According to the Boston Globe, President Obama purchased my book, My Green Manifesto, while shopping at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard last month. No writer expects this kind of thing, and in fact my attitude toward publication is usually more in line with Ed Abbey’s: “One more book down the well of oblivion.” But with the president’s purchase, my book suddenly felt slightly less destined for the oblivion hole. The article about the purchase sent a flurry of congratulatory phone calls and e-mails my way, and left me with a general sense of giddiness that lasted the weekend.
But after those superficial pleasures faded, I was left with a deeper question. What did I want -- really want -- for the commander in chief to take away from my book? It puts forth the idea that environmentalism has become too elitist and stuffy, and that it tends to swing from hysterical END OF THE WORLD warnings to mystical mumblings to dry technocratic language, and that, all in all, that language needs to be thrown over a clothesline and beaten with a broom.
The reason I focus on language is that I believe if we are able to speak more clearly about the so-called environment then we might be able to think more clearly about it too. If we did, we might realize that we, as species, evolved in nature, and that we are still drawn to it in a way that, when denied, twists us up inside. We might also understand that connecting to places, and loving and fighting for them, is about as natural an urge as a human can have. When I was finishing my book the editors suggested that, since mine was an environmental book, it should have bullet points, likely thinking I would make a list of how we should all take the lint out of our driers and screw in those twisty light bulbs. I complied, but with a different kind of list. Mine had only two points:
1. Have a small love affair with something in the world, a place or an animal or idea.
2. Fight like hell for that thing.
But what does this all have to do with our president? Am I suggesting that he sneak out of his vacation house on the Vineyard next summer, smear clay and osprey feathers on his body, swim naked, and howl at the moon? Well, yes, partly. But I’m also suggesting, to a man who puts such a high premium on being practical, that it is possible to weld pragmatism and passion.
This combination of qualities is embodied in my book’s protagonist, Dan Driscoll, an environmental planner for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, who spent over twenty years working toward what most deemed an impossible goal: cleaning up and re-planting the banks of the Charles River, a river once so famously polluted that it inspired the Standells’ “Dirty Water.” Dan Driscoll’s quixotic goal was to sell the idea of the Charles as a nature preserve, all the while wrangling, talking, and legislating land away from encroaching factory owners, homeowners, and even a local Mafioso in his attempt to restore native plants and trees to create a green corridor through the heart of Boston. Dan’s was an odd quest, no doubt about it, but in this age of environmental losses and hand-wringing, perhaps the oddest thing about it was this: it was successful.
Four years ago I paddled the length of the Charles River with Dan and wrote about it, first in an article for OnEarth (see "Riding the Wild Charles"), and later in My Green Manifesto. What especially struck me about Dan, other than his obvious love and attachment to the place, was his hard-headed and practical manner. His was not a pure environmentalism.
“We nature lovers are hypocrites of course,” he said as we paddled down the river. “We are all hypocrites. None of us are consistent. The problem is that we let that fact stop us. We worry that if we fight for nature, people will say, ‘But you drive a car’ or ‘You fly a lot’ or ‘You’re a consumer, too.’ And that stops us in our tracks. It’s almost as if admitting that we are hypocrites gets people off the hook.”
I pulled my paddle out of the water and turned back to listen.
“What we need are more hypocrites,” he said. “We need hypocrites who aren’t afraid of admitting it but will still fight for the environment. We don’t need some sort of pure movement run by pure people. We need hypocrites!”
This was what I found so exhilarating about being with Dan, a mix of raw passion and realism. Dan’s view seemed to open up environmentalism to the rest of us, to make it sloppier, more hypocritical, more fun, and, ultimately, more effective. In fact, Dan Dricoll seemed to approach fighting for the earth with an almost entrepreneurial gusto, exactly the kind of eco-fighter that the president himself envisioned during his first campaign, before all things environmental fell off his radar. Dan takes particular pride in the fact that he worked with corporations and businesses, and while some of those first fought his plan, they all now support it and act as stewards on the land.
So I suppose my hope would be that Mr. Obama, reading my book during all his spare time, would recognize in it not just the type of man he once held up to us for admiration, but the man that many of us hoped he was. Because if Dan Driscoll was open-minded and pragmatic, he also knew when to dig in his heels, to fight for something he believed in, no matter how absurd it might seem to others or how much ridicule was heaped on him, and to fight with the same spit and vinegar spirit as one of his own heroes, Teddy Roosevelt. It was simple really: he fell in love with both a place and an idea, fought for a couple decades for that place and idea, and did so in the face of great criticism, shaken at times but sure he was right.
Am I wrong to think the leader of the free world might learn something from a guy named Dan?
Editor's note: David Gessner's latest book, The Tarball Chronicles, which also grew out of his reporting for OnEarth, is out today ... you know, just in case the president is looking for a sequel. Publisher's Weekly calls it "brilliant." Really. That's why we hired him, folks.
