Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North

by Nancy Lord

Overview

In Shishmaref, Alaska, new seawalls are constructed while residents navigate the many practical and bureaucratic obstacles to moving their entire island village to higher ground. Farther south, inland hunters and fishermen set out to grow more of their own food—and to support the reintroduction of wood bison, an ancient species well suited to expected habitat changes. First Nations people in Canada team with conservationists to protect land for both local use and environmental resilience.



In Early Warming, Alaskan Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, takes a cutting–edge look at how communities in the North—where global warming is amplified and climate–change effects are most immediate—are responding with desperation and creativity. This beautifully written and measured narrative takes us deep into regions where the indigenous people who face life–threatening change also demonstrate impressive conservation ethics and adaptive capacities. Underpinned by a long acquaintance with the North and backed with scientific and political sophistication, Lord's vivid account brings the challenges ahead for us all into ice–water clarity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582438689
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	01/10/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nancy Lord lives in Homer, Alaska. From her many years of commercial salmon fishing and, later, work as a naturalist and historian on adventure cruise ships, she’s explored in both fiction and nonfiction the myths and realities of life in the north.

Among her published books are three collections of short stories and five works of literary nonfiction, including the memoir Fishcamp, the cautionary Beluga Days, and the front-lines story of climate change, Early Warming. Lord was honored as Alaska Writer Laureate for 2008-10, a term during which she traveled throughout the state to promote Alaska writers, writing, and libraries.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Early Warming

"Though [Lord] deftly weaves pertinent scientific and political information throughout, her account's power stems from her on-site observations, lyrical descriptions of the land and sea, and sensitive interviews of local officials and natives whose insight and experience humanize an otherwise vast and arcane subject . . . An eloquent and important dispatch." --Kirkus Reviews

"Early Warming is the most important book I've read all year. If you read only one climate change book, read this one. No statistical projections into the future, no doom, no gloom--no debate--just perfectly told stories of northern people who are right now struggling to bear their grief and re-invent their lives as forests die and burn, school buildings wash away, and the once-frozen ground gives way beneath their feet. By telling the stories so simply, so beautifully, Alaska's writer laureate forewarns the rest of the world." --Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort

"Here's the up-to-the-second report from the scout furthest out along the front lines. Nancy Lord combines her knowledge and her love of the North to give us a vitally necessary, and in places hauntingly beautiful, account of what's already happening in those places the rest of us still think of as wild and untouched." --Bill McKibben

Praise for Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore

"These pages teem with provocative ideas about wild country, its uncertain place in the world, and the way landscape can shape a life . . . [Lord] is a wonderful writer, and this is a terrific book." --Jon Krakauer author of Into the Wild

Praise for Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast

"Lord summons facts, art, literature, philosophy, science, legend, memory, hearsay and pure emotional and aesthetic response in the service of a deeper idea of Alaska. . . . [A] wholly worthwhile journey." --Newsday

"[A] satisfying collection of essays from the far reaches of Alaska." --The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

In a firsthand account of Alaska's changing environment, former Alaska State Writer laureate Lord (Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life) uses her gift as a storyteller to address the science and politics of weather and climate within the context of Alaskan life. There is familiarity and honesty in her writing about the animals, habitats, and people she describes so skillfully—the salmon and the polar bears, the boreal forest and its significance in the carbon cycle, and the resourceful Alaskans facing the impacts of climate change. Lord's interviews with community members, officials, and environmental leaders, along with her own observations, provide an insight into the causes of and solutions to the environmental, social, economic, and cultural impacts of global warming and climate change. VERDICT Lord effectively places a life-threatening global issue within a local setting to give readers a glimpse of what Alaska and the rest of the world is at risk of losing without creative solutions and multiple layers of sustainability. Recommended for readers interested in nature and environmental issues.—Robin K. Dillow, Oakton Community Coll. Lib., Des Plaines, IL

Library Journal

An alarming report from Alaska and Northwest Canada, ground zero for climate change.

Disproportionate temperature increases in the north, relative to the lower latitudes, make the region a perfect laboratory for witnessing the effects of global warming and for designing strategies to mitigate or adapt to altered weather patterns. According to longtime Alaska resident and veteran author Lord (Creative Writing/Univ. of Alaska, Anchorage;Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life, 2009, etc.), climate-related changes are happening now, radically transforming landscapes and lives. Although she deftly weaves pertinent scientific and political information throughout, her account's power stems from her on-site observations, lyrical descriptions of the land and sea and sensitive interviews of local officials and natives whose insight and experience humanize an otherwise vast and arcane subject. Lord reports from her home base, Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, where the wetlands are shrinking and large-scale modifications in both fresh water and marine conditions threaten the salmon-dependent economy; from Canada's Mackenzie River Valley and Fort Yukon, Alaska, where industrial development endangers the boreal forest, unlocking a massive carbon storehouse; from Barter Island, on the frozen Beaufort Sea, where thawing permafrost and diminished sea ice expose a vulnerable coastline and where "climate change tourism" now dominates the economy; from Shishmaref Island, where the Inupiaq have already voted to relocate because of erosion and flooding; and from Bethel, Alaska, where village elders near the Bering Sea gather to advise fishery managers and to consider the effects of ocean acidification, "climate change's evil twin." In each of these hot spots, residents already cope with climate-induced changes likely to reach the rest of us later. They're already making hard choices about land and water use, fire prevention and species conservation, as well as about combating climate change while still respecting traditional cultures. Amid an unprecedented challenge, the remote north, writes Lord, is a "proving ground," set to reveal either "how creative and responsible humans can be," or how feckless.

An eloquent and important dispatch.

Kirkus Reviews