Counterfeit Optimism: A Supplementary Book Review of "Inheritors of the Earth," by Chris D. Thomas

If someone wrote a book about women or a minority, saying that mistreatment of them by those in power is perfectly natural and has in fact made them more resilient, that efforts to help them are futile, and that if we wait a million years they will be fine, the writer would not be hailed as an optimist. Yet a remarkable number of book reviewers have accepted as optimistic a similar logic about nature, as described by Chris D. Thomas in his book Inheritors of the Earth.

That a book can be so flawed in logic and still be reviewed favorably in the news media and on book-selling sites makes clear just how vulnerable society has become to skewed thinking. Even the science writer Elizabeth Kolbert, whose New Yorker essay "The Darkening Sea" is one of my all time favorites, is advertised on the front cover as having given the book her imprimatur. Unlike most other authors who try to let readers off the hook by claiming that invasive species aren't a big problem after all, Thomas has actual degrees in biology and ecology, so his misrepresentations of nature are all the more puzzling.

The professional journal, Biological Invasions, recently published a review I wrote of Inheritors of the Earth. As author, I was given this link to allow access for readers who lack a subscription to the journal. That's the best, most concise read, but because that review may not be otherwise easily encountered, here are some additional thoughts, and some more detailed examples of the book's many deceptions.

INHERITORS OF THE EARTH, by Chris D. Thomas--a supplementary review

In a dark time, when so many problems linger unsolved, and when coordinated action to solve these shared problems is thwarted by political sabotage, hope becomes a scarce commodity. Competing for market share in the hope industry that has sprung up on the outskirts of this void is a book by Chris D. Thomas called Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction. The book seeks to absolve us of any species guilt we may feel, as our accelerating alteration of climate, land, and sea propels nature towards the predicted apocalyptic extinctions of the Anthropocene. Thomas erases responsibility and associated guilt by declaring humans and everything we do to be perfectly natural. His version of optimism is to claim that mass extinctions have happened before, are happening now, and will happen again, but that evolution has always patched things up over time. Check back in a million years and everything will be fine. That this logic is being sold as optimistic shows just how much the fabric of the future has unraveled, and how desperate is the search for silver linings in darkening clouds.

A close look at “Inheritors” reveals an underlying, abject pessimism, along with the now familiar techniques used by previous books in this applecart-spilling genre to discredit mainstream science and the work of conservationists. Once again--as in previous books, by Marris, Pearce, Orion and others--invasion biologists and conservationists are portrayed as emotion-bound sentimentalists who are wasting money and effort on a futile attempt to take us back to some past idyllic state of nature. Thomas takes the skewed logic of those antecedent books further, portraying nature not as a highly evolved, complex web of interactions among species, but as a random assemblage of winners and losers. Rampancy by invasive species is viewed as a sign of success. Human needs in this unmoored landscape are paramount, but, surprise, it turns out according to the author that the radical changes we have imposed on nature will benefit nature in the long run. Check back in a million years and you’ll see. If it sounds like an elaborate and too clever way to rationalize irresponsible behavior, well, it is.

Here are some of the techniques Thomas and his predecessors use to create false controversy about invasive species:

Claim conservationists are driven by emotion rather than knowledge

Conservationists seek to restore ecological functioning and protect habitats from radical change. But in this book they are told to “throw off the shackles of a pessimism-laden, loss-only view of the world." They are cast not as nurturing and sustaining, but rather “referees and arbiters of how nature should be.” Conservationists, according to Thomas, are "not happy", they harbor a "hatred of foreign species", and are "poised to kill.” "How long,” Thomas asks in one of his more provocative moments, “will it be before the environmental police force of ecologists and conservationists is prepared to step back and decriminalize introduced species that have had the temerity to be successful." Another quote, "Environmentalists may dislike them (invasive species) for their newfound success,” exemplifies how the book repeatedly portrays conservationists in negative, emotion-drenched terms, rather than explaining to readers the scientific basis for a conservationist’s work. And rather than grapple with the findings of invasion biology, the author wraps mocking quotes around “invasion biologists”, and returns to his polemic.

Overstate conservation's goals in order to declare them impractical

Imitating previous books in this genre, Thomas manipulates readers by repeatedly exaggerating the aims of conservationists. Here’s an example: “... to maintain our ecosystems and species in some idealized state is not possible.” Or, “No change is not an option…” Thomas adds his own additional pessimistic twist, claiming that even less extreme goals will prove impossible to achieve: “... we will fail if we attempt to keep things exactly, or even roughly, as they are.”

(Interestingly, conservationists are seldom if ever quoted in books of this genre, the better to sustain them as strawmen for Thomas’s ire.)

Intention vs. unintention: 

In order to relieve readers of any feeling of responsibility and guilt for the degradation of nature, apologists like Thomas make an unspoken distinction between intentional and unintentional action. Since so much of the damage done to nature is unintentional (the CO2 coming out of our exhaust pipes, the invasive species that are accidentally spread around the world by unregulated global commerce and travel) the author must portray unintentional acts as innocent and natural. Secondly, intentional action to right the unintentional wrong must be portrayed as futile, arrogant, dangerous, or all the above.

The strategy of forgiving our unintentional collateral damage while eschewing intentional, organized remediation can be seen at play in the following paragraph from the book. Nature is portrayed as damaged goods, our destructive impacts as natural, and attempts to remedy as futile.

"... we will fail if we attempt to keep things exactly, or even roughly, as they are. This dynamic perspective of biological change might sound like capitulation, but, in fact, it releases us. The earth was not in some perfect or final state before humans pitched up. Life is a process, not a final product. So we need a conservation philosophy that is based on natural change, with humans centre stage: partly because we have already brought about so many changes to the world that cannot be ignored, and partly because humans evolved naturally and we are part of the natural system."

By Thomas’s extreme definition of natural, even nuclear holocaust would apparently be deemed as natural as a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower. People are relieved, through this perspective, from any responsibilities that might come with our enormous power to pollute and transform.

Abject pessimism

Thomas claims to be an optimist, but the book's prologue is extraordinarily pessimistic about any intentional action to spare nature the worst of our abuses. Check out this stirring call to inaction: "There is no point in taking on a never-ending fight with the inevitability of eventual failure." Think of any movement, whether it be civil rights or women's rights, or to sustain nature or democracy, and ask yourself if those are the words of an optimist. In any struggle, social or environmental, there are always countervailing forces against which one must fight, and victory is never assured. And where's the optimism in "come back in a million years”? If said of any other problem humanity faces, “come back in a million years” would be considered a cruel joke.

Thomas saves his deepest pessimism for page 241, where he declares that any "urge to fight a specific biological change" must meet the following test: "Will our efforts have made much difference a few hundred years hence? If not, this means we are fighting a battle we will inevitably lose. Next, will our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren be that bothered if the state of the world has been altered, given that they will not know exactly how it is today? If the answer to this second question is no, this means we are fighting battles we do not need to win." Again, it seems heartless to rationalize inaction on the grounds that our descendants surely won’t miss what they’ve never known.

The nature of evolution and diversity

The central tenet of the book is that human disruptions and translocations of species around the world, while causing many extinctions, are also speeding up evolution of new ones. Invasive species are said to have caused few extinctions in the areas they invade, and so can be said to actually increase the total number of species in any particular area. But the book doesn’t examine the possibility that invasive species are undermining the ongoing evolution of indigenous species. If, through competition from invasives, a species becomes more and more rare, gene transfer between scattered remnant populations will decline, and the species will lose the capacity to evolve and adapt to changing conditions. Invasive species and habitat fragmentation due to development deliver a one-two punch, undermining evolution when it is most needed for adaptation to rapid changes in climate.

Thomas holds conservation in such low esteem in part because he sees no web in the web of life. Diversity is presented as a straight numbers game, a body count. For a book that is banking on evolution to compensate for the damage we are currently doing, he shows next to no interest in relationships like symbiosis that suggest a deeper interconnectivity between co-evolved species. Only the most mundane examples of mutualism are given. In “Inheritors”, species are portrayed time and again as free agents that can be jumbled together from all corners of the world, and left to duke it out for dominance. "Mix the species up and see who wins,” he declares. "The history of life on earth is one long story of successful animals and plants replacing those that proved to be less successful."

And yet the book calls for preservation of habitat.

Sprinkled through the text are occasional, almost parenthetical calls for protection of remaining habitats around the world. These calls for preservation sound jarring in a book that repeatedly defines species as winners or losers whose fate is of no concern to us. Preservation, it seems, helps Thomas make the claim that introduced species add to local diversity, "as long as there are still sufficient remnants of the earlier vegetation to act as refuges for the most sensitive species."

Thomas views remnant populations of indigenous species as “spare parts”, “building blocks” that should be saved “to maintain flexibility for future change.” And yet his indifference to the stress invasive species exert on remnant native populations, along with his abject pessimism about the conservation efforts needed to keep remnant populations alive, make these calls for preservation ring hollow.

Conspicuous omissions and blurred distinctions

Thomas claims that, outside his window, "the basics of biology remain. Regardless of their origin ... plants still capture energy from the sun and convert it into leaves, rendering the world green; animals consume plants and their seeds and in turn are killed and eaten by other animals." The part about "animals consume plants" is often not true. Introduced plants that become invasive tend to be those that the local animals won't eat, whether due to texture, taste or toxins. This gives the invasive plants a competitive advantage, so that they displace the native species, making the habitat less edible for wildlife as time goes on. Herbivores are proving incredibly slow at evolving a taste for stiltgrass, or the poisonous fig buttercup, or any number of other highly invasive species. What Thomas calls a successful species may not be superior, but merely have escaped, through human transfer to a new continent, the predators, herbivores, or diseases that kept its numbers in balance where it originally evolved.

Elsewhere in the book, Thomas describes how forests moved north as the glaciers receded, displacing grasslands. He believes that the human transfer of species from one continent to another is no different from this historic north/south shift of plant communities. But those historic shifts were not only gradual, over thousands of years, but also involved the shift not of this or that individual species but of whole communities of plants and animals that had evolved together, establishing checks and balances over time.

SORTED NOTES:

Click on “read more” to access my detailed notes on the book, including page numbers for various claims and contradictions.

Claim conservationists are driven by emotion rather than knowledge.

Prologue: "It is time for the ecological, conservation and environmental movement ... to throw off the shackles of a pessimism-laden, loss-only view of the world."

Prologue: "The default stance of conservation is to keep things as unchanged as possible, or, alternatively, to return conditions to what they used to be, or somehow to make the earth more 'natural'

His own pessimism: "untenable aspirations"

Prologue: "There is no point in taking on a never-ending fight with the inevitability of eventual failure."

18-9: "it often seems that we have set ourselves apart to act as referees and arbitors of how nature should be..."

23: Hint at nativism/racism

103: conservationists, etc. "not happy", "hatred of foreign species", "poised to kill",

104: "How long will it be before the environmental police force of ecologists and conservationists is prepared to step back and decriminalize introduced species that have had the temerity to be successful." (spins nurturing as coercive. What is a gardener then, or a doctor?) (and what are we to think of battles to maintain public health? Aren't they just a fruitless battle to save weak members of society that will ultimately fail?)

122: "an island, mainland cage or uncaged death zone" (but why aren't the released predators considered agents of death?--intention vs unintention, reminds of the animal rights activists who released thousands of minks into the British landscape where they fed on a rare species

124: "presumption that the old species are better than the new" (doesn't provide readers with the rationale that conservationists use

124 "Rather than attempt to assuage our ancestral guilt and defend an unending siege, it might be better to go with the flow."

218: Many ecologists and environmentalists, and particularly a special cadre of 'invasive species biologists', are prone to regard changes to the locations where species live as evidence that we are moving towards a less desirable world. They regret how the world is turning out."

219: We can look forward to future changes with an element of excitement and interest, not just with foreboding.

219: "But simply regretting that things are no longer as they were and venting our frustration at the unnatural state of the world is not the way forward."

226: "Environmentalists may dislike them for their newfound success."

(but does anything eat them? As usual, the importance of herbivory goes unmentioned)

237: "The past is gone"

237: conventional conservation = "fiddling while Rome burns"

Overstate conservation's goals in order to declare it impractical.

Prologue: "Attempting to prevent the establishment of alien arrivals ... so as to maintain our ecosystems and species in some idealized state is not possible,

219: "'No change' is not an option when we contemplate the future: our choices are all about the direction and speed of future change.

intention vs. unintention

120: similar to Marris-- "like a zoo, with predators controlled" (as if intentional removal of non-native predators is less natural than their accidental introduction) (is it natural to catch an imported disease, but unnatural for a doctor to restore health?)

123: pessimistic about intentional action

125: assumes no benefits intrinsic to the effort

125: calls for introduction of species, at first without considering unforeseen consequences, but then later acknowledges previous ill effects of bio control introductions

159: "deliberately" : intention as bad?

229: "we will fail if we attempt to keep things exactly, or even roughly, as they are. This dynamic perspective of biological change might sound like capitulation, but, in fact, it releases us. The earth was not in some perfect or final state before humans pitched up. Life is a process, not a final product. So we need a conservation philosophy that is based on natural change, with humans centre stage: partly because we have already brought about so many changes to the world that cannot be ignored, and partly because humans evolved naturally and we are part of the natural system." (But doesn't he consider intentional action to mend nature to be unnatural, portraying them in pejorative ways?)

protecting habitats

Prologue: "while remaining cognizant of the many human-caused losses." Keeping as many species as possible alive on our global ark should still be a primary target for our conservation activities

Prologue: claims a rise in number of species in areas where there is human disturbance and species introduction "as long as there are still sufficient remnants of the earlier vegetation to act as refuges for the most sensitive species."

68: "while other species continue to survive within protected habitats." (but "survive" is a low bar. Do they survive in sufficient numbers to be able to continue to adapt, or are they slipping towards extinction?)

102: Lake Maggiori: invasive introductions add to total species count "without, as far as is known, any 'native' species becoming extinct as a consequence."

111: extinction as the only measure of impact of invasives

128: "This is why it is so important to protect examples of all the different kinds of habitats that exist in the world, especially in places where there are concentrations of species that live nowhere else." (yes, but how, especially when he's advocating for introducing species helter skelter everywhere, as in quote from same page:)

230: "The second principle is to maintain flexibility for future change." (by saving "the world's existing species -- within reason...currently rare species that may in future become common -- earth's spare parts that might be needed in the future..."

233: maintain flexibility for future generations (anthropocentric)

"underlying philosophy of conservation..."

233: "keep alive the building blocks..." (how is this reconciled with his "let the winners win and the losers lose mentality expressed elsewhere?)

234: we should not ignore species that are un...  (contradictory)

--contradicts 231, judging what to keep

219: PESSIMISM This does not let us off the hook, however. It is entirely within our capacity to turn the Earth into a place that is far worse for humans and also far worse for most (but not all) other forms of life. We need to be vigilant." (but how to be vigilant, and what does that mean in terms of working in the field, or limiting introductions of disruptive invasive species? He offers no real clue.)

conspicuous omissions and blurred distinctions

234: Doesn't mention historic north/south movement, long vertical ranges

234: (doesn't discuss different behavior exhibited by different species of elephants. An elephant is an elephant, apparently, like the "where do camels belong" book's notions

235: Species rare in their native range thrive elsewhere (issues: checks and balances, and ascribes no value to co-evolution)

227: confuses north/south shift of forest species that evolved together, with import of new species from elsewhere

rate of change

96: "the speed of transfer motion accellerated" (no mention of speed of change as a problem)

118: "an accelleration of evolutionary change"

105: humans have increased pace of introductions

219: "'No change' is not an option when we contemplate the future: our choices are all about the direction and speed of future change. (but what are the pros and cons of speed)

234: ignores rate of change as important

excuses us from any potential harm this mixing could do: "By mixing up the world's species, humans have accelerated their demise rather than altered their eventual fate."

the nature of evolution and diversity

Prologue: "...the biological world is in constant flux."

regard people as part of nature, work with nature, not against it (yet doesn’t seem to believe that nature has a logic and complex functioning that predates people)

23: "successful species" -- what defines success? Numbers? How about coexistence, symbiosis?, mutualism?

-doesn't explain rationale for discouraging hybridization

24: interesting discussion of stilts

25: species as free agents, disconnected from any interrelational context

30: diversity purely a numbers game

44-7: primitive, bare bones examples of mutualism, combined with a view that sheer cumulative body mass of large mammals is good news

56: "It seems like an almost unnecessary diversity"

67: discussion of diversity and human-influenced habitats (might this be primarily generalists?)

84: "species come and go"   "interlopers"

91-94: core view of gain-loss?

"The forest delivers benefits that humans prize."

103: tree species returning (but how about the wildlife that eat them?)

117: "Evolution is how life comes back from disaster"

121: "some of the world's species are rising to the top, while others are losing out"

"The history of life on earth is one long story of successful animals and plants replacing those that proved to be less successful."

"This is how evolutionary replacement works. By moving species from one continent to another, and from continents to islands, humans have accelerated the process by which the eventual winners come out on top."

132 the apologist: species that were, he is essentially saying, going to die anyway: "By mixing up the world's species, humans have accelerated their demise rather than altered their eventual fate."

140: "Mix the species up and see who wins."

"incomplete" (places where evolution didn't fill the niches)

(suggests evolution isn't so dependable after all?)

149: cherry-picking: "It is not just checkerspots that are experimenting."  and "It is the same in England", and "It is not just butterflies."

151: "humans are spurring evolution on"

156: "The development of different varieties of animals and plants is simply a consequence of some individuals surviving and reproducing better than others..."  The recurrent use of the word "simply", while avoiding mention of contrary evidence.

156: some talk of "mutual benefit", but mostly between flower and pollinator, bird and fruit; seems very primitive and bare bones portrayal of mutualism, compared to Tallamy

157: co-evolution: "Given enough time..." (But doesn't grapple with how interdependence could argue for stability and make for a vulnerability to change)

158: "forcing evolution into overdrive"

160: "successful and unsuccessful genes" (and if another species displaces us, we will simply be holders of "unsuccessful" genes, so not to worry)

Britain spawns a warped perspective? America more isolated?

193: hybridization--doesn't explain the logic of why it's a concern (doesn't see any worth in what has evolved over time)

(can we say that he praises evolution, but is fine with seeing the result of it trashed and mangled)

195: "increased extinction and increased diversification"

197: core belief--new hybrids, setting the stage for new diversification

220-229: rare species becoming common is typical of earth's history (no distinction between expansion naturally, and introduction from afar, nor of speed of change)

223-4: Monterey Pine invasion in Chile? invasive as "heir to the world"

224: Blue gum eucalyptus preferred by monarchs??

"...represent a fire danger and oust native plants." (no quotes around the word native?)

"By mixing up the world's species, humans have accelerated their demise rather than altered their eventual fate."

Thomas claims that the human-facilitated spread of species around the world has led to relatively few extinctions of pre-existing species. This great mixing of species, he states, typically increases local diversity.

236: more coulds

(a generally impoverished treatment of interconnectedness in nature)

236: alludes to interconnectedness

megafauna affect plants, which affect insects (food chain?, mutual dependency?

Woulds, coulds, and cans

125--lots of woulds

126: "might be"

235: "could"s creep in

236: more coulds

241: a flurry of "cans"--apparently sounds more likely to happen than "could"s

Generalists vs. specialists

141: "The success stories are already all around us. Look out of your window and the chances are you will be staring at the future." (in other words, it's the generalists that will survive, but he doesn't divide the world up into specialists and generalists. All we see is winners and losers, no other apparent distinction.)

(an extremely repetitive book)

149: The caterpillars of one third of all of the 236 native butterfly species that live in California include newly arrived exotic plants in their diet. That is astonishing, given that most of these introduced plants have been growing in California for less than two hundred years. American butterflies are seemingly rushing to exploit foreign plants."

149: no distinction between generalists and specialists

235: mentions "generalists" species vs rare

PESSIMISM ABOUT HUMANITY

226: Blue gums "destined...to survive the human era" (why, then, do we bother helping humans to survive?)

229-30: FOUR PRINCIPALS (completely anthropocentric?)

"The first principal is to accept change." Describes diversity as a balance sheet of "gains and losses".

"The second principle is to maintain flexibility for future change." (by saving "the world's existing species -- within reason...currently rare species that may in future become common -- earth's spare parts that might be needed in the future..."

"The third principle is that humans are natural within the Earth system, so anything we do is also a natural part of the evolutionary history of life." (doesn't this mean that intentional restorative action, of which he is so pessimistic, is also natural?)

"And the fourth principal is that we still have to live within our planetary bounds."

230: "anything we do is also a natural part of the evolutionary history of life"

Principal 1: accepting change is not the same as laissez-fair

"prodding the world"   "effective and efficient"

Principal 3: excuses humanity from any responsibility for stewardship

231: "patch the world up afterwards is inefficient

paragraph about judging what to keep

"species and habitats" -- but focuses on species as unconnected to habitat, not part of an ecosystem, not interconnected

232: "dynamism is how species ultimately survive..."

arbitrary baselines--now, or 130,000 years ago?

(ignores co-evolution)

"It is difficult to understand..."

241: "Whenever our urge is to fight a specific biological change, we should ask the following triplet of questions. Will our efforts have made much difference a few hundred years hence? If not, this means we are fighting a battle we will inevitably lose. Next, will our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren be that bothered if the state of the world has been altered, given that they will not know exactly how it is today? If the answer to this second question is no, this means we are fighting battles we do not need to win. If change is inevitable, which it is, we should then ask a third question: how can we maximize the benefits that our descendants derive from the natural world? In other words, how can we promote changes that might be favourable to the future human condition, as well as avoid the losses of species that might be important in unknown ways in future?"

234: climate refugees

234: "old thinking"

"we can be proactive"

"humans are part of the new nature"

235: cherry picking with elephants

Any species location anywhere is immediately "natural"

extinction as the measure "eventually"

tricky paragraph: "Such accidents...promoting introducing species

235: "could"s creep in

225: Blue gum confined to small area before humans moved them

234: humans natural (therefore nuclear war is natural?)

Where does he explain how long it takes new species to evolve?

237: "The past is gone"

237: conventional conservation = "fiddling while Rome burns"

His alternative?: "We can think about engineering new ecosystems and biological communities into existence, inspired but not constrained by the past."

"inspired" suggests some value in what nature evolved

248: Star thistle

(why couldn't native species speciate?)

250 less is more?