetary rights”—and if corporations can have legal personhood, why should the planet not have the same standing? ClientEarth lawyers dug deep into U.K. and EU regulations on fishing to develop sustainable standards, no easy matter in the instance of the EU given that 26 signatory nations have to agree, and EU regulations always seem open to being thwarted. “A legal strategy deployed by a single lawyer at ClientEarth,” write the authors, “may stop the destruction of 40 years’ worth of health and environmental law built up by the EU.” ClientEarth prevailed, though not without considerable difficulty—and considerably impressive lawyering, making the case, for instance, that fish have rights, too. (“Any lawyer for halibut might start with establishing one right: Let the fish breed.”) As groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have learned in the U.S., the courtroom is usually a more effective venue for reform than the sidewalk. Demonstrations have their uses, but, as the authors write, making corporate bigwigs lie awake at night wondering when the next process server is going to show up has its own pleasures.
Anyone with an interest in environmental activism and environmental law will take pleasure in this vigorous account of justice in the making.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947534-03-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribe
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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