Letter from the Editor: Winter 2008

The Long Wait Before Something Happens

You'll find in these pages some brilliant solutions to several of our planet's more vexing crises. And yet... Discerning what those solutions should be is often merely a halting first step across the wide chasm between knowledge and action -- a long, agonizing stretch of time when societies have trouble mustering sufficient will and clarity to act.

In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria kills a million people every year, most of them pregnant women and babies. There exist medicines to treat the disease, larvicides to kill the young mosquitoes that carry it, and bed nets to keep adult mosquitoes from feasting on new victims. Spraying DDT inside homes can kill mosquitoes, too, though the pesticide has long been banned in many countries because of its harmful environmental effects. Moreover, mosquitoes can become resistant to the insecticide, and there is growing evidence of its impact on human health. The intense international debate on bringing back DDT -- fueled in part by anti-environmentalist rhetoric -- at times threatens to drown out more reasoned consideration of the best options, especially in African nations critically short of public health resources and infrastructure, where the most virulent form of malaria is epidemic. In our cover story, Kim Larsen reports from Kenya that "the best strategy for outmaneuvering the wily disease is to hit it and the mosquito it rode in on with as wide a range of ammo as possible." She introduces us to men and women working in the most trying circumstances who exhibit the kind of ingenuity, compassion, and persistence that could eventually vanquish Africa's signature plague if they only receive the necessary support.

The painful lag between knowing and doing can be seen from a different perspective in the western United States, where wildfires blazed catastrophically this past summer and fall. After watching the fires burn in his home state of Montana, author Richard Manning saw a human influence as potent as the winds that drove the flames: a legacy of bad fire-control policies and a crazy habit of building more and more homes adjacent to flammable forests. On top of this, we now confront an era of punishing drought and heat that will only worsen as climate change advances. Manning spoke to experts in fire management -- folks on the front lines battling the blazes -- who urge sensible solutions: let fires burn to consume trees and brush that will otherwise become tinder for future conflagrations, stop constructing houses where they don't belong, and confront global warming. But will we listen?

Tackling such monumental problems requires collective will and immense resources. But individuals act as catalysts. You'll love Dan Driscoll, who almost singlehandedly rescued Boston's Charles River from neglect and indifference, turning the abused waterway into a surprising refuge for people and wildlife. He and others you will meet in this issue -- plant biologists, marketing gurus, ranchers, to cite a few -- remind us that we are moving forward, however slowly.

Doug Barasch

Douglas S. Barasch