About this item
The moth snowstorm, a phenomenon Michael McCarthy remembers from his boyhood when moths "would pack a car's headlight beams like snowflakes in a blizzard," is a distant memory. Wildlife is being lost, not only in the wholesale extinctions of species but also in the dwindling of those species that still exist. The Moth Snowstorm records in painful detail this rapid dissolution of nature's abundance and proposes a radical solution: that we recognize our capacity to love the natural world. Arguing that neither sustainable development nor ecosystem services have proven adequate as defenses against pollution, habitat destruction, species degradation, and climate change, McCarthy asks us to consider nature as an intrinsic good and an emotional and spiritual resource, capable of inspiring joy, wonder, and even love.
About the Author
Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham, UK. He holds/has held Visiting and Adjunct Professorships at the University of Limerick, Ireland, Newcastle University, UK, and Penn State University, USA. He is an Honorary Professor of the University of Valencia, Spain. He has been involved in the study and teaching of English for 50 years. Since the 1980s he has worked with computerised corpora, investigating the vocabulary and grammar of present-day English, with a focus on everyday spoken language. He is author of more than 50 books and 110 academic articles. He has lived and taught in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Malaysia.
