The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy Hardcover – 21 May 2015

This is a great book that anyone who cares about nature ought to read. It’s both a warning and a benchmark: it should help re-set our ambition to safeguard nature where it remains, and shows the abundance and quality of nature that we should recover, where it has been lost.McCarthy writes about what he calls 'The Great Thinning' - the way pesticides and other farm chemicals have wiped so much wildlife from our countryside, and even town and suburban green spaces. He says: “it’s the loss of abundance itself I mourn … people over the age of fifty can remember springtime lapwings crying and swooping over every field, corn buntings alert on each hedge and telegraph wire, swallow aerobatics in every farmyard and clouds of finches on the autumn stubbles; they remember nettle beds swarming with small tortoiseshell and peacock caterpillars, the sparking pointillist palette of the hay meadows, ditches crawling and croaking with frogs and toads and even in the suburbs, song-bird speckled lawns and congregations of house martins in their dashing navy-blue elegance … but most vividly of all, some of them remember the moth snowstorm”By that he means the way that there were once so many moths that on warm humid summer evening, they used to appear like a cloud of snowflakes in the car headlights. British people old enough will remember that - and this book is partly about how that eco-disaster crept up slowly on us and we got used to it: the insidious 'moving baseline'. 'Silent Spring' has very largely happened and we didn't react - or not enough. Hopefully this book will encourage more efforts at rewilding and creation of new habitats, and the reduction in use of agro-chemicals. For people in countries like the former communist East Europe it's also a warning: don't let it happen there, where you still have so much more nature. For everyone who cares about nature here, it should be a wake-up call. We need to get the abundance of nature back, not just marvel at a few sad survivors in isolated nature reserves.

For a book with the word "joy" in its subtitle, this is not a cheerful book. Nevertheless, it is an important one, acting as tribute, elegy and call to arms for the natural world.Make no mistake - we are losing it all at an accelerating rate. Eventually, we may lose our own place on the planet as a result of our greed and stupidity, but Michael McCarthy contends that we will lose something else long before that - we will lose a part of ourselves.Our 50,000 generations as hunter-gatherers have had a more profound affect than the 500 generations as farmers and then city dwellers. We all of us have a propensity to find extraordinary joy and wonder in nature and we will be affected horribly if (when?) it is gone. This, maybe, is the contentious part of the book. Plenty of people are indifferent or even hostile to nature, as the author admits. However, he contends that the potential to feel for it exists in all of us.This is why the arguments in favour of preserving nature have failed in their aims. They do not speak to the sheer attachment we feel to the natural world. "Sustainable development" makes the mistaken assumption that people are fundamentally good, whilst "environmental economics" yields too much ground to those who cannot see any value in anything unless you can make money out of it. Both have their virtues, but both miss the fundamental point about nature - we are part of it. In a chilling aside, McCarthy warns those who are trying to save bees by putting a money value on "pollination services". At this moment, he suggests, some scientist working for a pesticide company will be perfecting plants which do not need insects for pollination. Then we can kill the lot. Unless we remember our joy and love for nature and harness this in its defence, then they will find ways to ignore us.Michael McCarthy weaves into his arguments a personal tale of how nature has affected him during a lifetime of family problems. When you read the section in which butterflies allow him to provide a tribute to his mother, you will cry. I guarantee it. I sobbed.As someone who has experienced exactly the same joy in nature and the rage at its wilful destruction as the author, I loved this book. Whether joy and love are enough to face off the forces of greed, stupidity and economic growth worship is another matter. Somebody needs to give this book to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He'd hate it.

I have been meaning to read this for sometime. There is much to respect and admire, It weaves a personal sometimes emotional family history with mans destruction, decline and threat to the natural world. From early childhood memories of butterflies, to getting on his bike to enjoy birdwatching on the local estuary in his teens, the descriptive writing and his evolving appreciation of the natural world is evocative. A lifetimes experience is incorporated, and the joy gained from enjoying a British bluebell wood in spring to the lasting delight and wonder of close encounters with whales and dolphins will strike a chord with most of us.He argues that the worthwhile admirable philosophy of Sustainable Development and the multi benefits and value of Ecosystem Services are deemed to have failed. Despite good intentions,they have not effectively grasped the public,decision makers and politicians hearts and minds to bring about long term permament change. I found the ending of this book a bit abrupt and unsatisfactory. Religion and beliefs are bought in right near the conclusion and it almost ends up with the thought that love is what makes the world go round.For 95% plus of the book I was in sympathy and related to his story, but I found the ending rather odd and unsatisfactory.There have also been more recent positive good news stories on the Uk nature conservation front, like the successful re-establishment of the Red Kite, which are not featured. For me the final threads of his argument at the end were not satisfactorily tied together, That said, for most of this book,there was a great deal to enjoy and cherish. so overall I found it a very good and informative read with lots to ponder.