This information is important to fully understanding the scale and cost of wetland losses we've inflicted on the planet. Author Proulx (whose use of "yclept" in this book I note here with a big smile, as it's a favorite underused word of mine) is an experienced campaigner when it comes to putting English through its paces to evoke a sense of place and a perception of mood: The attitude of looking at nature solely as something to be exploited—without cooperative thanks or appeasing sacrifices—is ingrained in western cultures. As a nonscientist, Proulx explains in accessible language how fens, bogs and swamps differ by water level and vegetation, and how crucial each of these ecosystems is to a balanced environment. The very short version is that they store carbon dioxide and methane, so when peatlands are disrupted, those gases are released and contribute to the climate change crisis, which is itself one of the things causing those disruptions. Peatlands are also home to a staggering number of plant and animal species integral to a healthy ecological community. Solving THAT conundrum is another book entirely, but perhaps an octogenarian's frustrated nostalgia will make a difference after all.

It is with the swamps and bayous of my erstwhile stomping grounds, Southern Texas and its adjacent lowlands, that the short shrift became apparent. Houston and its urban sprawl could, and should, form a book of damning indictments of greed and stupidity. New Orleans was, for reasons I simply can't understand, rescued as a human habitation after the death of the many bayous and wetlands south of it resulted in its near destruction...an expensive playground for rich people. Another book that should be written (again). Instead, Proulx makes a more difficult and unsettling argument: that we are all, in our own way, complicit in the environmental despoliation happening around us. She doesn’t blame Donald Trump or Joe Biden – her beef is with the Judeo-Christian belief that creation is made for humans, meaning we can use the world as we wish: “The attitude of looking at nature solely as something to be exploited – without cooperative thanks or appeasing sacrifices – is ingrained in western cultures.” It’s this instrumentalist view of nature that means wetlands are happily drained to make land for farming, releasing monumental amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. (Proulx revels in the irony that destroying our historic wetlands may be precipitating global warming, which in turn is causing waters to rise, so creating more wetlands.) A haunting tribute to the world's peatlands [...] Proulx's poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read" There is no doubt that we are creating a vast ecological disaster with the ways we treat our bogs and fens. Recently, we find that the underground peat fires that burn for months in the northern tundra regions, not only emit vast amounts of CO2 and methane which had been sealed up by the peat, but even the heavy deposit of soot that settles on the melting ice causes the ice to lose reflectivity and so makes it absorb more heat and melt even faster. Proulx's book is truly peat-ish: layered, learned, feisty, wildly discursive, and most certainly "undulating, dreaming [and] philosophizing""A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting. A lifelong environmentalist, Annie Proulx brings her wide-ranging research and scholarship to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important yet little understood role they play in preserving the environment – by storing the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth's most desirable and dependable resources, and in four stunning parts, Proulx documents the long-misunderstood role of these wetlands in saving the planet.

Perhaps most radically of all, the book takes aim at the modern notion of “progress” and “the hubristic idea that ‘now’, the time in which we live, is superior to all previous times”. Proulx argues for a radical humbleness in the face of complex ecosystems that we cannot begin to understand, let alone replicate. Her view, one that would be shared by philosophers such as Karl Popper and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is that the web of life in which we’re enmeshed is far too vast and complicated for us to technocratically “manage”.I came away from that wetland sharing my mother’s pleasure in it as a place of value but spent years learning that if your delight is in contemplating landscapes and wild places the sweetness will be laced with ever-sharpening pain.” The entire city was once swampland, as was much of Southeast Michigan. The glaciers that carved the land and melted to make the Great Lakes and the thousands of lakes in Michigan left behind waterlogged land. As the glaciers and ice melt, as ocean and groundwater rise there will come a world of new estuaries, rivers, lakes, fens, and, eventually--vast bogs and swamps. From all the wetland revivals, a new questioning attitude toward natural catastrophes seems to be emerging that asks: in the long run, can flooding be looked at as nature’s restoration of habitats and environments? To date, we have only looked at what damage is done to human activities and uses, but flooding does more than destroy houses and roads. We need to learn how the greater wild system works and cooperate with it as much as we can. How much did the 2020 pandemic “anthropause,” when the world and oceans were quieter with less human bustle, affect the natural world? ESQ: When discussing the draining of wetlands, you make several tongue-in-cheek references to the resulting “most productive soil in the world.” I think you’d agree that our society tends to have a rather toxic concept of “productive.” Where do you think this mania for productivity comes from?