Summer reading: A climate warrior pens a lyrical, and hopeful, local look at climate action

Mike Tidwell is one of the most aggressive lobbyists in Annapolis, a fierce advocate for climate action who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Lobbying a state government that routinely resists bold action, where progress is incremental at best, Tidwell has been known to aggravate legislative leaders, administration officials and their top aides with a pull-no-punches style highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.

But playing against perception, if not against type, Tidwell, the founder and leader of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), has just released a book about global warming that is sweet and lyrical, almost poetic, and surprisingly hopeful.

“The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue” is, in one sense, what it purports to be: A look at how severe weather and climate change have decimated the tree canopy on a single street in Takoma Park, where Tidwell lives. But it’s also a broader meditation on multiple global environmental crises and the people who are heroically trying to do something about them, even at a very micro level.

CCAN has been around for more than two decades now, but probably few people who interact with Tidwell know much about his own journey into climate activism. Once a journalist and travel writer, Tidwell began fretting about the world his son and younger generations would be inheriting and became convinced he needed to do more personally. So CCAN, which has become a regional environmental powerhouse, was born.

Tidwell’s book essentially charts his own activism and observations, particularly in the historically hot year of 2023, alongside the sometimes sudden and other times slow deaths of towering trees on his street and in the surrounding neighborhood in Takoma Park, the “Peoples Republic” that borders Washington, D.C.

One by one, Tidwell introduces the reader to a cast of characters in Maryland who are trying to do something about climate change. Some are familiar political leaders like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th) and Del. Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery). These two elected officials are climate warriors like Tidwell who have also overcome personal crises over the years – in Tidwell’s case, it’s the lingering and debilitating impacts of Lyme disease, which he contracted several years ago thanks to the proliferation of deer in suburban neighborhoods, a trend directly attributable to climate change. Raskin and Charkoudian also happen to be Tidwell’s neighbors in Takoma Park.

In the book, Tidwell also discusses the desire of a climate scientist who wants to bury dead trees to help capture carbon and heal the Earth; the worries of his pastor, vexed by the expense of responding to the intense flooding that is ravaging the church basement; the work of the city arborist and his bosses in Takoma Park; and numerous neighbors who are scrambling to make the best of the disappearing tree canopy on Willow Street by planting climate-resilient trees, expanding their vegetable gardens, and looking after their neighbors’ lawns.

Through the years, Tidwell has become an unofficial steward of tree health in Takoma Park, leading expeditions of volunteers who clip vines that are choking local trees to death – an effort he describes in his book . It’s a model of cataloguing and pruning he hopes other activists will follow across the country. Tidwell writes at length about the science of tree birth, life and death, about the souls of trees and the healing qualities they bring to communities and all sentient beings.

“The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue” is a quick and enjoyable read, and ultimately serves as a primer for climate action that anyone can follow. Tidwell sounds many hopeful notes on what’s possible and attainable, including the growing prominence of renewable energy across the globe.

It’s worth pointing out that he wrote the book before Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January and before Maryland political leaders backslid alarmingly this year on climate legislation; Tidwell no doubt is licking his wounds and shaking his head after a very rough session for environmentalists in Annapolis.

But there are important reminders in “The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue”: Climate catastrophes are in the news every day – epic, apocalyptic, international-scale disasters like wildfires, tsunamis and flooding. Yet the ravages of the crisis are around us all the time – so obvious that we can observe and comprehend the implications of a few dead trees on a single suburban street. It follows, then, that the solutions to this existential crisis are often close at hand – and begin with each and every one of us.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Tidwell book without some polemic. Individual climate action is important, he argues. But don’t lose sight of the responsibilities and culpability of the polluters and their enablers in elected office; collective action is essential.

“We did not, as a country, end racial segregation and stop child labor practices and phase out DDT through voluntary individual choices,” Tidwell observes. “Those victories required national movements of people demanding statutory change. The climate movement, likewise, needs more citizen activists to hasten the switch to clean power and finally abolish fossil fuels by law.”

– “The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue,” by Mike Tidwell, 279 pages, is available from St. Martin’s Press, $29.