Barret Baumgart

I can safely say I’ve never read any nonfiction quite like China Lake (which by the way, is a naval weapons testing base in the California desert). Barret Baumgart begins his book like a Hammett novel. He drops you into his dark world and you have to figure out where you are and who’s who and why you’re there. It certainly is an intriguing way to keep attention and focus in science, but it was difficult to know what the book was about.

For a while it seemed to be about geoengineering the atmosphere, plunging into the paranoid, conspiratorial world of chemtrails crisscrossing the skies. And the political impossibility of seeding the atmosphere ever working. But then it also became an exploration of the petroglyphs – rock art – of the natives of California. And their shamans. Particularly their shamans. A lot about shamans.

He then crosses the country with an itinerant environmental protest march, ending up with a personal tour of the Pentagon in Washington. There are several uncaptioned black and white photos along the way.

About two thirds through it became a book about the US armed forces’ perverse efforts to go green. They are perverse because the US armed forces consume more fuel than 90% of the countries in the world. It is the Pentagon that pollutes the worst, upsets the ecology the most, and whose negligence will lead to wars over lack of drinkable water and lack of usable land as the seas rise. We need the Pentagon to defend us against the uncontrolled actions – of the Pentagon. Its greening has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with not relying on any other country in the coming wars.

There are also several side trips on this zigzagging journey, and sometimes Baumgart switches back and forth without cues. He does not believe in subheadings. His separation of paragraphs does not conform to intuition. He puts breaks where none are required, and splices scenes together that need perspective. His mother plays an outsized role in this investigation into environmental disaster players, even though her main weapon seems to be champagne. She colors his thoughts and frustrates his development: “Chances of life on Mars were still greater than a month at my mother’s house.”

He definitely has his own style. As an environmental book it makes an insightful memoir. As a memoir it adds some science to the environmental apocalypse. After this, I’m not sure where Baumgart goes next.

David Wineberg… (mere)