Richard Powers is one of America’s top mainstream novelists, sitting alongside Peter Matthiessen (Snow Leopard) for his environmental and social concerns.
The Overstory (2018) follows a motley cast of Americans who, for all sorts of reasons, commit their lives to saving the continent’s old growth forests.
The descriptive writing is beautiful enough to turn readers instantly into tree-huggers. The tragedy of the clear-fell logging should turn many of them (us) into activists, too, so there are thematic parallels with Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.
Like some of Powers’ other novels The Overstory has fantasy and SF elements but they are relatively slight – although its mythic force might remind readers of Ursula Le Guin. This page on the author’s site is full of lavish praise for the book. Somewhat surprisingly, given the nature of such sites, none of it is unjustified. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, The Overstory really is that good.
Both The Ministry and The Overstory are very firmly grounded in reality. Powers’ protagonists come together as protestors trying to save the California redwoods and the second half of the book recounts conflicts between them, vigilante loggers, and the near-vigilante police. They are so violent that they are implausible but they are actually true to the history: such events really happened, although Powers has changed names and rearranged times and places. Neither Wikipedia, in its page on the novel, nor this otherwise recommendable review in The Guardian, make the connection to Earth First! but it’s a remarkable story.
Earth First! and what followed
The quickest way for me to tell the story is to quote highlights of Wikipedia’s coverage. All links below are to Wikipedia so readers can follow up anything of particular interest.
Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group that originated in the Southwestern United States. It was founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar. … During the group’s early years (1980–1986), Earth First mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic “crack” down Glen Canyon Dam) with far-reaching wilderness proposals that reportedly surpassed the actions that mainstream environmental groups were willing to take. …
After 1987, Earth First became primarily associated with direct action to prevent logging, building of dams, and other forms of development which may cause destruction of wildlife habitats or the despoliation of wild places. … Since 1990, action within the Earth First movement has become increasingly influenced by anarchist political philosophy. … In 1992, Earth First’s push [drift?] toward the mainstream movement led to the creation of an offshoot group [groups, really] called Earth Liberation Front. …In June 1993, Earth First halted the construction of the Noble [forestry] Road by erecting elaborate multi-layered barricades, which included U.S. Forest Service vehicles. These barricades were constructed in one night, during which activists traveled 17 miles through the mountains dodging law enforcement patrols who had been informed of the planned demonstration. The first tripod lockdowns occurred at this incident, which involved three 30 foot logs, tied together and placed upright, with an activist tied to a platform between them 20 feet in the air. The tripod was placed over trenches in which four activists were buried in quick-drying cement. Two additional activists used U-locks to lock their necks to the front axles of responding vehicles. U.S. Forest Service shot at activists and raided the land with a SWAT team armed with M-16s. 27 activists were arrested. …
There is far more of this, both in real life and in the novel.
Radical activism
Earth First! was formed by people who thought mainstream environmental groups were too tame to bring about the changes they thought necessary, and the Earth Liberation Front, in turn, split from them for the same reason. This has been a common pattern in the environmental movement. Greenpeace, for instance, grew out of the Sierra Club and Sea Shepherd out of Greenpeace.
The more radical groups tend to take their theoretical framework from Green Anarchism and Deep Ecology. It seems to me, however, that their real motivation comes from frustration with the gulf between what we need to do to avert environmental disaster and what little progress we have actually made.
One question they raise for us is the extent to which we support illegal or violent actions in support of a just cause. It’s a question each of us must answer for ourselves. The Overstory, through the choices made by its protagonists, may help us find answers.