Nathaniel explores different cases throughout the book were corporations have released toxic chemicals into the world, the earth, and communities.

This was fascinating to learn about. I enjoyed hearing all these cases, getting informed about how all these corporations are gaslighting people to cover their tracks, their environmental crimes, something I am passionate about. The book is rather dense, filled with interviews and facts, and less reflection than I would have desired. In general, I think a book like this would be even more interesting if the focus was on minority communities or different places in the world rather than solely in the U.S.

After having read and thoroughly enjoyed Nathaniel Rich's The Odds Against Tomorrow, I was curious to read his narrative nonfiction. Second Nature is a collection of environmental essays centered around Man's relationship to Nature - much of what we now see as "nature" is not in fact natural. With each chapter was something surprising, thought provoking, and informative. Each of us in our corner of the world will have to reckon with our self-imposed "second nature". These stories of real people are impeccably researched and written in a style fit for magazine cover stories. Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reader copy!

Nathaniel Rich has a message for those hoping to reduce humanity’s technological and industrial impact so as to return our planet back to some halcyon days of a pristine natural world —it ain’t gonna happen. Instead, in his collection of essays entitled Second Nature, he says the engineer and the environmentalist are not enemies, but partners, quoting historian William Cronon’s view that, “the idealization of wilderness it not merely a myth; it is antagonistic to the aims of any environmentalist. For if, in the future, something resembling wilderness is to survive, it will be only ‘by the most vigilant and self-conscious management.” In essays that are at times infuriating, deflating, and energizing, he shows us several examples of the people trying to do just that sort of management.

The first essay, “Dark Waters,” is probably the one that will enrage readers most, even if they already know some of the story, which deals with Dupont’s manufacture and use (in both consumer and industrial goods) of the incredibly toxic perfluorooctanoic acid, despite decades of their own studies that showed it affected the organs in animals, accumulated in the blood of workers, caused birth defects in test animals and, when they discretely looked into it, in their own employees, and more. It’s a litany of corporate evil that in a movie would have you think the writer/director were pilling it on in ridiculous fashion to create a “super-villain” but that all really happened and was eventually made public by the efforts of a cattle farmer in West Virginia (Wilbur Tennant) and a dedicate lawyer (Robert Bilott), who actually used to defend corporations.

One might say this tale ends happily, in that Dupont ends up caught and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and reparations, but as Rich notes:

if you are reading this, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood … the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish … polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles … albatrosses on Sand Island … in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North American and Asia.
Not only is it not a happy ending; it’s no ending at all. The other essays, though lacking the same sort of direct/obvious villainy, share this sort of open-endedness. In “The Wasting”, an unknown malady strikes starfish, wiping out huge populations and, in a ripple effect, creating “marine wastelands.” Scientists spent years trying to find the cause, and though in the end some populations came back, “the stars evolving before researchers’ eyes,” scientists still don’t know what happened, leaving them to wonder, “is it a onetime event or a harbinger of worse to come?” If that sounds ominous, Rich tries to offer a glimpse of hope in the way researchers are helped by children as young as three, who are better at finding the tiny juvenile stars — “they had excellent eyesight, boundless curiosity, inexhaustible energy … They enjoyed solving problems. They liked to feel that they held the fate of the world in their hands.” Though one might argue that last line is more chilling than optimistic.

“Aspen Saves the World” reports on the complex interweaving of privilege, environmental activism, and business in one of the ritziest resort towns in America, whose ski tourism is seemingly doomed by the effects of climate change. The next group of essays focuses on more direct and deliberate human manipulation of nature, with “Pigeon Apocalypse” exploring the idea of de-extinction, discussing several potential lost species but focusing mostly on the passenger pigeon. Meanwhile, several essays shift the focus from genetic engineering to civil engineering, reporting on the attempts to save Louisiana from disappearing into the sea, itself a process greatly accelerated by earlier human intervention via damming the great Mississippi. While scientists and engineers have come up with several ways of creating/reclaiming land in the southern reaches of the state, there is no solution for how such plans will affect the people living there, such as shrimpers whose economy will almost certainly be destroyed by the innocuously named “diversions” of the river. Finally, moving from solid ground (literally) to the surreal, the last two essays deal with a seemingly immortal jellyfish (it can “age backwards” and then start the living process again) and a glow-in-the dark rabbit, respectively.

Rich writes vividly, clearly, and engagingly, and has a gift for bringing the people who pepper the essay alive, such as the Japanese scientist who has spent decades studying the immortal jellyfish (we see him at karaoke for instance, and even get a few lines of lyrics from his original songs. The voice, while engaging as noted, is also a bit removed, more reportage than personal essay style, and one rarely finds Rich coming across as making any sort of judgments. That removed voice, and those mixed endings or endless ending also can make a few of the essays feel somewhat anticlimactic — they both compel and entertain in the reading but at the close one wonders sometimes just what we’re supposed to take away from them. Though perhaps that is just what Rich’s purpose is — to make his audience wonder, to make them think more attentively, more critically, about just what is happening to this planet, and to realize we’re well past the point of simple “good guys and bad guys” (outside of Dupont of course) or easy/no harm solutions.
3.5

This book puts forth a number of compelling and thought-provoking problems--and potential solutions--to the numerous environmental ailments that our society struggles with. What I appreciated most is how thoroughly the premise is reinforced throughout the book: Our conception of Nature vs. Society, two spheres of human life that have a neat and defined gap between them, has always been misguided. The author's many case studies and interviews with experts showcases fascinating discussions and valuable insights.

One will find insightful information, researched writing that is of disturbingly true real horrors.
What a tragedy upon this earth set in motion by humans, wether by greed or ignorance, and reading important works like this may have readers more in the know.
But then again I am reminded of these words by Cormac McCarthy

“In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.”
-Cormac McCarthy in All The Pretty Horses

What was causing a horrific smell and strangely common illnesses in a suburb of Los Angeles? Why were sea stars (aka starfish) pulling off their limbs and then liquefying? What was killing animals and people in West Virginia? How are the new “meatless meats” made and why? These are just a few of the ten topics covered in Second Nature.

Is de-extinction, a la Jurassic Park, a good or a bad thing? The creations would not be the exact same creature. They would be a manmade version of the extinct bird, animal, or plant. Does anyone else feel a shiver of horror at that idea? In Second Nature, the cutting-edge ideas in climate change and what used to be called ecology are presented in a compellingly readable format. No science education is necessary for a full understanding of each topic.

I highly recommend this book! Everyone should read it. Some chapters are uplifting and some genuinely sad—but all are enthralling. 5 stars and a favorite!

Thanks to MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rich has written novels before, and you can tell; his sentences are more elegant than a lot of nonfiction writers'. The book synthesizes a lot of information and gives a sense of the human meaning of the Southern Reach Trilogy world that we've created for ourselves. Really good book, just as "Losing Earth" was.