About book Visit Sunny Chernobyl - Adventures In The World's Most Polluted Places (2013)
I enjoy this kind of travelogue, with reservations. The topic is a serious and fascinating one: the author set out to visit some of the most polluted places in the world, whilst freely admitting that any such choice would be arbitrary. He began in Chernobyl, taking in Canada’s tar sands, America’s oil refineries, India’s rivers, Brazil’s deforestation, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and China’s toxic smog. For the most part, I thought Blackwell struck a thoughtful and appropriate tone. The chapter covering his voyage on the Pacific was the most amusing part, as he admits to having 'Patrick O’Brian Syndrome that impels him to yell “Where away!” when spotting items of plastic rubbish. I wasn’t wholly comfortable with him bringing his romantic life into the book though, I felt they made it more personal than was necessary. His complaints about the Amazon being ostensibly not destroyed enough annoyed me at first, however I forgave them once he came to a more nuanced view on the shared responsibility for deforestation.In fact, the analysis in this book was more thoughtful than I dared to hope for. I find that travelogues by white male Americans are best approached warily as, no doubt with good intentions in mind, they so easily seem very patronising. As an example, I appreciated Blackwell’s point about the ambivalence between local environmental movements and international NGOs. The latter can generally pursue issues only in a relatively short-term and superficial manner, relative to local organisations. On the other hand, NGOs may be in a better position to challenge multinational companies’ behaviour. Another good point that is made repeatedly in the book is the Western problem of assuming nature is something separate to humanity. It is far more helpful to see ourselves as part of nature. The environment as something that we have changed, continue to change, and cannot simply leave alone. We must learn to live better within it.This book doesn’t claim to rehabilitate polluted places, although it makes clear that they are still people’s homes (in most cases). Neither does it give any real idea of how to improve them, merely demonstrating how they came to be as polluted as they did and why not enough has yet been done to improve things. The style is chatty and accessible, interspersed with moments of deeper analysis. I learned some interesting facts and came away less depressed than I'd expected. The Canada tar sands chapter was the most dispiriting to me, although I felt like the Linfen one would have been worse had the consequences of pollution been explored in more depth. In fact, the whole book was more fun than maybe it should have been. I’m giving it three rather than four stars for that; philosophical as one has to be about our individual ability to save the planet, too much equanimity turns into inertia. Danger might be Blackwell's name, as he organizes expeditions to some of the worst possible destinations on earth.Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a wonderful chapter, when Blackwell joins a specious, semi-scientific cruise to find where the Pacific Ocean has rafted together miles of trash. His escapades in Chernobyl are unbelievable, and his guide even more so - living in radiation and ignoring the reality of pollution. Texas oil fields, the Ganges River, ewaste in China - how can humanity possibly survive?
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CADL Nonfiction Book Group title June 2013.
—razberry
