Enter Sandman: Childs finds solitude and space in the dunes of Mexico to ponder the future of the planet.
In a few years, adventurer and writer Craig Childs has done more than most of us do in a lifetime. He has explored remote dunes in Mexico, floated an un-run river in Tibet, played amidst Hawaii’s active lava fields and traversed Greenland’s icy corners—all in an effort to tackle big questions about the Earth, its future and what that means for us.
Childs ponders these in his latest book of essays, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Ever Ending Earth (Pantheon, 2012).
No matter what exotic spots beckon, Childs says the best part about leaving is returning to the canyons and creeks of the Southwest and his home at the base of Colorado’s West Elk Mountains where he lives off the grid with his two sons and “Über” wife of twelve years. He made time to catch up with us while navigating the twists and turns of a whirlwind book tour.
What inspired you to write Apocalyptic Planet?
I wanted to push back against the idea that the end is near, that the apocalypse is coming in 2012 because I’ve spent enough time out in the natural world to know that it doesn’t work that way.
There are big trends and big things change, but we can’t live as if the end is near. So much of the apocalyptic thought is just surrender and I wanted to use this book to say “No! This is an amazing world so don’t give up on it. There is a future worth fighting for.”
Why did you go to the globe’s most physically challenging places?
I have an innate fascination for desolate, scarred, revealing, exposed landscapes, places where all of the layers have been peeled back. I chose places that showed the Earth reduced to elemental levels from different forces like genetically modified cornfields in Iowa, the fastest melting glaciers in Patagonia and the driest place in the world—the Atacama Desert in Chile. I picked the superlatives so I could experience the most extreme stories.
What did you learn in these extreme spots?
I learned that these places are possible, that this is what the Earth is capable of. So now when I look at climate models that point toward catastrophic outcomes, I can say this is what a catastrophic outcome looks like, this is what might happen in the future.
How do you feel about what you learned?
It gives me both hope and terror. Hope because I realized the Earth is gonna be fine. The chances of us causing massive, world changing destruction that ends everything are much less than I expected. The Earth is much more resilient than I thought. Terror because although it is resilient, it does have catastrophic tendencies. Resilience for the Earth means life comes back, but we don’t have that kind of resilience as a civilization. There are millions of species, languages, societies that will never come back. Apocalyptic Planet explores these ideas. I’m hopeful that the world will go on forever and terrified to know that little pissants like humans won’t. Catastrophic failures will take out things that we know and love.
What was hardest about writing this book?
Showing these two ideas of thinking at once was the hardest—the idea that the Earth is going to live forever, but that we also have to keep fighting to keep this world beautiful. I had to make sure people didn’t read it and think, “the Earth’s gonna be fine. I don’t have to do anything. I can keep burning fossil fuels to my heart’s content and keep destroying wilderness.”
Chapter names give the impression the Earth is alive—Seas Rise, Mountains Move, Deserts Consume. Why do you do that?
This planet is alive. It has cycles, processes, reproduces itself and it is prone to things that life is prone to like suicide and also thriving. Our question as humans is which way are we pushing it? Toward planetary suicide? Or toward a blooming, bio-diverse crazy planet full of life?
You’ve said the book is about how this planet works, how easily and drastically it can change and how we might understand our place in the midst of it. What is our place in it?
We have made a significant dent in the way the Earth works by causing massive species depletion, dramatically altering chemical balances in the atmosphere and the ocean and much more. We will leave a mark that you can see 10 million years from now. But, I don’t ask whether we belong here or not or whether we’re a cancer or not because we’re a species on the planet. In Apocalyptic Planet, I’m just asking “what is the appropriate way of doing that, of being here?” I’ve discovered that it’s appropriate to first understand what kind of planet we live on and then go from there.
Have we done anything good?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the idea of our massive impact because it’s so industrial and huge. But, I conclude in Apocalyptic Planet that the smallest changes affect things dramatically, especially at a tipping point like this, so individual actions are of the utmost importance.
If there weren’t people defending wilderness and working for preservation, we’d be screwed—it would have collapsed a long time ago.
