Words We Need: Cambios & Firmos
Paolo Bacigalupi's new novel NAVOLA coins two words that conservation needs.
One thing I’ve learned from years of writing about conservation is that the English language doesn’t have enough words for it, and those that we do have can be counterproductive. “Words We Need” suggests some ways to fill the gap. Ideas welcome.
Paolo Bacigalupi is one of our best speculative fiction writers, and he’s also one of my oldest writing pals; we were accountability buddies before either of us had published much of anything. So I read Paolo’s latest novel, Navola, with particular pleasure — even though Navola’s pleasures reminded me of a roller coaster’s long, slow climb and sickening drop. (Author Holly Black describes the experience of reading Navola as “like slipping into a luxurious bath full of blood,” which makes it sound almost … relaxing. It’s not.)
Paolo is known for his dystopian climate fiction — his worlds are often plagued by floods, droughts, and energy famines — and Navola, a fantasy inspired by the warring city-states of Renaissance Italy, is a deliberate departure. But it’s not as much of a departure as its historical trappings suggest.
Davico, Navola’s main character, is expected to master what the fictional philosopher Soppros calls Cambios: “that which man touched and influenced … changeable, untrustworthy, the realm of human striving, of waterwheels and castelli, of axles, wagons, of lingua, steel, and cities.” In Davico’s case, mastering Cambios means mastering the subterfuge and manipulation that built his family’s Medici-like banking dynasty.
Davico, though, is more drawn to what Soppros calls Firmos: “that which lay beyond human power.” As Paolo writes:
Firmos was not just the dirt of the earth, as its name might imply … Firmos was a woven web exquisitely stretched: twinging and shifting, pulling and tugging in response to every creature, every plant, every season, every wind, every raindrop, each strand connected to every other, but instead of being woven by spiders this net was woven by the many gods.
Cambios and Firmos. I like how these two words complicate the usual human-nature binary with the dimension of time: The grand buildings of Cambios may outlast any single season of Firmos, but the shifting web of Firmos is ultimately more enduring. (I recently wrote about Henry David Thoreau’s efforts to escape chronos, or clock time, and live by kairos, or seasonal time; there’s a parallel here.) I also like that neither term excludes the other. While Cambios is alienated from Firmos, in Soppros’ telling, the “realm of human striving” remains entangled in the weave.
The divide between what we English speakers call humans and what we call nature is forever getting in the way of conservation, our language reinforcing the cultural notion that nature is something separate and distant from human lives. But to insist on the contrary — that humans are simply “part of nature” — creates another problem, implying that bulldozers and oil rigs and climate change are natural, too. There is a categorical difference between, say, a card game and a forest, or a toaster and a lake, even if the categories are fuzzier around the edges than our language suggests.
Paolo’s invention allows for some useful blurring of the human-nature boundary, in Navola and perhaps in our world, too. Whether a bath full of blood is more Cambios than Firmos, though, is entirely yours to decide.
Conservation at Work
Humans and other animals can expect to see more of each other in the coming decades: A new study in Science Advances [open access] predicts that across more than half the planet, human habitats will overlap more with those of other terrestrial vertebrates than they do now. A reminder that some of the most important work in conservation is — and will be — helping humans live sustainably alongside other species.
Speaking of overlap, a Canada lynx was sighted in Vermont in mid-August, the latest sign that lynx are venturing south from Canada into their former range in the U.S. Northeast. An effort to reintroduce the species into New York’s Adirondack Park in the late 1980s and early 1990s failed, mainly because so many of the animals were hit by cars. In the years since, the Staying Connected Initiative, a cooperative effort by conservation groups and public agencies, has worked to establish safe movement corridors in the Northeast for lynx and other wildlife.
“Process-based river restoration” is a wonky term for a thriving movement. As
at explains in his not-at-all-wonky overview, it’s about “optimizing for messiness rather than efficiency.” (It’s also about beavers.) This recent episode of the Mountain & Prairie podcast, featuring restorationists Nancy Smith and Austin Rempel, is also a fine introduction to process-based restoration.Colombian environment minister Susana Mohamad, who will preside over COP 16, the UN biodiversity summit, in October, recently made a forceful statement about the danger of pursuing climate solutions at the expense of conservation: “There is a double movement humanity must make,” she said at a press briefing in Montreal. “The first one is to decarbonize and have a just energy transition. The other side of the coin is to restore nature and allow nature to take again its power over planet Earth so that we can really stabilize the climate. The climate has much more awareness and political investment, but we are not seeing the other side of the coin, and it’s dangerous. That is dangerous for humanity.”
After years of tolerating the hard-right politics of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, state Republicans have been shocked out of acquiescence by what the Guardian describes as a “mind-boggling plan to pave over thousands of unspoiled acres at nine state parks and erect 350-room hotels, golf courses, and pickleball courts.” Facing opponents ranging from environmental advocates to Republican Rep. Brian Mast — who said the development would happen “over my dead body” — DeSantis soon abandoned the idea. The plan was leaked by a cartographer at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, who has since been fired. Thank him with a donation to his GoFundMe.
Finally, I’m so pleased that the brilliant climate scientist and policy expert
has joined Substack. is inspired by her imminent book of the same name; subscribe today.
Hi! And thank you for the shoutout 💛 – and yay lynx!
I read Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife" a while back. I thought it a little too far-fetched. Then Scottsdale cut off water to Rio Verde Foothills. I didn't sleep for a week!