Environmental writer and filmmaker Adam Welz’s The End of Eden should begin with the same kind of content warning that flashes across TV screens before the start of certain shows. “This program contains graphic images. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Such an alert might prevent readers from being caught off-guard by passages like this one describing the raft of wildfires that tore through Australia a few years ago:

“These fires burned thoroughly, leaving almost no patches unconsumed, none of the refuges where small animals like mice, lizards, or butterflies find sanctuary in regular fires. Every flying thing burned; at various places on the southeastern coast, people saw flocks of parrots screaming away from the smoke, their wings and tails aflame, heading out over the ocean. With nowhere to land, they drowned, and their charred corpses washed ashore in the days after. Many fires burned so fast and from so many sides that even large kangaroos couldn’t outrun them. Overcome by smoke, these strange, graceful animals collapsed and boiled inside their own skins. Tens of thousands of slow-moving Koalas died in agony in just a few weeks.”

The gruesome scene Welz depicts here is one of many such nightmares he recounts. He tells stories about some animals as individual species, some by groups, and some by human names. Grief awaits us throughout the book, forcing us to half-cover our eyes and tremble as we turn each page.

Why would an author put us through so much agony? Why should we put ourselves through it?

“This book is written for everyone,” Welz answers in the introduction. “I hope it brings you closer to the wild creatures of our tarnished Eden as they try to navigate this extraordinary, uncertain period in our shared history and inspires you to act with intelligence and courage for their persistence — their continued thriving — with us.”

Welz’s gut-wrenching approach is hard to stomach, but The End of Eden is a book that fundamentally changes us as we read.

He starts by calling on us to replace the term “climate change” with “climate breakdown” — a twist that makes sense. “Breakdown acknowledges that climate is a type of definable pattern or structure that is breaking apart and not easily reassembled,” he writes. “Its cause — human activity — is well understood, and it is serious and directional; it’s not a random, temporary variation in the weather.”

Welz opens a later paragraph with a curve ball. “Most of the current wild species declines and ecological disruptions are not solely caused by climate change,” he states. Instead, “climate change is usually, to use a military term, a force multiplier.”

This multiplier makes every offshoot of climate breakdown more powerful and destructive — deadlier hurricanes, wildfires, heatwaves, etc.

Welz expertly weaves together a climate-breakdown education that combines objective scientific discourse with empathetic accounts of the lives and deaths of plants and animals across the globe. While the hard science is sometimes too much for lay readers — and the country- and critter-hopping within chapters a bit jarring — he makes us care (and sometimes cry) about every place and creature covered. “Adapt, move or die” is the mantra all living things face.

He shares the plight of yellow-billed hornbills in southern Africa, where increased temperatures force males to seek shade rather than gather food and return it to their females, eggs, and hatchlings. “Birds don’t fall out of the sky en masse,” he writes. “They just fail to reproduce.”

The vicious cycles continue as Welz recounts the story of a single female moose in Maine, an animal whose size gives her species “substantial influence on the ecosystem” — until winter ticks latch onto her fur and kill her in a slow, agonizing death. Her obituary runs in a chapter dedicated to plagues and diseases.

A stop in Puerto Rico introduces us to iguacas, a linguistically advanced but disappearing bird species that Category 5 Hurricane Maria smacks to near extinction, an example of extreme weather wiping out humans and animals alike.

Another hurricane, Harvey, takes aim at Galveston Bay in Texas and a bottlenose dolphin named Sam. He stays put while other dolphins swim out to the salty ocean. Sam contracts freshwater skin disease — fungi, algae, and bacteria embed in his skin — and swims toward shore in a desperate attempt to breathe.

“The Texas sun beating down on his rotten skin was too much,” Welz reports. “He overheated, his heart stopped, and he died.”

Readers looking for a Hollywood ending won’t find one in The End of Eden. The author reveals bits of his own climate-breakdown heartache, his personal battle against “climate doomism” — the tendency of people “slumping into indifference and inaction because they believe global disaster is inevitable.”

Rallying himself and us, Welz ticks off some of the things we can do to stem the tide. For example, we can take individual action such as rewilding our own yards — using native plants to replace our unsustainable lawns. (These lawns, he notes, use up more acreage than any farmed crop in the United States.) We can also take collective action like replacing fossil-fuel-funded politicians with people who want to protect the planet.

We must at least try.

“Our actions matter,” he concludes, “but even if those of us who care work hard and smart, there is no guarantee of success; we might not prevent mass extinction and large-scale ecological breakdown. But what better goal is there to strive toward than the continued flourishing of life itself, in all its miraculous forms?”

Christopher Lancette is a Maryland-based writer, essayist and multimedia storyteller focusing on nature and the environment. He publishes a passion project at EyeOnSligoCreek.com. Follow him on Twitter at @chrislancette.

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