When science writer Jon Mooallem took a hard look at his daughter鈥檚 world, he noticed that his four-year-old brushed her teeth with a whale-shaped toothbrush and her hair with a fish-shaped comb. Kids, he realized, live in a world of idealized animals. The adult world, of course, is more complex. In (Penguin Press, $28), Mooallem examines the disconnect between our arcadian animal love and the shameful ways we treat real critters. In Churchill, Manitoba, he witnesses climate change鈥檚 effect on polar bears鈥攁nd sees the absurdity of media-driven conservation when he finds himself trapped with a gang of scientists in a tundra buggy chasing Martha Stewart, who鈥檚 there shooting a segment.
At a California wildlife refuge that serves as the only remaining habitat of the Lange鈥檚 metalmark butterfly, a naturalist rips out invasive weeds and tells Mooallem, 鈥淭his place will never run on its own.鈥 This is the hard truth of 21st-century environmentalism: humans are now godlike garden tenders. 鈥淚f we choose to help [polar bears] survive,鈥 Mooallem writes, 鈥渋t will require a kind of narrow, hands-on management鈥攍ike getting out there and feeding them.鈥 Among a lot of environmentalists, those are fighting words. All respect to Mooallem for having the guts to say them.