Misguided criticism of Franzen’s New Yorker article

In this week’s Weekly Digest I linked to a recent article by Jonathan Franzen in The New Yorker, “Carbon Capture:  Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?”  He made a few statements that I’d challenge but, overall, it’s a very thoughtful and nuanced piece.  He speaks to the challenge that many of us feel in trying to make progress towards solving chronic problems while also dealing with acute ones.   He tells a good “think globally, act locally” story.   It’s a good read.  Unfortunately, over the past few days I’ve read some really out-to-lunch criticisms of the piece by people whose opinions I generally respect.  (Names omitted here to protect the guilty.)  I don’t know what to say about that beyond, “Read it for yourself.”

Some related reading:

From Hine:

There’s a big difference between the task of trying to sustain “civilisation” in its current form – supermarkets and all – which is what “sustainability” has largely come to mean, and the task of holding open a space for the things which make life worth living. I’d suggest that it’s this second task, in its many forms, which remains, after we’ve given up on false hopes.

A few things about Franzen and his article:

  1. It’s not that there aren’t things to criticize, it’s that the criticism I’ve read failed to see the forest for the trees.
  2. I’ve been reading Franzen’s writing for probably 25 years now.   I’ll like his essays as well as his novels (Strong Motion, in particular).  His writing just resonates with me – one paragraph from his article, for example:

Maybe it’s because I was raised as a Protestant and became an environmentalist, but I’ve long been struck by the spiritual kinship of environmentalism and New England Puritanism. Both belief systems are haunted by the feeling that simply to be human is to be guilty. In the case of environmentalism, the feeling is grounded in scientific fact. Whether it’s prehistoric North Americans hunting the mastodon to extinction, Maori wiping out the megafauna of New Zealand, or modern civilization deforesting the planet and emptying the oceans, human beings are universal killers of the natural world. And now climate change has given us an eschatology for reckoning with our guilt: coming soon, some hellishly overheated tomorrow, is Judgment Day. Unless we repent and mend our ways, we’ll all be sinners in the hands of an angry Earth.

ADDENDUM #1:

Back in 2002 Franzen wrote about the tension between wanting to be both popular and writer’s writer (see here or here).  I think his “Carbon Capture” piece is in the same vein.

ADDENDUM #2 (4/6/2015):

One of Franzen’s statements that I’d challenge is his implication that there’s political pressure amongst environmentalists/conservationists to prioritize action climate change over other conservation issues:

It’s not that we shouldn’t care whether global temperatures rise two degrees or four this century, or whether the oceans rise twenty inches or twenty feet; the differences matter immensely. Nor should we fault any promising effort, by foundations or N.G.O.s or governments, to mitigate global warming or adapt to it. The question is whether everyone who cares about the environment is obliged to make climate the overriding priority.

Actually, I don’t think that is a question that arises much in practice.  I think the vast majority of conservation-minded people are happy to see people involved with whatever issue is significant to them.   Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day.  Not every important issue can have everyone’s full attention.  Decide your priorities and do what you can.  Should I ditch my car and bike to work?  Yes, that would definitely reduce my carbon footprint.  As a practical matter though biking to work would be a royal pain in the ass.   My thing is habitat restoration;  specifically, planting native trees, shrubs and wildflowers to make our lot more appealing to birds, bees, and insects.   A few years ago I was talking with my father and he noted, “The suburbs are at war with nature.”  It’s true.  Planting native plants is my way of fighting back.   That’s my thing.  Not once has anyone suggested that I should forget about the plants and bike to work instead.  And, frankly, I don’t expect that anyone ever will.