Dancing at the Dead Sea

After winning the Global Reuters IUCN media award for excellence in environmental reporting, Alanna Mitchell launched herself on an odyssey that would take her around the world, zeroing in on it's environmental hotspots. Travelling from Madagascar to the Middle East, from the Arctic to the Galapagos Islands, her goal was to explore how humanity could flourish without destroying the planet, and she began with a term of study at Oxford University where she studied Darwin's theories. Darwin challenged the idea that the earth and its species were created for man's benefit and succeeded in overturning the accepted view. Today, we are at a similar crossroads, one where we need to come to terms with the fact that all creation is not here for us, that we are but one species dependent on other species and planetary life-support systems for our own existence. As his theories of evolution changed the whole way of Victorian thinking, so she hopes that today we can accept a similar seismic change and learn to treat our environment in a way that will prolong, rather than shorten its shelf life. After Oxford, she sets out to see for herself the effects of our actions in hotspots such as the Madagascan forest, only 10% of which now remains, the Azraq oasis of Jordan which, after supporting life in the Middle East for a quarter of a million years, was turned into a dustbowl in just thirteen years, to the Banks Island in the high Arctic where centuries old graves are being exposed as the ice melts. She charts positive outcomes too, such as the Amazonian rainforests of Suriname, now protected by the government, and the people of Iceland who, having raised their forests centuries ago are now having to develop alternative sources of natural energy. An extremely positive book - it shows that although we have reached a crisis point, it is one that we are capable of turning around if we are prepared to embrace the challenges that face us.