Ever Green
Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet
21 April 2023
Description
Clear, provocative and persuasive, Ever Green is an inspiring call to action to conserve Earth’s irreplaceable wild woods, counteract climate change and save the planet
Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska’s Bering seacoast to Canada’s Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America’s bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa’s wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California.
These mega forests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green. Mega forests serve an essential role in decarbonising the atmosphere—the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years’ worth of global emissions at 2019 levels—and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet’s most formidable ongoing crisis.
Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.
Reviews
"Eloquent and fact-filled.... Ever Green, for all its scholarly precision, is ultimately an impassioned plea to save the world’s last great wild places by two men who had come, through long professional acquaintance, to love them. Readers will find their passion to be contagious." — Richard Schiffman, The Washington Post
"There is no better or more readable guide to the bewildering array of threats to forests or to the economic and institutional programs created to protect them. . . . It’s impossible to read Ever Green without being moved by the vision and commitment of the people—including its authors—who’ve devoted themselves to protecting the world’s forests." — Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Review of Books
"Nothing could be more important than saving the world’s last remaining forests, and no one could make a more eloquent case for this than John Reid and Thomas Lovejoy. Ever Green is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of life." — Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction
"Five giant forests—Amazon, Congo, New Guinea, and two taigas—holding carbon, diverse life, and the fate of the planet. This is a profoundly important, fresh-minded, deftly written, and constructive book. Therefore it’s also thrilling." — David Quammen, author of The Tangled Tree and Spillover
