The Control of Nature

In the first essay, General Sands frames the efforts to tame the Atchafalaya: “Man against nature. That’s what life’s all about” (20). This sentence sets the tone for the book. From the Army Corps to Icelandic mayors, nearly every expert or significant figure quoted in this book uses the language of war to refer to their interventions in nature. McPhee describes the scenes of natural disasters—say, a debris flow—much like the site of a bloody battlefield: “On the terrace, the crushed vehicles, the detached erratic wheels suggested bomb damage, artillery hits, the track of the Fifth Army. The place looked like a destroyed pillbox” (199).

Iceland in particular views “the Battle of Heimaey” and the control of nature through the lens of war. The pumping operation retreats like a soldier moving behind enemy lines, and in the aftermath of the experience, the townspeople view themselves as veterans of war: “He was a foot soldier, and looked upon his role as such. Like the others, he viewed the struggle through the metaphor of war” (101). The enemy, however, is not another country, but nature itself. We see another example of this militaristic language in the following passage: “On this day […] virtually everyone on the island presumed that the battle was over—before it had really begun” (112). We see how natural disaster can traumatize people much like a war.

Words such as “war,” “battle,” and “fight” might seem like natural phrases to describe controlling the Atchafalaya’s flow, cooling lava in Iceland, or stopping debris flows in Los Angeles. However, nature cannot be reasoned with, unlike other humans during a battle. There is no treaty to be signed with nature. McPhee writes, “In making war with nature, there was a risk of loss in winning” (143). Nonetheless, entities like the Army Corps try to control space and time to halt the progression of natural occurrences and also to keep nature at a stable climate suitable for humans. Regarding the Army Corps’s efforts to suppress Old River flows to 1950s levels, General Sands says that “what we’ve done here at Old River is stop time” (21). 

It’s a race against time, however, and Mother Nature “has nothing but time” (24), according to Rabalais. Many of the experts whom McPhee interviews says it’s a matter not of if, but of when we will lose this fight with nature. The hydrologist Wade Wells, for example, says of the houses perched next to the mountains of Los Angeles: “Their houses are living on borrowed time” (204). There is a certain hubris in our fight against nature, as humans continue to develop settlements in areas where we know Mother Nature is unstable. Fighting with nature is like going to battle—and we’ve lost that battle. Andrew Ingersoll, a planetary scientist, soberly reflects on the losing battle with regard to the fight against debris flows in Los Angeles: “It might have been a very poor concept to try to control the San Gabriels” (231). 

This book of essays exposes humans’ propensity for arrogance in assuming that we can mold Earth to our liking due to our superior technology. This ego tends to blind humans, leaving us with a false or overblown sense of confidence in our man-made interventions to control nature. As the book shows, man-made interventions fail just as often as they succeed.

Sometimes, nature’s inventions are even better than our own, though humans are reticent to acknowledge that we can be bested by nature. Take, for example, the scientist Kamb’s chiding of the crib structures in the San Gabriel mountains: “These cribworks are less strong than nature’s own constructs. The idea that you can prevent the sediment from coming out is meddling with the works of nature” (231). Sometimes, humans feel the need to create the illusion that they are taking control of their situation, even if they aren’t actually helping control the environment. Another scientist illuminates this dilemma when he describes the ineffectiveness of the crib structures as “an example of bureaucracy doing something for its own sake” (231).

Moreover, we also see the arrogance in the attitudes of scientists who criticize ignorant residents for living on dangerous mountainsides, although these same scientists live near the San Gabriel mountains as well. An engineer tries to justify his residence to McPhee: “Like my neighbors, I figure that I’m protected. I haven’t seen anything across my yard yet” (232). Human nature—human arrogance—is such that even when we logically understand a future threat, until it happens to us, we often assume that we will face no harm. We assume that our man-made devices can save us, even if we have historical evidence to the contrary.

In fact, some residents are upset by the debris basins, which they deem to be an ugly blight on nature. Until residents experience a debris flow firsthand, they don’t see the value in the basins. Human arrogance goes hand-in-hand with complacency towards the natural environment. These residents hope for the best, even when history warns otherwise. A series of conversations with different residents late in the book illustrates this all-too-human problem, as one resident explains to McPhee why he believes his house will be spared from the debris flows: “I think we’re all pretty well covered. I’m hoping so. The water rushes down quite nicely in the wash” (246).

Some believe that because they’ve suffered one kind of natural disaster, they’re prepared for all of them. Another resident tells McPhee, “No, we’re not concerned. We lived through the San Fernando earthquake” (246). Some even act as if nature sets limits on the number of times natural disasters can occur (which isn’t true, as McPhee describes floods in which numerous debris flows occur): “The fire was three years ago. It’s not supposed to flood. I cancelled my flood insurance last year” (246). They act as if they know better than nature.

Still, some humans have been able to put aside their egos to recognize their impact on the environment. McPhee speaks with Charles Colver, who runs an experimental forest in the mountains. Colver concedes to McPhee that humans’ reckless interventions have brought about their own folly: “We’ve encroached on nature […] When we diddle with Mother Nature, we mess up things” (234). McPhee takes this self-reflection to another level, implying that human intervention in nature creates more unanticipated problems in the long run: “They all involved human intervention, with effects that affected other effects and were ultimately so imponderable that no one could assign to people or to nature an unchallengeable ratio of triumph to defeat” (136).