The current demise of our natural world is laden with
complexities. Trying to explain these complexities to others can be a difficult
task, a task that The Devouring Dragon
takes on and eloquently succeeds.
When I first started to read The Devouring Dragon I was intrigued as to how Simons was going to
place the decline of the natural world on China’s growth, yet he does not.
Instead, Simons uses China to symbolically represent the world’s treatment of
the environment.
Too often I find environmental texts laden with scientific
jargon, preventing those without background knowledge in science, developing
meaning from the text. Simons writes his more like a narrative and when he does
use terminology he explains it. This makes The
Devouring Dragon accessible for all individuals. The readability of The Devouring Dragon combined with it
being a story about the whole world’s relationship with nature, makes it an
important read for all.
Simons, a journalist who lives and works in China, presents
a familiar picture. China, a developing country, wants the same quality of life
as developed countries. In a similar journey that developed countries have
taken, China is using the environment to their financial and developmental
advantage. Yet their pace of development is so rapid it is putting a strain on
the ecosystem services that nature provides. Developed countries see this, and
even though their individuals have a greater impact on the environment than
China’s, they suggest a different direction for China on their journey to a
better quality of life. Meanwhile, as developed countries are requesting them
to prevent their environmental impact they are using China to manufacture their
goods. Which leads to huge environmental impacts locally for China and
globally.
To tell this story Simons takes the reader on a journey
telling the history of China and its current situation through those without a
voice: the plants, animal species and individuals whose relationship with the
natural world is being affected by China’s use of the environment. Through the
loss of the Yangtze dolphin, the forests in Papua New Guinea and the failure of
Copenhagen, the reader is confronted with the effects of our current treatment
of the environment. In one statement by a local Papua New Guinean, ‘The trees
are gone, the land is spoiled, it is all gone.’
One could be forgiven to see The Devouring Dragon as a pessimistic view of our world. A feeling
of no hope, we are on the path to the loss of the natural world and humanity’s
destruction. The descriptions of the plants and animals are highly emotive and
are used as a metaphor to our ignorance. As they fade away, is there anyone to
witness their demise? Does anyone care? Simons shows there are signs all around
of nature’s declining state. Simons
describes himself brushing off coal ash from a magazine, a symbolic indication
of our feigned ignorance to our consumptive use of the environment. Yet, almost
painting an Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World (1932) vision of China, the people do not see the environmental
destruction around them, only the progress of their society. In Simons’
descriptions of the fading natural world he faintly sends the message that we
must see it now before it is all gone.
However, contradictory to his tone of the book where natural
beauty meets human ignorance and greed, he concludes that there is hope. He
offers that there are solutions that can be realised and he suggests that even
though it seems bleak he has optimism. He is optimistic because he chooses to
be so, perhaps a lesson for us all.
Despite the hard to swallow truths in Simons book, it is a
must read. Not only does it perfectly describe the current environmental
crisis, but it reminds us of what humanity could lose.
Huxley A 1932 Brave
New World London: Chatto &Windus.
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