The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

The Best American Science and Nature Writing
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ISSN
1530-1508

ISBN
978-0-544-00342-2

e
ISBN
978-0-544-00339-2
v1.0914

“Mixed Up” by Katherine Bagley. First published as “Climate Change Is Causing Some Mixed-Up Wildlife” in
Audobon
, November 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by the National Audubon Society. Reprinted by permission of
Audobon
magazine.

“The Great Forgetting” by Nicholas Carr. First published in the
Atlantic
, November 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Nicholas Carr. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Social Life of Genes” by David Dobbs. First published in
Pacific Standard
, September 3, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by David Dobbs. Reprinted by permission of David Dobbs.

“What Our Telescopes Couldn't See” by Pippa Goldschmidt. First published in the
New York Times
, September 11, 2013. Copyright Â© 2014 by Pippa Goldschmidt. Reprinted by permission of Pippa Goldschmidt.

“A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA” by Amy Harmon. First published in the
New York Times
, July 27, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 the
New York Times.
All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

“A Life-or-Death Situation” by Robin Marantz Henig. First published in the
New York Times Magazine
, July 21, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Robin Marantz Henig. Reprinted by permission of Robin Marantz Henig.

“23 and You” by Virginia Hughes. First published in
Matter
, December 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Virginia Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Why the Brain Prefers Paper” by Ferris Jabr. First published in
Scientific American
,November 2013. Reproduced with permission. Copyright Â© 2013 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

“O-Rings” by Sarah Stewart Johnson. First published in
Harvard Review
, Winter 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Sarah Stewart Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Sarah Stewart Johnson.

“When Animals Mourn” by Barbara J. King. First published in
Scientific American
, July 2013. Reproduced with permission. Copyright Â© 2013 by
Scientific American
, a division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

“Where It Begins” by Barbara Kingsolver. First published in
Orion
, November/December 2013; commissioned for
Knitting Yarns
, Ann Hood, ed., W. W. Norton, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Barbara Kingsolver. Reprinted by permission of Barbara Kingsolver.

“Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!” by Maggie KoerthBaker. First published in the
New York Times
Sunday Magazine
, July 16, 2013. Copyright Â© 2014 by Maggie Koerth-Baker and the
New York Times.
Reprinted by permission of Maggie Koerth-Baker and the
New York Times.

“The Lost World” by Elizabeth Kolbert from the book
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in
The New Yorker
, December 16 and December 23, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013, 2014 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Permission to reprint granted by Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

“Awakening” by Joshua Lang. First published in the
Atlantic
, January/February 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by the Atlantic Media Co. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future” by Maryn McKenna. First published in
Medium
, November 20, 2013. Copyright Â© 2014 by Maryn McKenna. Reprinted by permission of Food & Environment Reporting Network.

“The Return of Measles” by Seth Mnookin. First published in the
Boston Globe Magazine
, September 29, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Seth Mnookin. Reprinted by permission of Seth Mnookin.

“Twelve Ways of Viewing Alaska's Wild, White Sheep” by Bill Sherwonit. First published in
Anchorage Press
, May 29, 2013. Copyright Â© 2013 by Bill Sherwonit. Reprinted by permission of Bill Sherwonit.

Foreword

I
N THE SUMMER
of 2008, I spent a cool, foggy day hiking in the coastal hills of Wales with Sir John Houghton, one of the world's leading climate scientists. As we tramped through wet, sheep-nibbled grass, the landscape seemed to dissolve into the heavy mists that closed around us, bounding our horizons. Every now and then, through breaks in the fog, we glimpsed vistas of green, treeless hills sloping toward the Irish Sea. Then the view would fade to gray again, stranding us in a world drained of color.

Over the course of that damp day we talked about another sort of shrinking horizon, one composed of fast-vanishing opportunities to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate change. At the time of our hike it still seemed possible that the world's nations might manage to limit greenhouse gas emissions to levels that would not prove utterly disruptive. Most scientists believe the planet's average global temperature must rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels if we are to minimize the hazards a hotter world will bring: melting ice sheets, rising seas, extreme weather, extinctions, crop failures, severe droughts.

Houghton served for nearly fifteen years as one of the lead scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, overseeing the release of the world's most authoritative reports on the subject. I asked him how much time we had to turn things around. “We have seven years,” he said. To confine global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, our emissions of greenhouse gases would have to peak in 2015 and decline steadily thereafter.

We'll surely miss that deadline, and in the meantime we're setting the worst sorts of records. In May 2013 the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, a level unmatched since 3 million years ago, when sea levels may have been 60 feet higher than today. That dreary benchmark should have made headlines, trumping every other story. Instead, some of our leading news organizations have cut back on environmental coverage. Why does the most important subject of our time receive such underwhelming attention? I sometimes fantasize that daily reports of carbon dioxide concentrations will displace the latest figures from the Dow Jones or that dancers at a Super Bowl half-time spectacle will enact how sea-level rise will force the Miami Dolphins to seek a new home before the century ends.

The world we knew is literally disappearing. Hurricane Sandy chopped more than 30 feet off New Jersey's beaches, redrawing the state's coastline overnight. Such storms will become more frequent and more devastating in the decades ahead. What will it take to wake us up? Perhaps some of the remarkable stories in this collection will help. Few writers have done more than Elizabeth Kolbert to alert us to the enormous scale and peril of the threat we've unleashed on ourselves. This volume contains her magnificent two-part article from
The New Yorker
, “The Lost World,” which should be required reading for politicians in every nation. (One hesitates to call them leaders.) Kolbert shows how we are now witnessing ecological changes in mere years that once took place over geologic time scales.

Call me biased, but I'm convinced that you will find in these pages the most important journalism of our time, the stories that will last. Whether it's Nicholas Carr's account of the corrosive effect of technology on our brains in “The Great Forgetting” or Corey S. Powell's “The Madness of the Planets,” a lively and lyrical narrative of the dangers lurking in our rough-and-tumble solar system, the articles here are the sort that will change the way you look at the world. They also make for delightful and often moving reading. I know I will never forget the planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson's “O-Rings,” with its unexpected links between Antarctic exploration and .Â .Â . well, I won't spoil it for you. I was astonished to learn from Johnson that “O-Rings” is her first published essay. I'm certain it won't be her last.

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