(p. 15) . . . [in] a piece called “Save What You Love” as [Jonathan Franzen] tells the story, he was “already not in a good mood” when he read a news release from the Audubon Society explaining that climate change was “the greatest threat” to America’s birds. That statement deepened his tetchy ill humor, because he believed that it might distract bird lovers from what he considered the more immediate work of protecting habitat. “I felt bullied by its dominance,” he writes of global warming, and so he conceived of the essay, which turns into an extended whine about environmental groups for focusing so heavily on carbon emissions.
For the full review, see:
Bill McKibben. “Forest for the Trees.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, Dec. 9, 2018): 15.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed words, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 3, 2018, and has the title “Jonathan Franzen Despairs of a Planet Inhospitable to Birds.”)
The book under review, is:
Franzen, Jonathan. The End of the End of the Earth: Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.