KRISTIN OHLSON: SWEET IN TOOTH & CLAW
ON BIG BLEND RADIO: Author and environmental journalist Kristin Ohlson discusses her new book, “Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World.” Watch here in the YouTube player or download the podcast on PodBean.
In a follow-up to her groundbreaking book “The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet” (Rodale 2014), journalist Kristin Ohlson offers optimism in the midst of our environmental crisis through stories of people partnering with nature.
Her new book “Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World” (Patagonia 2022) presents a paradigm shift in how a growing group of scientists think about the mutually beneficial interactions that they believe support every species on earth. Counter to the idea of “survival of the fittest, ” in which organisms’ primary relationship is the competition for resources, Sweet in Tooth and Claw offers an alternative understanding of nature, one crucial to rolling back and preventing further damage to our planet.
Through interviews with biologists, ecologists and farmers in the field, Ohlson’s deeply researched case studies and observations show example after example of how nature is sweet, not ravenous. The new understanding of mutualism is driving scientists to reconsider everything they think about the natural world, which, Ohlson writes, includes humans.
“How might our behavior change if we understood the extent to which cooperation within and among species undergirds the natural world and makes it thrive?” writes Ohlson. “Could we begin to see ourselves as partners and helpers, part of a greater fabric of giving, instead of exploiters and colonizers and wreckers?”
The title “Sweet in Tooth and Claw” plays on Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” in which he references nature as “red in tooth and claw.” The book extends the concept of cooperation in nature from “The Soil Will Save Us” to the life-affirming connections among microbes, plants, fungi, insects, birds, and animals—including humans—in ecosystems around the globe. Ohlson tells stories of trees and mushrooms, beavers and bees. There are chapters on a wide variety of ecosystems and portraits of the people who learn from them: forests (the work of Suzanne Simard); scientists who study the interaction of bees and flowers in the Rocky Mountains; the discovery of bacteria and protozoa in the mid-1600s by Dutch scientist Antoni von Leeuwenhoek; ranchers and biologists restoring wetlands in desertified northeastern Nevada; and more. Ohlson also recognizes older cultures that understood the necessary balance between nature’s and human’s needs, and to which we must turn at this time of climate crisis.
“I’m convinced that if we can learn to respect, not ravage, the rest of nature, we’ll also become more generous and nurturing with each other,” she writes.
“Sweet in Tooth and Claw” is a rich and fascinating book full of amazing stories, complemented by full-color photography, and is sure to challenge the reader’s perspective on the natural world.
More at https://www.kristinohlson.com/
