![]() ![]() My other concern about tactics has to do with the diverse audiences to which environmentalists like McKibben and me must address our books. Those successes give me hope that we may similarly resolve other difficult international problems, including climate change. But agreements have nevertheless succeeded in eliminating rinderpest and smallpox, delineating near-shore economic zones in the oceans, reducing chlorofluorocarbon damage to the ozone layer, setting standards for oil tanker pollution and establishing a framework for seabed mining with shared royalties. Those agreements have addressed difficult issues and required negotiations between nations that hate and fight each other. ![]() If environmentalists refuse to engage with big companies, in order to push them to do more good things and fewer bad ones, we could well end up in McKibben’s worst-case scenario: human extinction.Īnother reason I feel hopeful has to do with the success of many recent supranational agreements - bilateral agreements between nations, regional agreements and world agreements. Alas, here on Planet Earth, good and bad are mixed together we don’t have companies that are purely good. Listen, you extraterrestrial visitors from the Andromeda Galaxy, where companies and androids are either purely good or purely bad. You may already have closed your ears because of the bad things you know that even the best big companies also do. These forces include Exxon, poverty, inequality, Ayn Rand, the Koch brothers, other very rich Americans, President Trump and Silicon Valley. The middle part of the book discusses forces opposing solutions to the problems laid out in the first part - motivated variously by self-interest, grim realities, power, ideals and views about the proper role of government. all now at increasing risk because of their scale, complexity and susceptibility to disruption. What could be more familiar, cheap and simple than asphalt roof tiles? But McKibben explains how their manufacture and distribution depend on multiple big systems - undersea and desert oil drilling, limestone and sand mining, fiberglass fabrication, pipelines, refineries, rail lines, truck routes, building supply stores, etc. While these dangers have been widely discussed, McKibben provides a fresh perspective with surprising examples and an engaging writing style. McKibben’s worst fear is summarized in his subtitle: “Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” In the first half of the book, he explains the present dangers to civilization, which include the risk of nuclear war and multiple hazards associated with climate change: increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, threats to food production, rising sea levels, and ocean warming and acidification. This book ends with the conviction that resistance to these dangers is at least possible.” ![]() Still, there is one sense in which I am less grim than in my younger days. “This volume is bleak,” he writes, elaborating a few paragraphs later: “I think we’re uniquely ill prepared to cope with the emerging challenges. “Falter,” the environmentalist Bill McKibben’s latest book about threats to the planet, combines fear of bad outcomes with hope for good outcomes. FALTER Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? By Bill McKibben ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |