The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah

Our teenage son volunteered at a local nature center every summer. One of the activities the counselors in training participated in was pulling up Purple Loosestrife. It is an considered invasive species that thrives along Michigan's lakesides.

So, I was shocked to read that Canadian researchers concluded "there is certainly no evidence that purple loosestrife 'kills wetlands' or 'creates biological deserts'!"

Investigative journalist Sonia Shah's book The Next Great Migration is filled with such iconoclastic insights, smashing prevalent notions contending that ecosystems were meant to be unchanging, pristine, and unadulterated.

Instead, she systematically argues that no place on Earth has remained untouched by the migration of species. Including human migration.

Shah takes readers through the entire history of the migration of species and the ideas humans have held about migration. Bad science and ingrained beliefs have lead to false assumptions that impact the political landscape to this very day. Most disturbing is the rise of Eugenics and categorization of human groups to justify our fearful reaction to newcomers.

Building walls, Shah contends, cannot stop or solve the reality of migrating human populations. She writes, "Over the long history of life on earth, its (migrations) benefits have outweighed its costs." Embracing migrants can be a solution to the problems we face.

Shah's book was an engrossing read that shed light on how we 'got to here'.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher: 

A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting--predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change. 

The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet's migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous. 

But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis--it is the solution. 

Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today's anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
by Sonia Shah
Bloomsbury Publishing
Pub Date June 2, 2020 
ISBN: 9781635571974
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

Fatler by Bill McKibben

"Put simply, between ecological destruction and technological hubris, the human experiment is now in question."~ Falter by Bill McKibben

I was a teenager in the late 1960s when I read Ayn Rand's novels. I was still reading for story and too young to understand Rand's philosophy. I never returned to reread her books. Bill McKibben's Falter has educated me on Rand and the impact of her ideas on shaping the world we live in today.

The list of Rand-inspired movers and shakers is impressive: Alan Greenspan was a personal friend of Rand and people who revere Rand include Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson, Ronald Reagan, Mike Pompeo, Ray Dalio (a Trump confidant), and Donald Trump. 

Rand called her philosophy 'objectivism,' which is really libertarianism. It's anti-government, believing there should be no limits on the individual's self-interest and quest to personal achievement. There is no consideration of the needs of others, the people who can't or won't do for themselves, those leeches on society. Don't limit my rights and privilege for the common good and tax my wealth for the government to give to those people.

It is a philosophy readily adopted by business. Unimpeded growth without restraints is the goal of capitalism. Drill for all the oil and dig for all the coal anywhere, without limit. It's someone else's problem to clean up any mess we create. Too bad if we contaminate the water or air or devastate the land or cause earthquakes.

Right-wing politicians love Rand; don't tax me to pay for programs that benefit the losers; small government is good government. This leads to obscenely rich business owners, like the Koch brothers, funneling money to right-wing politicians who will protect their interests.

Then there are the Silicon Valley visionaries funding research into aging and how to live forever and genetic engineering and the creating of AI. 

Are these good things? Will these technologies improve human life? Or will they create a larger socio-economic divide, even a separation between regular humans and improved humans? What would a world without death look like? Would those living suppress the number of humans to be born?

McKibben asks, has the 'human game' begun to 'play itself out?' Has our progress advanced to the point that we are negatively impacting our species? Is continual growth sustainable? Growth in technology, wealth, improvement via genetic engineering?

Can we alter climate change? Will we slow down growth to a sustainable rate? Will we put our effort into renewable energy? We are the only species on Earth that can place limits on ourselves, band together to achieve outcomes that improve our mutual community. But...will we? Or will humanity's future look like the movie Wall-E, brain-dead screen-addicts floating in space while a robot runs our lives?

"There are people who...hate the idea of society, who organize campaigns against public transit, who try to dismantle public schools and national parks, who instinctively head for the gated enclave. I don't think their rule will last forever...but they currently possess a savage leverage, perhaps power enough to end the human game...

"The endless efforts to gerrymander districts, suppress voting, race-bait, gin up cynicism in our politics, confuse us about issues such as climate change--these are nothing more than efforts to weaken society so it can't exert power over its most dominant individuals."~from Falter by Bill McKibben

Will the pendulum be swung away from disaster by nonviolent activism and a WWII era rise in commitment to the common good--fighting for our lives? Our fate is in our hands.

I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
by Bill McKibben
Henry Holt
$28 hardcover
ISBN:978-1-250-17826-8

Falter is a brilliant, impassioned call to arms to save our climate from those profiting from its destruction before it’s too late.—Jane Mayer, bestselling author of Dark Money