Earth Day

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Book Report: Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes" charts what happens when you leave " the front door" open | NCPR News

I bought this book at my local, independent bookstore  (shout out to Forever Books in St. Joseph) because, I thought, if I am going to drink from and frolic around Lake Michigan, it was time I learned something about it.  Dan Egan states the case well and makes the reader aware just how high the stakes are.

97 percent of the globe's water is saltwater.  Of the 3 percent or so that is freshwater, most is locked up in the polar ice caps or trapped so far underground it is inaccessible.  And of the sliver left over that exists at surface freshwater readily available for human use, about 20 percent of that--one out of every five gallons available on the planet--can be found in the Great Lakes.  p. xiii

Egan does an impressive job of sharing the history of the Great Lakes from the time the colonialists arrived on Turtle Island to the present.  He shares how the want for greater trade and commerce led to substantive, human-made geographical changes in the Great Lakes so that ships could make their way from all over the globe, into the Atlantic Ocean and then further south into these surface freshwater resources.  

Here is what led to one of the major threats to the Great Lakes.  As these ships made their way, the ballast water they had taken on to balance their ships while at home port, would then be dumped in the Great Lakes.  A diverse, biological bonanza was dumped into an ecosystem that had developed an ecological harmony and balance over thousands of years.  In particular, zebra and quagga mussels threatened to kill the lakes with the way they destroyed ecosystem infrastructure without any real predators.  

Though the Clean Water Act had brought the Great Lakes back from filth, fire (remember when Lake Erie was set on fire) death, and extinction, the exceptions for ballast water had left the door open for these intruders.  Efforts to stem this invasion have been half-hearted and lacked enforcement.  Stewards of the Great Lakes have also been concerned about advancing carp populations and how they might wipe out lake life and take with them the Native whitefish, trout, and walleye that were staple fish which used to be so plentiful in the Great Lakes.  

One of the other major contributors to lake pollution and die-off has been agricultural run-off.  Those of you who know me must wonder if all I do is blame our food system for any number of troubles in the world.  Climate change, immigration, and now the death of the Great Lakes!  C'mon, MIke!  Find a new story!

We continue to use fertilizers and pesticides at alarming rates which then run off into our water systems.  I'm not sure we can have any other system but chemical agriculture as long as capitalism is what we turn to deliver goods and services.  Capitalism requires more and more and more--consuming beyond what it means to be engorged.  Farmers look for higher yields and are blitzed with advertising to go bigger, grow more, and extract what they can.  

Egan ends his book with hope for the courageous decisions necessary to reverse the death-giving we give and allow for in the Great Lakes.  He is not romantic without a critical analysis for multivalent solutions needed to meet these challenges.  Yes, courageous decisions will need to be made but some of the native fish within the Great Lakes have already made some evolutionary changes to begin thriving.  Science may contribute a way to end carp reproduction and therefore stem the threat they pose.  

Threaded throughout his book are personal stories each person (scientist, fisherfolk, professor) has in their history of enjoying the relationship they had fishing or swimming or just being in relationship with their family at the Great Lakes.  Not unlike Bill McKibben, who believes we must develop relationships with the particular to really build our muscle for climate change, Egan believes the will for balance and health in the ecosystem of the Great Lakes must be found with those relationships.  He ends his book with a photo of his son having caught his first fish.  

I wish Egan's book was required reading for every local church found along the Great Lakes.  We need people with that relationship to incorporate this critical analysis into their love relationship with a resource that will become more and more necessary as climate change becomes more severe.  We should also remember, as Nick Estes reminded me, when the day comes that climate change comes close to the point of no return, we must not blame Mother Earth.  We are sewing violence into Mother Earth with our economic systems (like food) every day.  I pray that we are not too late to reap only violence.


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