Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Bill McKibben is a really excellent writer, with a smooth, clever prose style. His books are always a good read. In this one, though, the content doesn't match the style.

There are two parts. In the first, he summarizes our environmental problems, especially global warming, which has gone too far for us to avoid terrible problems. We also face severe economic troubles, due to peak oil and huge debts. He draws many connections between the environment and the financial crisis that began in 2008. And he reviews the peak oil theory and the link between upcoming oil shortages, the world economy, and the end of globalization.

In the second part, he advocates that we give up the idea of constant growth and progress, and reconcile ourselves to a declining and shrinking economy. He advocates smaller political and economic structures and more localized economies, as he did in his earlier books, Enough and Deep Economy. There are some bizarre passages, like his quick history of US Federalism and the growth of the national government.

He is certainly correct about global warming, although he should be citing scientific sources, like the IPCC reports, not selected newspaper articles. The media have a history of sensationalizing everything and only present the far extreme part of any possibilities. The scientists more calmly, describe a range of possibilities, with the less awful being as likely as the most. No matter what, the future looks bleak enough to justify taking action, although total collapse is unlikely. In any event, our species will survive nicely. Even if the population of homo sapiens drops to one billion, as James Lovelock predicts, it would not be a catastrophe, if we take a long view of population history. The environmentalists' task remains protecting nature until the human plague recedes.

Would I recommend the book? It's not bad but there are two much better environmental books, more science based. These are Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand and The Coming Population Crash by Fred Pearce. Brand is one of the founders of modern environmentalism; McKibben is just the sort of Romantic environmentalist that Brand skewers. Pearce is a veteran reporter with New Scientist; his book discusses the surprising drop in human fertility and its possible consequences. A reader would get much more information from these than from Bill McKibben's disorganized, illogical jeremiad.

This book has good intentions, however it fails to give any solutions to the problems stated. Many of his ideas are unrealistic, and could not possibly be done in the united states due to the countries size and general population mindset. Also this book contradicts all his ideas, if you want to go completely green and stay within your small community, wouldn't having a book printed and distributed across the country be a bad thing? Think of all the trees cut, vehicle emissions released in transport, and deadly chemicals used in printing. In the end this book is just about some hippie ranting about change, and doing nothing about it aside from renaming our planet.

This was a tough read (for a "tough new planet"). The basic concept here is that the global warming catastrophes that we all feared for so long have already happened and it's too late to prevent them. We're going to have to adapt to live on a planet that is markedly warmer with shrinking resources, shrinking foodstocks, and shrinking coastlines. McKibben spends a large chunk of the book explaining how bad it's gotten before he finally says: "But in the end, the transition will need to be mostly mental: we need to get past our current ideological rigidity and think more broadly." Basically it's about conservation and choosing diversity -so diversity in types of food and on a smaller scale. Smaller and more numerous powerplants. He spends the last third of the book basically saying "make the world like Vermont." And, I'm sorry but, in the end, it's a tough sell. He argues for less growth, less greed, less economic expansion. One of the problems with prosperity is that we believe we can somehow insulate ourselves from environmental catastrophe with our money, with our wealth. McKibben argues that, in the end, that won't be possible and that the oil will eventually run out. Unfortunately, for him, writing in 2010, he didn't realize that we would discover vast new sources of fossil fuels, or that Americans would pick a billionaire real estate developer to be president in 2016. Rather than making that needed mental transition that McKibben spoke about in 2010, we seem to have chosen greed. Again the book is a bitter pill to swallow especially in 2017. (As I write this, the president's proposed budget calls for a 31% cut to EPA).

Bill McKibben is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. In 2010 The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine has called him "the world's best green journalist." Here is how one reader reviewed this book: ‘About midway through reading this book, I had this weird feeling that I was reading a science fiction/ horror book. It reminded me of post-apocalyptic fiction in which an old text from right before the apocalypse is found and read by those living in the future. In the old text, the author is discussing a monster looming on the horizon which is pretty much completely ignored by everyone until the monster is upon them. That pretty much sums up what's happening to our planet now .” I agree, the opening part does read a bit like sci-fi, but only in our dreams. The fog is in this sense, clearing and I am coming to see more clearly now that we are further down the road of altering this planet than we wish to believe. Mckibben mentions that for thirty years, politicians left and right, and celebrities have been making pro environment speeches that go like "The reason that I am taking action today is that I want the planet to be a safe and stable place to live in thirty years for my grandchildren". Well, it is thirty years later and the unborn grandchildren were born, have grown up, and probably have children of their own now. Life is like that, times keeps moving, things keep changing, and the planet keeps being effected by what humans do to it.
the second half of the book tells us what we should be doing and what many are doing now to work with our Earth and how we can join in this change. What impressed me was that when I was visiting some small towns in the Lowe Hudson Valley this past weekend, I saw people already at work, implementing some of these important, small changes- like buying locally, sourcing locally and supporting local farms.

The front cover of Bill McKibbean's "Eaarth" contains a quote by Barbara Kingsolver urging the reader to drop everything and read the book straight through. What Kingsolver doesn't mention is that once you begin reading the book it'll be impossible to stop.

McKibben describes a place so strikingly different from the planet Earth we have always known, that it has to be renamed to "Eaarth." McKibben's writing is easy to read and his ideas are clear, but his thesis is overwhelming to any reader: "The earth that we knew--the only earth that we ever knew--is gone." (pg 25) At times, reading the book is similar to the experience of watching a carwreck - it's heart-wrenching but you can't force yourself to look away.

A lot of readers will probably dismiss Eaarth based on its "environmentalist agenda" - they'll say that McKibben is simply another tree-hugger attempting to instill fear about the world of the future, or to borrow McKiben's explanation as to why we haven't stopped climate change thus far - "the world of our grandchildren." But if this is true, then we definitely need more people like the author of Earth, as it doesn't seem that anyone is listening - currently, "44 percent Americans believe that global warming comes from 'long-term planetary trends' and not the pumps at the Exxon station." (pg 54)

McKibben is probably one of the very few to steer us into the the direction of thinking that we can't restore the old Planet Earth. Thinking that driving hybrid cars and taking shorter showers will restore the ice caps in the Arctic is unrealistic. We need a major overhaul of our infrastructure and our logic to even adapt on this New Earth we created. It's no longer enough to admit that global warming is real and to want to adjust a few things in our daily lives - we must realize that our daily lives are gone in the way we've known them.

The author's suggestions of how to adapt to living on this new and changed Earth are hopeful and rely on getting rid of industries, on going back to a more simplistic lifestyle of individual farming, moving the entire infrastructure closer to home, and observing as much conservation as possible.

"Eaarth" is a book that should serve as a wake up call, but not in the same way that Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" (book and/or movie) did. By being more Earth-shattering (pun intended), McKibben's book is also more realistic and contains more statistics and McKibben quotes more articles to back up his thesis. However, the book's revolutionary words might also be alienating and can be viewed as a source of despair. In his introduction, McKibben cautions us against this being the case by saying that "[m]aturity is not the opposite of hope; it's what makes hope possible." (pg xiv)

It is this reviewer's sincere hope that McKibben's book is taken seriously and interpreted as a call to action rather than as a description of challenging events that can no longer be stopped or altered.

I have not read any other books by Bill McKibben, so I can make no references to them, but I will say this. Bill McKibben pulls no punches here. He tells of climate change as it is, the serious consequences, worldwide, that are happening now. From the dying coral reefs of the Caribbean to the melting ice caps of Greenland, and what disasters are happening, what you read here will scare you. What is really scary is that the disasters predicted that would happen 50 to 100 years from now have accelerated. They are not waiting to happen, they are happening now.
Before going any further, I would like to point out that this book was released in 2010, before fracking and shale drilling for oil and natural gas became well known in the media, but it doesn't matter. This book is not outdated. In fact, it applies today more than ever. I mention this because should Mr. McKibben decide to update this book, he will have a lot of new material to add.
Anyway, you should still buy this book. Mr. McKibben lives in Vermont, and even there, he has seen the effects of climate change, where there are heavier rains than ever before, flooding rivers and creeks, causing mudslides, and washing out road and bridges, literally stranding some residents in their towns, like on an island. The author has traveled to Bangladesh, where he contracted dengue, a fever causing great sweat, and has also seen the consequences of salt water pouring in fertile lands.
Further, where humanity has poured carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere resulting from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, the atmosphere has heated up, causing great changes for the earth, which the author renamed eaarth, a new planet having these changes. Coral is dying in the oceans, hurricanes, typhoons, and monsoon rains are more powerful, causing more destruction, the ice caps are melting and ocean levels are rising, farmlands are becoming deserts due to droughts, and the permafrost in the Arctic is melting, releasing trapped methane, which will heat the atmosphere even more, causing a chain reaction that will be impossible to stop or reverse. Many disease ridden insects, confined to the tropics, are coming further north (and south) carrying their diseases with them. Massive fires are destroying forests, bugs are killing trees, we are destroying jungles, all causing more greenhouse gases to pour into the atmosphere, and the cycle goes on and on. In a nutshell, our burning of fossil fuels are destroying the Earth, and we no longer have the means to stop it. All this is explained one at a time, in great detail, so there is plenty to scare you. It's all believable, and true, and is happening right now.
One number that is stressed is 350. That's 350 parts per million, the maximum amount of carbon dioxide our atmosphere can have without causing much damage to the earth. We are now at 390. We need to get back to 350. Is it possible? The author says that it is.
All that is covered in the first two chapters (out of four). This last two focus on how the human race can deal with it, focusing on how one can function in a community. Note that word. The author encourages the reader to help revive the community as a way of life, for in this day and age, many homes today are self contained, each never knowing its neighbor. McKibbon encourages one to change, and have neighbors help each other, by establishing community and individual farms, sources of energy by solar, wind, and biomass, all locally produced and used, and most of all, have people cut back on their materialistic lifestyles. Living in Vermont, the author feels that all this could be applied anywhere, using what one has and making the most of it. He also tells what can result from all this socially, physically, and psychologically. There would also be plenty of food available. He tells of farming and fertilization techniques, also.
All in all, McKibbon takes a worldwide disaster that is happening now and tells the reader to deal with it on a local scale. Do not be misled. National society, the electric grid, modern technology, all would still exist. What he tries to do is to tell you to scale back and do locally as much as possible, such as producing food and energy, as to, for example, cut down on transporting food 2000 miles where energy is wasted and dumped in the atmosphere and much of the food would decompose.
This is a book to read and ponder. It does need a little updating, with fracking and the new oil boom, but everything else apples, especially now.

A long anticipated update to Bill McKibben's The End of Nature book, Eaarth stresses that we've waited too long to address the causes of climate change. He uses the word "Eaarth" to reflect the new planet in which we now live. Long on gloom and short on solutions, the book stresses mistakes of the past that have had a negative impact on the environment.

While the book does a nice job exploring the environmental issues that have been building the past couple decades, it provides few innovative insights or suggestions. From stories about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to descriptions of the slow food movement, the book rehashes topics already covered in other publications.

I was looking for a unique perspective, instead I found the standard appeal of the environmental movement for making fundamental changes in our society. This book would be a useful tool for those new to the environment movement, but as a long-time advocate for change, I was disappointed.

Eaarth is at once hopeful and devastating. Bill McKibben doesn't pull any punches about the effects of global warming on our planet. The consequences of our pursuit for fossil fuel (and its burning) have made a lasting impact which is already effecting day-to-day living. The 'natural' disasters that we've been plagued with in ever-increasing frequency are a direct result of the imbalance which is a direct result of global warming. I say 'natural' because these freak weather events would most likely not have occurred if we hadn't pumped so much poison into the air and bumped up the global temperature (and it's only been pushed up one degree at this point). However, McKibben doesn't just harp on the horrors we've inflicted on the planet and its many inhabitants. He has solid ideas for ways we can adapt to our new environment on this completely new planet we created. His advice is to rely on communities and strive for living greener lives. (I've oversimplified of course because to give away more would defeat the purpose of you reading his excellent book.) If you're interested in environmental sciences and/or you're interested in the fate of our planet and our very way of life then I recommend you read this book ASAP.

This book has a few strengths, but more weaknesses. As other reviewers have pointed out, its best point is its graphic description of consequences of global warming that are already here. Although cites to the popular press way outnumber those to peer-reviewed journals, these passages of the book are a convenient digest of information for people who don't keep up with blogs like The Daily Climate or Climate Progress. The stars I give the book are for this service, plus for its well-deserved caricature of NYT columnist Tom Friedman (esp. @ 49-51 and 97) and the fact that it dares to speak out against economic growth, albeit meekly (more on this below).

BMcK's solution to global warming is to emphasize the importance of "community" -- but he portrays this as exclusively small-town and rural. If he couldn't find inspiring anecdotes in major US cities, he might have taken a look at some cities overseas in between his visits to pungent penguin rookeries (@ 25). Or at least read up a little. Akihiro Ogawa's "The Failure of Civil Society?" gives an eye-opening description of the range of civic organizations one can find in just one small, typical neighborhood in Tokyo, a city much larger than even NYC (and where more people say hi to each other on the street than I ever saw in California). Cities are far from hopeless as sites of community; BMcK's failure to discuss them is a missed opportunity. (To be fair, maybe BMcK has some special blind spot for Japan. He suggests that in a future age of global warming-driven conflict, Japan might be "eyeing Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming" (@85) -- thereby displaying ignorance of Japan's abundant groundwater, its solar-powered desalination technology and constitutional proscription of foreign invasions all in one brief sentence.)

In the last chapter of the book, BMcK identifies the Internet as one of the keys to building community. This is unduly optimistic: the Internet can also contribute to the destruction of communities. Consider. e.g., the impact of this website on local independent bookshops, the use of anonymous postings for harassment, the preference of many young people for virtual over face-to-face contact (all too common in Japan), and the occasional deaths in Asia of children of multi-player-game addicted parents (thanks to our superior broadband services). More realistically, the impact of the Internet on community is a wash.

A more serious weakness is that in this work of advocacy, BMcK's rhetoric falls flat. His proposed alternatives to "growth" and "sustainable" as catchwords include "durable," "sturdy," "stable," "hardy," "robust" (all @ 103), "graceful decline" (@ 99) and "maintenance" (@ 124). None of these are inspirational. At best they suggest plumbing, or treading water; at worst, sinking. Again, for such a global thinker, BMcK might have benefitted from being more in touch with global thoughts. There's already a lot of discussion of "de-growth" in Europe, where not only do they have the sense to avoid words like "decline" but also to tack on some more upbeat adjectives. For example, in Italy activists talk about "decrescita felice" and in France "décroissance heureuse," both meaning roughly a "happy" de-growth of the economy.

Happiness isn't a topic BMcK addresses in this book, since he wants it "to be relentlessly practical -- to talk about surviving, not thriving." Those interested in thriving are referred to his earlier book, "Deep Economy" (2007), with which the present book shares numerous anecdotes and factoids, e.g. about Velvetbean and conversations at farmers markets. That book suggests that community is a source of happiness (albeit a happiness based on a mysterious, never-spelled-out "new Utilitarianism" and "Einsteinian economics," D.E. @ 45). But in "Eaarth", BMcK's self-imposed limitation to address survival makes the connection to community less compelling. He never explains why community is the *only* way to survive, even though it's the only one he talks about.

What ultimately takes the wind out of BMcK's case is that he never dares to criticize capitalism. (Not that Marxism is better -- it's no less fanatical about growth.) Rather, he praises the local entrepreneurship of an organic seed company (@160f), and wants to give money to Al Gore to invest in start-ups (@52). Social enterprise, cooperatives, and an economics based on reciprocity might be ways to make a market economy more community-friendly, but they're never mentioned. (Aside from a couple of specific cooperatives mentioned in passing, they aren't addressed in "Deep Economy" either.) Humanistic grounds for critiquing growth, like the modern nature of work, the growth of social inequality, the primacy of the financial economy (with an annual turnover many times bigger than GDP) and the replacement of politics by neoliberal economics, are too ... European. The farthest our "relentlessly practical" author will stray from hard-nosed stuff like global warming and "peak oil" (@28) is a sentimental vision that blends "It's a Wonderful Life" (see @ 106, on local banks) with Ben & Jerry's.

It's a fiction that we can limit growth and return to community while retaining capitalism as we know it today. It's a pity that BMcK is too timid, too credulous in his faith in conventional economics, or else simply too worried about losing book sales ("relentless practicality" again?), to be forthright about this topic with an American readership. Maybe that reticence will get this book into the hands of more people, and persuade a few of the unconverted to worry about global warming. But it will be misleading them about the real nature of the problem. And it will offer them no more concrete solution than heading for the hills.

Bill McKibben has done much to raise consciousness concerning the necessity of changing our way of life in order to save the Earth.

This latest book has two parts -- in the first half the crisis is summarized. This is familiar to many people by now, but if you have been shielded from this information, then by all means read -- it is essential to know.

In the second half McKibben argues for decentralization and a more locally-based economic system. This is more questionable. While desirable, in my opinion, the question is how is it going to happen? It seems to me that the only way is through social collapse. Our complex, stratified society is not deliberately going to decentralize itself. But McKibben does not discuss social collapse or any of the problems associated with social collapse such as violence, civil war, barbarism, and so forth.

Nor does McKibben discuss what sort of mass militant movement will be required in order to defeat the Carbon Lobby, which is going to be necessary if we are to make a deliberate move to save the Earth and avoid social collapse. In a recent interview he says protest can only be symbolic because the Fossil Fuel System (my term) is too big and powerful. I strongly disagree. Direct action is not merely symbolic, and it needs to be massive! The Rising Tide network is pushing in that direction.

Of course it is much easier to identify a problem than figure out the solution. But there are many better books than this on the subject. I would recommend Thomas Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization specifically on the question of social collapse.

Bill McKibben's book Eaarth was a wonderful read. He presents a vastly different Earth that he likes to call Eaarth. The second "a" is to represent the current planet that we live on, a planet that we have altered so vastly that we can no longer call it the only name that modern humans have ever known. He reveals statistics at the beginning of the book that will shock even the most serious skeptic. There is one statistics in particular that is sure to shock; the freshwater discharge to the Pacific Ocean has fell by almost 6% since 1948, or roughly the annual volume of the Mississippi River! He succinctly presents the history and politics of where we are in our current state as a nation and a species. Specifically, how states have slowly relinquished rights in a effort to accomplish things that a small government could never do such as building the railroads, sending a man to the moon, and building the interstate highway system. The latter has lead to the spike in automobile sales, gasoline consumption, and our fast-paced life. Mr. McKibben is asking for a slow down, not to necessarily abandon our national connections, but to consider more carefully your local farmer's market. He is very realistic and knows that we can't all do this immediately, but he has some suggestions that could help this transition from rapid growth to a bit of a downsize. I highly recommend this book to all interested; it does not require a lot of knowledge about climate change or science in general.

McKibben changes the terms of the climate change debate. He presents an overwhelming argument that it is already too late to stop catastrophic global change. The catastrophe is already here. He further argues that all the feedback loops of global warming lead the wrong way. The melting ice caps lead to greater heat retention by a dark ocean surface. The melting tundra releases vast quantities of methane. The mass death of trees further intensifies the heat and aridity. I thought that increased CO2 would at least stimulate plant growth, but McKibben claims that overheated plants consume less CO2.

Somehow, the unstinting depiction of a planetary train wreak is handled with wit and even entertainment value. Then the discussion of adjustment strategies is practical, realistic and conversational. It's mostly stories about practical efforts by real, quite ordinary people. McKibben's own story of activism seems quite modest. His trial and error steps seem doable by most anyone with a computer. Like the Arab Spring's leaders, he puts great faith in the Internet as a tool for neighbors to connect.

Mankind has irreparably changed the Earth's climate and weather conditions. This book gives the details on tells how to survive on this new planet.

The Earth that mankind knew, and grew up on, is gone. A new planet needs a new name; hence Eaarth. It is a place where the ice caps at the poles are severely reduced, or gone. It is a place where the oceans are becoming more acid, because of more carbon being absorbed into the water, not to mention the toxic chemicals and other pollutants being dumped into it. It is a place of more extreme weather patterns.

The average person might not care if an entire glacier completely melts away, like the Chacaltaya Galcier in Bolivia. Those living downstream, dependent on that glacier for their drinking water, will certainly care. Since 1980, the tropics have expanded worldwide by 2 degrees of latitude north and south. Over 8 million more square miles of land are now tropical, with the dry subtropics pushing ahead of them. The chances of Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, running dry in the next 10 years have reached 50 percent. The residents of an oceanside town in North Carolina are spending up to $30,000 each to place large sandbags in front of their homes to keep the ocean at bay.

The times when America, or the world, can simply grow its way out of its financial problems are gone forever. Building enough nuclear power plants to get rid of even a tenth of the climate change problem will cost at least $8 trillion. According to one estimate, America needs to spend at least $200 billion a year for decades, just on infrastructure, to avoid the kind of gridlock that will collapse the economy. A small village in Alaska is being evacuated, because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $400,000 per person. There is not enough money on Earth to evacuate everyone threatened by rising sea levels.

What to do? Some people are taking another look at small-scale agriculture, getting away from a dependence on artificial fertilizers and chemicals. Eliminate the middleman, like advertising, packaging and transport costs, and put more money back in the farmer's pocket. Along with local agriculture, consider local power generation.

This is a very eye-opening book. The first half is pretty bleak, showing just how bad things have gotten. But, there is plenty of hope in the second half of the book. It is very much recommended.

XXXXX

"Apollo 8 was orbiting the moon, the astronauts busy photographing possible landing zones for the missions that would follow. On the fourth orbit, commander Frank Borman decided to roll the craft away from the moon and tilt its windows toward the horizon [since] he needed a navigational fix. What he got, instead, was a sudden view of the Earth, rising...

Crew member Bill Anders grabbed a camera and took the photograph that became the iconic image perhaps of all time. "Earthrise," as it was eventually known, that picture of a blue-and-white marble floating amid the vast backdrop of space, set against the barren edge of the lifeless moon. Borman said later that it was "the most beautiful, eye-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it. Everything else was simply black or white. But not the Earth...

BUT WE KNOW LONGER LIVE ON THAT PLANET. In the four decades since, that Earth has changed in profound ways...The world hasn't ended, but the world as we knew it has--even if we don't quite know it yet...it's...a different planet. It needs a new name. EAARTH."

The above is found in this monumental book by Bill McKIBBEN. He is an environmentalist, writer, and author. The "Boston Globe" in 2010 says "he's probably the nation's [that is, the United States] leading environmentalist" and "Time" magazine described him as "the world's leading green journalist." McKIBBEN is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.

We have waited too long. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different.

Generally, the first half of this book surveys the evidence for climate-driven impacts on the planet's major features. The second half offers a solution by way of a new mindset, by taking an imperfect but provocative look at "the architecture for the world that comes next, the dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent."

Finally, this book is well-written telling it like it is but offering hope, optimism, and even humour in places.

In conclusion, this is an important book telling us that climate change is a real & present danger and how we can possibly cope with that danger. I leave you with the words of the late, great astronomer and planetary scientist Dr. Carl Sagan, inspired by a Voyager 1 spacecraft image of the Earth as seen from 3.7 million miles away:

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is, nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we must make our stand."

(first published 2010; preface; 4 chapters; main narrative 210 pages; notes; acknowledgments; index; about the author)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

XXXXX

Mankind has irreparably changed the Earth's climate and weather conditions. This book gives the details on tells how to survive on this new planet.

The Earth that mankind knew, and grew up on, is gone. A new planet needs a new name; hence Eaarth. It is a place where the ice caps at the poles are severely reduced, or gone. It is a place where the oceans are becoming more acid, because of more carbon being absorbed into the water, not to mention the toxic chemicals and other pollutants being dumped into it. It is a place of more extreme weather patterns.

The average person might not care if an entire glacier completely melts away, like the Chacaltaya Galcier in Bolivia. Those living downstream, dependent on that glacier for their drinking water, will certainly care. Since 1980, the tropics have expanded worldwide by 2 degrees of latitude north and south. Over 8 million more square miles of land are now tropical, with the dry subtropics pushing ahead of them. The chances of Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, running dry in the next 10 years have reached 50 percent. The residents of an oceanside town in North Carolina are spending up to $30,000 each to place large sandbags in front of their homes to keep the ocean at bay.

The times when America, or the world, can simply grow its way out of its financial problems are gone forever. Building enough nuclear power plants to get rid of even a tenth of the climate change problem will cost at least $8 trillion. According to one estimate, America needs to spend at least $200 billion a year for decades, just on infrastructure, to avoid the kind of gridlock that will collapse the economy. A small village in Alaska is being evacuated, because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $400,000 per person. There is not enough money on Earth to evacuate everyone threatened by rising sea levels.

What to do? Some people are taking another look at small-scale agriculture, getting away from a dependence on artificial fertilizers and chemicals. Eliminate the middleman, like advertising, packaging and transport costs, and put more money back in the farmer's pocket. Along with local agriculture, consider local power generation.

This is a very eye-opening book. The first half is pretty bleak, showing just how bad things have gotten. But, there is plenty of hope in the second half of the book. It is very much recommended.

XXXXX

"Apollo 8 was orbiting the moon, the astronauts busy photographing possible landing zones for the missions that would follow. On the fourth orbit, commander Frank Borman decided to roll the craft away from the moon and tilt its windows toward the horizon [since] he needed a navigational fix. What he got, instead, was a sudden view of the Earth, rising...

Crew member Bill Anders grabbed a camera and took the photograph that became the iconic image perhaps of all time. "Earthrise," as it was eventually known, that picture of a blue-and-white marble floating amid the vast backdrop of space, set against the barren edge of the lifeless moon. Borman said later that it was "the most beautiful, eye-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it. Everything else was simply black or white. But not the Earth...

BUT WE KNOW LONGER LIVE ON THAT PLANET. In the four decades since, that Earth has changed in profound ways...The world hasn't ended, but the world as we knew it has--even if we don't quite know it yet...it's...a different planet. It needs a new name. EAARTH."

The above is found in this monumental book by Bill McKIBBEN. He is an environmentalist, writer, and author. The "Boston Globe" in 2010 says "he's probably the nation's [that is, the United States] leading environmentalist" and "Time" magazine described him as "the world's leading green journalist." McKIBBEN is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.

We have waited too long. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different.

Generally, the first half of this book surveys the evidence for climate-driven impacts on the planet's major features. The second half offers a solution by way of a new mindset, by taking an imperfect but provocative look at "the architecture for the world that comes next, the dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent."

Finally, this book is well-written telling it like it is but offering hope, optimism, and even humour in places.

In conclusion, this is an important book telling us that climate change is a real & present danger and how we can possibly cope with that danger. I leave you with the words of the late, great astronomer and planetary scientist Dr. Carl Sagan, inspired by a Voyager 1 spacecraft image of the Earth as seen from 3.7 million miles away:

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is, nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we must make our stand."

(first published 2010; preface; 4 chapters; main narrative 210 pages; notes; acknowledgments; index; about the author)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

XXXXX

Quote: "Change--fundamental change--is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance."

Mckibben tries to warn us that not only is the planet heading for disaster, but he knew it 25 years ago and has taken strides to announce it to the world. Although he paints a grim picture of our future, he paints an even grimmer picture of what we have to do to change it. It's not so much that we'll perish, but like we need to put ourselves on a diet before we grow too lazy to get out of bed.

Like others of recent times in the twenty-first century, Bill McKibben is making a clear case. We're just out of time. He shows case after countless case of how the world is changing and makes a convincing argument that we are causing it.

The most powerful element of the book is its readability. He blasts everything from industry to land conservation to overpopulation, to make a most indelible point.

This is a serious book about a very serious problem we can't be cavalier about. If you read any of the IPCC reports or even start to watch some of the documentaries on climate change, like National Geographic's Six Degrees Could Change The World, you'll be overwhelmed by how much we've managed to destroy the planet over the past few hundred years. What I liked about this book is that McKibben doesn't sugar coat things, that he explains climate change in ways that people can understand (it's such a huge issue, but when scientists start spouting endless facts, my eyes glaze over, it becomes too incomprehensible), and he also suggests steps we can take in our lives to contribute towards a less bad future. This is great for everyone to read. It should be required reading in high schools and colleges. An environmental science course should be a required course. I never did use any of that calculus from high school, but my environmental studies class changed the way I live.

McKibben writes a very comprehensive narrative about global warming and that the net result is inevitable death and decreased survivability.

Where this falls dreadfully short is McKibben insistence on false hope and ineffectual adaptations and fixes.

For those of us who have been studying and advocating change in how the world approaches global warming; we also understand the limitations of any corrective action after the climates positive feedback loop is triggered.

McKibben tiptoes around this, no doubt wanting to combine prescience with comfort. .."no need to alarm the idiots still dancing to the orchestra on the Titanic:, right?

McKibben states experts saying it would take 1000 years to get the planet to even BEGIN to reverse course of looming climate chaos. EVEN IF ALL countries stopped everything bad this afternoon

We don't have 1000 years. WE never changed our usage.

What was not said but implied is that the trajectory is humans will have destroyed not only the planet but all plants..animals and themselves either before 2050 or within 100 years from now.

If you understand about methane and clathrates then you know once fired..things are out of our control.

We have to remember that humans have never created anything..everything invented ties on resources already on the planet.

Ergo..once gone we cannot recreate the planet. METHANE PLUMES means less oxygen..less trees..therefore more atmospheric displacement and accelerated climate chaos.

SO WHAT? HUMANS don't breathe well on less ocygen..less water with less oxygen
.less to no plants from less oxygen.

I agreed with much of the book and I agreed with the ICC findings but where I disagree with both is that if you say we will be up to 6.7 degrees higher by centuries in and humans as well as most things on earth can not survive in a differential beyond 4 degrees higher; then less than 3 minutes later talking about future endeavors and what to do next century is dissembling at best and crazy denial out worst.

We be in deep Dookie and our pride in the progress of modern society may be humanities epitaph and indictment.

Give me Guy McPherson who at least couples his own version of gloom and doom with a "die or go gently into that good night with grace"

Because the first half of the book makes the second part seem like the author does not even take his own information seriously.

FYI in the 2013 revamped edition of the IPCC report, the info was the same as 2010 and 2008 with the exception of the potentiometer bomb that by 2020 or 2030. (Yes 4 to 14 years from now) up to 95% of most species on earth would be extinct ( that means DEAD ) and also around 67% of all humans would also be dead.

That was 67% of humans may be dead and not just in other countries..the American Southwest will continue to trend towards drought and the main killers will be the usual..war..famine..drought..diseases but this time with no other country coming to the rescue.

We never

McKibben is a master at putting it all together--and puncturing the balloons of those who think clean coal, nuclear energy, technology or more VOLT cars will save us from "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"(Yeats) Pulling together in community and thinking small seem to be the ticket. How keen and flexible we will be in doing this remains to be seen. I hope to be hopeful, but sometimes it is difficult given the asleep at the switch "leaders" who have sold their souls and our globe to lobbyists. Read this book. It's enlightening, sobering, and wonderfully written. My novel, Falling Through Time, peeks into our future, seventy years from now...we survive, but very differently from now...maybe that's a good thing? You decide.

The main premise of `Eaarth` is not that the world will be different in the future, for our grandchildren, rather it is already different - it's too late, we are on a new "Eaarth" (thus a new spelling), climate change is adversely impacting us right now. McKibben supports this with compelling evidence in the first half of the book, which is the best part IMO, although not without problems (see below). McKibben's solution is to reduce complexity, reduce size and reduce growth - smaller, local, slower. This approach, he observes, is nothing new as can be seen in many movements such as local food, slow food, anti-globalization.

Unfortunately McKibben's premise is misguided. He offers a simple solution to a complex global problem that requires both local and international change. While it's true we need to act individually, and as communities locally, there also needs to be work on the level of national and international policy. We need both small scale and large scale tools. All scales have their unique challenges, but neither is a silver bullet solution.

One of the problems with McKibben's evidence-based argumentation in the first half of the book, where he shows how and why the world is already in hot water by citing science reports, is that he uses many of the same logical fallacies of climate deniers. Certain studies are cherry picked for their emotional impact with overly large conclusions drawn. Studies are cited but there is no sense of how reliable or mainstream they are. Was it one scientist with 1 year of data, or 100 scientists over 50 years? It's argumentative rhetoric without the kind of substance that's needed to really arrive at the truth. It's actually very difficult to determine how reliable science reports are, not unlike sorting out all the claims made in the vitamin and alternative health industry. Science journalism is a lost art and one of the reasons there is no much confusion in the popular press. It is exactly the kind of hard work we hope McKibben would do for us in book form - instead he cut and pasted the same headlines we already know about on the Internet without really examining them in detail to determine the nuanced reality behind them, which is nearly always the case.

Bill McKibben's `Eaarth` is a passionate and informed argument for a belief system that is a model of Vermont environmentalism. This is not a bad thing, but it is preaching to the choir and ultimately just deepens the divide. Vermont, where McKibben is from, is repeatedly used as a positive role model. Unfortunately Vermont has many unique characteristics geographically, demographically and historically that simply don't apply to other regions of the US or world. Of course McKibben is just using Vermont as an example, but it's one of the worlds best examples for his cause. McKibben doesn't ask the hard questions or look at the messy contrary evidence because it doesn't make for as good a story.

`Eaarth` is worth reading, because there is a considerable amount of up to date information in particular the first 100 pages on what's happening to the world today with climate change; I know a lot about it, but still learned a lot new, and McKibben is a good writer. Ultimately I don't think the books main premise says anything very new, at least for me, I already knew "we are so screwed" years ago. For some readers though it may be an eye opener and bring coherence of different topics into the bigger picture. I'd love to see someone set up a web page that investigates in more detail each of the claims made in the book and ranks them according to degree's of assurance, reliability and number of studies supporting it. Such as the "Snake Oil?" example (see comment below for URL). In the end this is a book worth reading but do your own research also.

The first two chapters of this book provide a good overview of the evidence for, and the consequences of, global warming. These consequences do not get as much attention as they should, and if anything, will likely be more severe than described. I believe that McKibben's assertion that the changes are clearly apparent now, not an expection of the future, is true. The recent massive snow fall in Washington DC is one of the expectations of global warming: warmer air hold more water; more water means more snow dumped at lower lattitudes as weather fronts move north. The unusual spelling, eaarth, used as the title is intended to convey the idea that the Earth has alrady changed, and is not the Earth as we generally think of her.

The last two chapters of the book are a guide to changing the bad habits that have lead us to this eaarth. I was very pleased by the breadth of this coverage. But I do not think that there is as yet sufficient anxiety among the general public, and perhaps more importantly, among politicians, about climate change to effect these changes in a timely manner. Climate change denial seems to be a major plank in the platforms of several political movements. Many elected officials looked out over a Washington DC brought to a total stand still by snow, and still managed find this to be evidence for a normal winter.

But political climate change is necesary to survive the changing global climate. Some serious cultural changes have to be made to reduce/eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from major sources and these will require a type of politics which is impossible today. Two of these are Portland cement manufacturing and air travel. The former will require either development of new building materials with a small manufacturing carbon footprint (unlikely), or complete sequestration of CO2 emissions, a costly change that will undoubtedly require federal incentives at taxpayer expense. Air travel will have to be curtailed; CO2 emissions from aircraft engines cannot be captured at all. I do not think that our current elected officials are up to it.

This is an important book. Every policy maker at all levels of government should get a copy, although the denial folks will certainly not read it. I wish it was more emphatic about the evidence at hand, and the seriousness of the problems. Skeptical readers might also want to visit the CDC website for an overview of the public health consequences of climate change, many of which are also currently in evidence.

The title of the book, eaarth, is clever, but should have been the Richerd Zeebe's quotation in chapter 1, "It's pretty outrageous what we've done."

Bill McKibben has made his career in the clear explication of humanity's impact on nature. He is a humanist rather than a scientist, and while he makes his case based on broadly observed and reported scientific studies, his strength lies in translating and illuminating the aridity of scholarly assessment.

It must be nearly heartbreaking for McKibben to have so plainly stated our modern calamity in The End of Nature only to watch the world proceed on its merry carbon-spewing way for another two decades. In Eaarth, the author makes clear that we are already living on a climate-changed world, and that the time for preventable loss is past. Now comes coping with the shift, while, hopefully, taking steps to prevent the worst.

The best part of this book comes in later chapters, where McKibben offers ways that real people can effect real change in their daily lives. He doesn't hold out false promises that private action will save the world, only that local action can save communities--or at least ameliorate the worst effects. Peak oil is on track to relocalize us whether we like it or not, and his focus on local food, local energy production, higher efficiency and community interdependence are the best policy options most of us will ever have a hand in creating.

We're screwed in a lot of ways, and coming decades will be hard to live through and perhaps harder to witness, but here, at least, is a path with heart.

If you want to debate whether global warming is real, or, if it's real, whether it's a natural phenomenon or something we did, or if "drill, baby, drill" can bring cheap energy back to America or whether depleting the earth's resources is a good thing because it brings on the End Times --- there are many places on the Internet you can go to have those conversations.

Bill McKibben's book is not one of those places.

Just the spelling of the title of "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" --- the most important book you can read this year, and yes, I know, it's only April --- signals that we are, in his view, beyond all those conversations.

Bill McKibben is the dean of environmental writers, and there's a good reason for that --- in The End of Nature, published in 1989, he was the first to use the term "global warming." A few years ago, in Deep Economy, he was among the first to write that an economy built on growth was not sustainable and that we needed to scale down and strengthen our ties to our local communities. Not happy messages, but we pay attention because he is a serious thinker, a stellar reporter and a writer who can make even statistics interesting.

A great communicator takes complexity and makes it clear for the layman. Like this: Global warming has reached a stage that we no longer are living on the same planet we grew up on. Let McKibben explain:

Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It's our reality. We've changed the planet, changed it in large and fundamental ways. And these changes are far, far more evident in the toughest parts of the globe, where climate change is already wrecking thousands of lives daily. In July 2009, Oxfam released an epic report, "Suffering the Science," which concluded that even if we now adapted "the smartest possible curbs" on carbon emissions, "the prospects are very bleak for hundreds of millions of people, most of them among the world's poorest."

In the first part of this book, McKibben explains how we got here --- that is, how we blew past an atmosphere with less than 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, and what happens now that we're at 390, and what will happen if we don't get back to 350, and fast. And how unlucky it is for us that we're starting to run short of fossil fuel ("Simply running in place would mean finding four new Saudi Arabias by 2030") just as we've dangerously destabilized the planet.

The pols talk about making the planet "safer for our grandchildren." As soon as they talk generations down the line, you can stop listening to them, McKibben says. They don't get it. We don't have that kind of time. We've got to wean ourselves from our obsession with growth, and pronto: "If don't stop pouring more carbon into the atmosphere, the temperature will simply keep rising, right past the point where any kind of adaptation will prove impossible."

This isn't going to happen. Wall Street lives on the Gospel of Growth, and the government tags along. And as for public consciousness --- well, "44 percent of Americans believe that global warming comes from 'long-term planetary trends' and not the pumps at the Exxon station." So, as a civilization, we'll deal with this at 11:59.

Bill McKibben is not a doomsday prophet. He sees hope. In "Deep Economy," he noted that the fast growing sector in food marketing is the farmer's market. Now he sees localization of much more than food production as key to our survival. Because smart people are simply not going to sit back and wait for their lawns to flood, their roofs to blow off and their kids to die of skin cancer.

212 pages. An evening of your life. If you're interested in saving it, make time.

No one writes more coherently on the vital issues of environmental science facing us all than Bill McKibben, one of the finest environmentlists of our time. This book will help you understand how to cope with the disastrous ecological events now facing us all in the Anthropocene Age!

As author Bill McKibben points out, we now live on a planet that is radically different from the one we evolved on--a planet that has "changed in large and fundamental ways." It's not Earth anymore but--in Arnold Schwarzenegger's deep Austrian accent--"EAARTH":

* Global rainfall is now increasing 1.5 percent per decade
* Larger storms over land now create more lightning, and thus more forest fires--including some of the first northern tundra fires ever
* There is now 22 percent less sea ice than has ever been witnessed before, while the Arctic ice cap was 1.1 million square miles smaller than ever in recorded history
* Global warming has expanded the standard meteorological definition of the tropics more than 2 degrees of latitude north and south since 1980
* The 18,000 year old Chacaltaya Glacier of Bolivia is now gone, "completely melted away as of some sad, undermined moment early [in 2009]"
* "One hundred eleven hurricanes formed in the tropical Atlantic between 1995 and 2008, a rise of 75 percent over the previous thirteen years." According to the NY Times, "the last thirty years have yielded four times as many weather-related disasters as the first three quarters of the 20th century combined."
* The seas are acidifying as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere. Already the pH has gone from 8.2 to 8.1--which is corrosive enough to kill baby oysters--and is expected to reach 7.8 by this century's end, a process Britain's Royal Society described "essentially irreversible."

The historic level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere--the level that produced the last ten thousand years of atmospheric stability that we have come to know and love--was roughly 275 parts per million. You can think of that as the sweet spot. We are now somewhere near 390 ppm. The last time the earth's atmosphere reached levels this high was roughly 20 million years ago--and it wasn't pretty: sea levels rose 100 feet or more and global temperatures rose about 10 degrees. As the Zoological Society of London reported in July 2009, "360 is now known to be the level at which coral reefs cease to viable in the long run." And as if this wasn't news enough, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new study showing that a new understanding of ocean physics proved that "changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a thousand years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped."

To put it bluntly, no one is going to refreeze the Arctic, and the increasingly chaotic weather we have come to expect over the last decade is only going to get worse. "We're not, in other words, going to get back the planet we used to have, the one on which our civilization developed. We're like the guy who ate steak for dinner every night and let his cholesterol top 300 and had the heart attack," says McKibben.

Eaarth is not merely another addition to the large and growing body of "collapse porn" which has appeared recently (confer Jared Diamond's superb Collapse and Jim Kunster's novel World Made by Hand). After probing the girth of the problem, McKibben spends the last half of the book offering practical advice to readers who would "try to manage our decent," as it were--for people who hope to bring about a "relatively graceful decline" to our sputtering civilization. Instead of "trying to fly the plane higher when the engines start to fail, or just letting it crash into the nearest block of apartments," says McKibben, "we might start looking around for a smooth stretch of river to put it down in." And that river, without giving away too much in the way of details, is quite small and local, focused less on economic growth and more on stability and maintenance.
Much of the writing that went into this book was done while McKibben was launching his new organization, [...]--a global organization attempting to "rise to the challenge of climate crisis"--and thus much of the content overlaps with the [...] movement. (Google for more information.)

As with everything else McKibben has written, Eaarth is an eloquent, informative and extremely important book. My only complaint is that, along with local self-reliance, organic farming, farmers markets, the slow food movement and community-based email listservs, he failed to even mention permaculture as an effective means for change. But we can forgive our valiant Vermonter this once, I suppose. After all, you can't have your finger on the pulse of everything.

This book should be required reading for anyone in public office. Although the first half starts out as a depressing litany of our failure to avoid global warming when we had the chance -- how we fell for Ronald Reagan's siren song instead of heeding Jimmy Carter's realism -- by the middle of the book, McKibben is making some very good points about how bigger is not always better. Smaller banks, e.g., would not have crashed the economy with their failures. In fact, smaller banks are less likely to fail because they are in better contact with where their loan money is going. Some things are better bigger and some smaller -- in addition to banks, smaller power plants would make much harder targets for terrorism, and would also be less likely to take down the whole grid if one failed. Food systems, too, should not be "too big to fail."

I don't know how realistic it is to talk about bringing back the family farms of the 1940s and 50s -- nowadays, it's cheap agri-business or expensive gourmet meats and vegetables from tiny organic farms, but he makes a good argument for community-based decision making when it comes to food and also energy. He spends quite a few pages illustrating how people have encouraged small-scale farming in his home state of Vermont, and how people can use the energy resources of the places where they live, and even of the animals they raise - there are biogas generators that run on manure, e.g. His point is that the solution is many decentralized solutions, and I think it's a good point. He thinks the internet will be a great source for re-learning the things we've forgotten, for sharing new ideas with each other, even for getting to know our neighbors and for keeping our societies tolerant and accepting, even as we have to go back to relying more on one another again.

His vision of our new planet, which he calls Eaarth, is troubling but also stirring. We have work to do until we can reduce our carbon emissions to the point where we can restore the global climate stability our civilization depends on, and we have a long road ahead of us, but it can be done, it is being done. He wants us all on board.

During the Apollo 8 mission in 1986, while the men were orbiting the moon, Commander Frank Borman decided to roll the craft for a directional realignment. What the men saw next would be one of the greatest sights beheld by men; the view of the earth, rising in the blackness of space; “a grand oasis.” Bill McKibben begins by saying that this earth seen by the men of the Apollo 8 mission is not the same earth we live on today. The earth we live on today is the result of human abuse; abuse by the over consumption of fossil fuels. Abusing these resources without rest has released immense quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, lowering acidity levels in the ocean, intensifying global climate patterns, increasing ocean levels and temperatures worldwide; a phenomenon known as global warming. The planet will never be the same, it can’t be. McKibben’s Eaarth is where we live today, and we must learn to live with her rather than over her.

Eaarth is an interesting book about global warming and the environment. What makes it so interesting is the author admits that it's not some future event we need to plan for, it's something that is happening now and the changes are here to stay. While this may sound all gloom and doom, Eaarth is actually more about the answers to some of our global problems.

Although the first half of the book may terrify you due to the massive changes that have and are taking place with the environment, the second half is promising. Bill reveals a lots of information, most of it about growing food since that will be a major issue. When you imagine how many billions of people have to eat everyday, it's hard to fathom. For most of us in wealthy country's, we don't know hunger so we may not appreciate the larger issue. There are hundreds of millions of people who almost starve now, and the future doesn't look good for most. What I found inspiring and dare I say hopeful was the ability we have to go back to the old ways of farming. Not only does locally grown food taste better and is more nutritious, but it also does something I had never thought of. It brings us back into our community and helps us be neighborly once again.

Ironically enough, it's the Internet that will be extremely helpful in this new environment since knowledge is easily accessible for anyone with a connection. If you want to learn more about the environmental effects on Earth, you will enjoy reading Eaarth, and you may come away with a little more idea of how we may be able to cope with the changes taking place each day on this planet we call home.

"Eaarth" is the name the author Bill McKibben gives a new planet just discovered by humanity. This world is quite similar to our own planet. It has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and can support complex life. This planet might be a good target for an interstellar colonization mission, except that on further review, it has some problems. It seems that an intelligent species has already pretty thoroughly conquered this planet, digging up its hydrocarbons, and over a couple hundred years, changing its climate into something that isn't quite hospitable to the type of civilization that humans prefer.

Unfortunately, "Eaarth" is right here, and the message of this book is "we are doomed, and it is too late" followed by "well, maybe not totally doomed, but the future isn't going to be fun." And, to make things worse, there's no magic technological break through that can keep things the way we are used to.

I'd recommend "Eaarth" for those who want a short, engaging survey of everything wrong with our planet, and a catalog of how things are changing for the worst. In fact, not so much how things might change, but rather, what's already been done. The game's over, and "Eaarth" is merely the box score of how bad we've lost. I will be honest, it is quite depressing and scary, and the second half of the book, where the author gives some ideas on how humans can adapt to our changing world, is merely a band-aid over a gaping wound.

I give McKibben credit for trying to be optimistic, but in the end, this book tells us what we have lost, and the message is "things will not get better -- adapt the best you can."
Regardless, a very worthwhile read, if for no other reason then to see clearly where our planet is likely headed

What Bill McKibben tells us in Eaarth is that the planet on which we now live is no longer the planet that it formerly was due to how man has changed it. He uses the word Eaarth purposely as a metaphor to give a visual indication that our planet's change is permanent. Additionally, he says that we have no choice at this time other than to drastically modify how we live so that we and future generations can lessen our exposure to increasing food shortages and natural disasters such as drought, torrential rains, fires from increased lightening, and floods.

This is the kind of book that makes me want to jump onto the bandwagon. McKibben may talk about gloom and doom, but he does so in an enjoyable, conversational tone. His statistics come forth frequently, always jaw-dropping and never boring. An example would be when McKibben states that "already the ocean is more acid than anytime in the last eight hundred thousand years, and at current rates by 2050 it will be more corrosive than anytime in the past 20 million years." Scary? You bet!

Well researched, Eaarth comes complete with notes in the back which are footnotes for the main work and could also be used as a springboard for additional reading later. I'll definitely be looking for more work by this author as I found so many of his ideas thought-provoking.

In the past, I've heard much about global warming but not to the extent that Bill McKibben explained it. It makes more sense to me now. So, too, do the solutions that he proposed, although I feel that this area of his book could have been developed a little more. He basically promoted the local lifestyle that he himself lives in his home state of Vermont. Nevertheless, I suggest that you grab this book, read it, and then join the author and me in making a difference in this changing world.

***This book was received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.***

EAARTH by Bill McKibben was written to serve not just as a Nightmare Wake Up call about Global warming, but provides suggestions about what ALL OF US should be doing, right now, to keep this present nightmare from becoming a Post Apocolyptic vision of reality. Actually, the first stance McKibben upholds, is that even under the VERY BEST scenarios for future global warming levels, we will never live on the old EARTH. No, whether we were to all cut back to AMISH levels with our carbon footprint, we have done too much damage. The book's first section provides hard facts and figures about Global Warming/ Climate Change. I sat outside reading this book in 104 degree weather, so that my body AND mind would absorb the lessions.....things are HEATING UP. You'll want to read the first part of the book with a highlighter on hand, because the (well footnoted and researched) factoids will slap you in the face. For example, you might wonder WHY the USA and other countries drag their feet ,when it comes to switching over to Green Engery. As it turns out, the Oil Companies have 10 TRILLION DOLLARS invested in Infrastructure, including oil wells, off shore oil rigs, refineries, pipelines, super tankers, etc. Given just that ONE FACT, from ONE PAGE, allows you to make some fast deductions about WHY the Oil Companies TALK about green technology, but do nothing about it. (except make sure it never happens.) And, of course what might happen if we removed 10 TRILLION dollars in infrastructure investment? If you thought the housing meltdown was a mess, an overnight switch to GREEN ENERGY would destroy our planet's economy. Another little factoid from the first part, was 5 out of every 6 off shore oil rigs in the world, are off the Gulf Coast of Southern USA. Again, it sheds a LOT of light on why the Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi politicians were upset that there was a mortitorium on Off Shore Oil drilling. Even tho we dont get a large percentage of our oil from those wells, they certainly provide a large chunk of $$$ to the struggling economies off the Southern Gulf Coast. Naturally, global warming stand-by facts and figures make their ominous appearance as well. The number of "hottest ever" years on record in the past decade, the number and severity of Gulf Coast hurricanes, not to mention hurricanes (and Typhons) in places that never saw them before, the melting of the glaciers worldwide, ultimately removing the amount of fresh water glacial meltwater provides to major rivers running thru China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and S.E. Asia. Even tho some figures might seem like a rerun of Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, there's more indepth analysis, and more recent (summer 2009) facts about the ever increasing RATE and SEVERITY of climate change. I read the book in bits and peices, because hopelessness starts to wash over you, when you wonder if your grandchildren will ever grow up on a planet without water rights wars, food availablibilty wars, massive electrical black outs, and summers with 120 degree heatwaves becoming the norm in Northeastern USA. By the time I read the first part of the book, the heat was getting to me, and not just the 103 degree summer sun.

McKibben's EAARTH's second part provides some HOPEFUL sollutions to the mess we are all in. He also pops some pink clouds that some of us want to hide behind. In fact, if you have ever read WENDEL BERRY, and his anti-agribusiness farming philosophy books, you will have a bit of an idea what McKibben's solutions entail. First off, he is NOT a proponent of Nuclear Energy. Building enough Nuclear Reactors to eliminate just ONE TENTH of the global warming threat, would cost us 8 TRILLION DOLLARS. Instead, he believes our culture needs to change top to bottom. Smaller farms, neighborhood gardens, home gardens, that lead to the END of Agri-businessmen owned farms which extend farms for hundreds of miles. He lets us know how insidious our dependence on OIL has become, from the OIL COMPANIES supplying furtilizers, (instead use manure) bug sprays (instead use the right insects, and plant species, evolved or developed for the climate in your area). Recycle plastics, localize electric grids, invest in infrastructure renewal and economical mass transist, and most of all, END the sickening SURGE of populations from the FARMS into the CITIES, since it takes more farmhands to farm green. I became impressed when I realized the book had no political finger pointing agenda. ( We are ALL TO BLAME.) Also, even tho he scares us with the HARD FACTS, McKibben at least gives us some hope to avoid a global apocalypse before the 21st century ends. (or, before 2050 arrives, take your pick on scientists and their data.) If we are to slow down the global warming time bomb, we need to work together to HEAL THE WORLD, or watch as billions die from a lack of water, food, tropical diseases moving north, and the end of our craving for fuel to feed our ever growing technologies.

Like most Cassandra's, I doubt anyone will listen to McKibben. The oil Company Lobbyests, the LIVE FOR TODAY economic policies, and the horrific waste in the wealthiest countries, almost garrantees that the destruction of this beautiful green earth. The past 10,000 years of climate stability allowed Humanity to develop agriculture, animal husbandry, science, and finally, the Industrial revolution's smokestack timebomb. The Author knows our Children and grandchildren will be asking us WHY DIDNT YOU LOVE US ENOUGH TO SAVE THE EARTH? And of course, the answer will be, "It's not that we dont love YOU, we just loved money MORE." Ideally, this book would to be read by every responsible adult, especially the Oil Company CEOs, and the heads of the USA's EPA, and DEPT of INTERIOR. It ought to be read by CHINA and INDIA, who are causing global warming to speed up from burning coal. However, its going to take a LOT OF PEOPLE, reading this book, and others like it, to make a TRUE grass roots change. With almost 30 pages of FOOTNOTES, this book cant be tossed into a stack of books by pundants who work for their Oil Company overlords. It's only thru educating ourselves with these books, that we can argue their "nothing to fear" agenda with clear, scientifically based facts about where we are now with the world's climate, and the world's ENERGY use, and dependance on OIL BY PRODUCTS like plastics, fertilizers, and polyester clothing. This book has SOME GOOD, SOLID answers, that are logical, tried and tested for years. Likewise it contains a REAL grass roots policy for slowing and capping global climate change. McKibben states that Leisure hours have fallen back by ONE THIRD since 1950, as we work longer and longer, for the same standard of living. I wish we'd all buy this book, and maybe a couple other books like it, and read them, absorb them, and talk about them NOW, before we dont have any leasure time left.

I've been studying climate change for two years and thought I knew it all. Bill packs this book with facts and figures, all the more frightening, that I hadn't heard from other sources. This is a truly frightening book, and absolutely essential. Scientists and journalists have done a poor job tying climate change to the present. This book puts it in the now.
If you haven't read a climate change book before, this is a good place to start.
Still not sure why he spells earth with an extra "a" though. That's the only dumb part I could find. The rest is impeccable.

This book has been widely summarized, especially the very scary first section. What I want to share is a small ray of hope that McKibben describes as a way of melding the high value strong community ties from the past with the high tech information age fast paced world we live in. Using practical creativity,a woman new to a city, Burlington, Vermont, created a networking community tool that grew and spread after attempting and failing to meet her neighbors in the traditional ways. She printed up and distributed flyers announcing the creation of the Five Sisters Neighborhood Forum to "share messages about lost cats and block parties".

Bit by bit neighbors started sharing information. The larger Front Porch Forum was formed to cover other neighborhoods. "Front Porch Forum may already be the most important source of information for many Vermonters, who have watched their newspapers lay off reporters and shrink coverage." Word of a bridge closing was quickly shared, many neighbors showed up to help with a move after only being asked for a strong hand for a few heavy items. A mother couldn't afford canoes for her daughter's hoped for canoeing party - a word in the forum brought 6 canoes to their front yard.

It sounds like this kind of innovation and putting minds and hands together is what will be a big tool needed in the new eaarth coming our way.

McKibben's book is a powerful cautionary tale about the effects if global climate change on our environment and society, but it's not all doom and gloom. The most memorable part of the whole book was the last bit, where McKibben tells a myriad of stories about what efforts people are making to minimize the damage. It was heartwarming and inspiring to read about. A must read for anyone considering themselves a climate activist

About half of this book is really helpful. It basically tells us what climate change will do and has done to the planet.

So you've noticed the snow in Austin, the hurricanes in New Orleans, and the unbelievable drought in Atlanta, in addition to the sinking islands in the Pacific?

Welcome to global warming.

If you were wondering what to expect from the coming century in terms of weather, this, in a "I think I'm going to go hide in my closet now" sort-of way, will definitely tell you. The damage rising seas and melting icecaps have done and will do is hard to believe, but it will apparently become even harder to ignore.

That part of the book is great.

But then, the author gets into solutions for preventing even greater climate change: buy local, and don't travel by car, work from home, and work with your neighbors.

That would be great, except he imagines us all living suburbia. One-third of the U.S. lives in cities; where other authors talk about vertical gardens in high rises, and the virtues of being able to live without a car, this author envisions huge cooperative gardens and horsedrawn carriages. That's great, if you have the room for a farm.

Basically, utopian visions of back-to-the-farm seem less than realistic. Of all Americans, some of the people with the smallest carbon footprint (because they live in small spaces, they don't have cars, and they don't use a lot of air conditioning)

are in New York City.

Read this for the first half; the second half seems oddly motivated by back to the land ideals that wouldn't work for many Americans.

Bill McKibben's Eaarth is a refreshing read. I'll admit, when I first started Eaarth, I had concerns that it would devolve into a depressing diatribe where, after reading, I would feel depressed and powerless about the state of the planet. Not so. Eaarth is an excellent and empowering read. McKibben outlines where the planet is--climate-wise--currently. He tells it like it is, no judging or haranguing. The second half of the book is empowering. McKibben offers small scale, local solutions to the problems he sees. He is not waiting for the rest of the planet, or even the rest of the country to hop aboard his bandwagon. His solutions are achievable in the smallest of communities. Eaarth is an inspiring and uplifting read--once you accept his premise that the planet has irrevocably changed for the worse.

If you are looking for evidence that Global Warming is real there are plenty of better books to read. Eaarth is aimed at those who already know we are in trouble but would like a little help in understanding how deep; how soon; how did we get here; and what can we do about it. Bill's answers are: Deep enough to totally undo the civilization we have grown up in; Now; Infinite economic expansion in a finite space in pursuit of the Good Life; Downsize and get to know your neighbor.

I believe McKibbon's approach has been misinterpreted as hopelessly naive in its prescription for a simpler life as the solution to an overwhelming global challenge. I actually think he believes descent into ugly chaos is most likely, but he prefers to remain hopeful that we can bring forth the wisdom of our name sapiens and proactively design and adopt a new society for a new world before overshoot and collapse are forced upon us. That society would be more local, more grounded and more fulfilling, if less comfortable than our aspirations to a Lazy Boy world. Will we get there? Unlikely, but still better to try than hunkering down with an AK waiting for the roving bands of urban refugees.

After reading this book I wondered why global warming is not the top priority of everyone thoughtout the world. McKibben paints a pretty bleak picture of the damage that has been done to our planet and the consequences of humankind's actions. I found it particularly interesting that the atmosphere will continue to get worse before it gets better even if we stopped polluting today.

Instead of concluding that we are doomed and we've done irreparable damage to the planet, McKibben offers sensible solutions that we must act on as soon as possible. His recommendations are being implemented on a small scale in some places, and hopefully people everywhere will copy the farming and power generating methods that we need to make Earth livable for future generations.

Enormously compelling and persuasive in its diagnosis of what we've done to the planet and of how nature now and in the future will, because of our own actions, be much harsher generally than in the past. I would love for him to somehow be wrong about all this dire climate change, but he's very convincing and very illuminating. It's worth five stars to me just for that.

While the awful details about the new nature on our transformed planet are pretty despair-inducing, he is later as hopeful and positive as he can be, offering solutions he thinks might work. I'm not at all confident that his solutions, in the best-case scenario, could realistically work in widespread deployment, but anything's better than nothing.

Some reactions I've seen elsewhere dismiss McKibben's proposed solutions as unlikely to be adequately effective. Those reviewers, I'd hope, would still support the implementation of his approaches. Something's better than nothing, right? A few seem contemptuous that he's not radical enough. But he's more radical than many Americans, and perhaps his sympathy for capitalism will improve his chances of getting a fair hearing.

NOTE: The following is excerpted from a joint review of EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET (Bill McKibben, 2010) and DIET FOR A HOT PLANET: THE CLIMATE CRISIS AT THE END OF YOUR FORK AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT (Anna Lappé, 2010), originally published on my own blog. I received both books as part of Library Thing's Early Reviewer Program.

Let's start with Bill McKibben's EAARTH, which is by far the more radical of the two books. EAARTH opens with a terrifying premise: that, when it comes to climate change, humanity has already altered the earth's environment to the point of no return. For the bulk of human existence, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere has remained somewhat stable at 275 parts per million (ppm). Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels have been on the rise, as has been scientific debate over its safest uppermost concentrations. Initially, 550 ppm was the supposed ceiling; in 2007, climatologist Jim Hansen identified 350 ppm as the "safe number." This is problematic to say the least, as currently the planet has almost 390 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even if we drastically reduce emissions overnight (an impossibility, both practically and politically speaking), we've already reached the tipping point; our home's climate is changing, and for the worse.

"Worse," anyhow, for most of the species that have evolved to live on earth as it was, humans included. The "new earth" - christened "EAARTH" by McKibben - will be a planet of much harsher living conditions and more extreme weather patterns; a planet "with dark poles and belching volcanoes and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat." McKibben looks to current climatological trends as indicators of what's to come: warmer air and water temperatures, melting glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels, increasingly acidic oceans, more powerful storms, prolonged droughts, a decrease in biodiversity and corresponding increase in invasive "pest" species - all of these phenomenon are interconnected and influence one another in myriad ways; sometimes unpredictable, almost always tragic.

I'm no climate scientist, so I can't speak to the veracity of McKibben's predictions - but the data presented in EAARTH (buttressed by 25 pages of end notes) certainly makes for a striking argument. If nothing else, McKibben clearly demonstrates the degree to which seemingly disparate natural occurrences are interdependent; a change in one aspect of the earth's climate affects all others. Human-driven climate change is real, and it's really happening. Even if you accept this as a scientific truth, however, McKibben's solution will be hard to swallow (not that you'll necessarily have a choice, mind you).

In the second half of EAARTH, McKibben shares his vision of a new way of life for a new planet. Though he doesn't describe it in so many words, McKibben's EAARTH strikes me as somewhat anarchist in nature, marked by a number of small, mostly self-sufficient city states functioning under a shared moral code or social contract.* (It's hard to pin down this new society exactly, as MicKibben doesn't elaborate on such minor details as systems of government or human rights. I guess those things will just...work themselves out? Sarcastic, who me?) Rather than "regressing" to older ways of life, McKibben sees us living lightly on this changed planet by retaining some necessary and beneficial aspects of our current culture (e.g., the internet, new energy technology) and discarding those which are unnecessary and unsustainable (most of our current, bloated economy, including but not limited to the entertainment industry. No word on traveling bards, fwiw.)

Of course, the most obvious contributors to climate change - energy (i.e., fossil fuels) and food (particularly animal agriculture) - merit a drastic overhaul in this new world. Conservation coupled with a transition to renewable energy can make us energy independent, while a switch from industrial "factory" farming - necessarily reliant on the input of petroleum-based chemicals and focused on short-term gains - to farming that's small, local, organic and works with nature rather than against it, will provide us with healthy food and a healthier environment: for the people, by the people.

Naturally, this next agricultural revolution must involve a significant shift toward a plant-based diet. While purveyors of local / organic / free-range / "happy" meat (and milk and eggs) would have you believe otherwise, animals exploited (I'm sorry, "raised") sustainably simply cannot provide enough animal-based foodstuffs for us all, and certainly not in the volumes to which we've become accustomed. Sustainability isn't just about you; it's about all of us humans - all seven billion and counting. Animal agriculture requires a massive input of resources - energy, land, water, plants - and results in a relatively small return in food. EAARTH will not support such a system, even by McKibben's own (speciesist) account.

Not that McKibben would have us all become vegans, nosiree! While he's able to accept that animal flesh and secretions will become a rare delicacy on EAARTH, McKibben is reluctant to give up his sirloin steak altogether. In light of the other proposals set forth in EAARTH, forgoing the occasional glass of milk or chicken breast seems a downright conservative "sacrifice" to make. And yet, even as he argues in favor of a radical restructuring of human society, McKibben stubbornly refuses to welcome nonhuman animals - our friends and neighbors on this new planet - into his moral circle. Such is the degree to which human exceptionalism has poisoned our consciousness. It may not be in our best interests to enslave, slaughter and exploit other animals - but we reserve the right to do so, dammit!

To this end, McKibben spends quite a bit of time praising small-time animal exploiters. The many scribbles, underlining, explanation points of outrage, and all-caps commentary - most of which reads simply "YUCK!" - that you can find in the later chapters of my copy of EAARTH speak to the disgust I felt at McKibben's shameless displays of speciesism. Establishing a nonprofit to encourage meat and chicken farming?** "Swine clubs" in which pigs are kept in drained swimming pools? Livestock mortality composting? Yuck, yuck, yuck.

In the forward to DIET FOR A HOT PLANET, McKibben writes, "Three times a day, we're reminded of what is, and what could be." Indeed.

As long as we're rebuilding society, why not create a more compassionate world for all? Now that's a truly radical idea.

Three out of five stars, with one star deducted each for speciesism and a failure to explore this new EAARTH beyond the bounds of food.

* That said, my first and last introduction to anarchism was Bob Torres's MAKING A KILLING: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ANIMAL RIGHTS, which is equally short on the specifics in regards to building anarchistic societies. While an interesting read, in trying to present the case for veganism to anarchists - and anarchism, to vegans - Torres necessarily abbreviates both discussions, to the detriment of each. (imho, anyhow.) MAKING A KILLING piqued my curiosity, but I haven't had the opportunity to follow up on the topic as of yet. So I could be completely off-base in identifying McKibben as an advocate for anarchism, is what I'm saying.

** As if, um, chickens aren't also animals and thus included under the rubric "meat"?

Few books can deliver quite the punch with the level of detail McKibben does here in so few pages while covering everything from climate science to history to economics to energy policy to philosophy and back again.

In short, this book should serve as the owner's manual for every informed citizen who wants a guide not only to know what happened to our old Earth but also to understand how to live on the new Eaarth, explained crisply by a journalist who has been reporting on every facet of these questions for decades.

While McKibben dramatically outlines the current state of old Earth
with a devastating list of probably irreversible changes, his bucolic
view of the inevitable solution -- localized self-sufficient communities -- ignores
the social and political upheavals that will result from these changes.
Read this book now, without a doubt; it's reminiscent of Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring and will likely have a similar long term impact. But you
may have to look elsewhere for more accurate predictions of the turmoil
the new Eaarth will experience.

The planet we currently live on has changed, its gone. McKibben suggests a new planet, called Eaarth, is where we now live as a result of climate change. Starts off by scaring us by carefully explaining how global warmings harsh reality is upon us. Then responds with solutions which bring hope to an otherwise dim future. He realizes climate change has come, therefore we must take what we have and do as much as we can because we are responsible for our planet.

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, has decided Earth is gone. Replacing it is Eaarth, a new planet with new rules:

"We're not going to get back the planet we used to have, the one on which our civilization developed" (p. 16).

"The planet on which our civilization evolved no longer exists. The stability that produced that civilization has vanished; epic changes have begun" (p. 25).

"We've turned our sweet planet into Eaarth, which is not as nice. We're moving quickly from a world where we push nature around to a world where nature pushes back - and with far more power. But we've got to live on that world, so we better start figuring out how" (p. 100).

McKibben doesn't dwell on keeping this change from happening. It's happened.

"Global warming... is a negotiation between human beings on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other. Which is a tough negotiation, because physics and chemistry don't compromise" (p. 80).

What McKibben does discuss is how society has to change, although he really focuses on western civilization. For example, he writes, "For almost all of human history, our society was small and nature was large; in a few brief decades that key ratio has reversed" (p. 104). There are many places on Earth (not Eaarth) where nature still looms large. Sub-Saharan Africa obviously comes to mind. "My point throughout this book has been that we'll need to change to cope with the new Eaarth we've created. We'll need, chief among all things, to get smaller and less centralized, to focus not on growth but on maintenance, on a controlled decline from the perilous heights to which we've climbed" (p. 203).

On community - "Access to endless amounts of cheap energy made us rich, and wrecked our climate, and it also made us the first people on earth who had no practical need of our neighbors" (p. 151-152). This is another example of the western civilization slant. Now, since this is where his readers will hail from, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So McKibben suggest localism, which obviously is easier in some communities than, for example, New York City. Part of the new geography of Eaarth, I suppose. He does like the worldwide web as a mechanism for proving people with contacts and information:

"We need cultures that work for survival - which means we need once again to pay attention to elders, to think hard about limits, to rein in our own excesses. But we also need cultures that work for everyone, so that women aren't made servants again in our culture, or condemned to languish forever as secondary citizens in other places. The Net is the one solvent we can still afford; jet travel can't be our salvation in an age of climate shock and dwindling oil, so the kind of trip you can take with the click of a mouse will have to substitute. It will need to be the window left ajar in our communities so new ideas can blow in and old prejudices blow out" (p 204).

Pay attention to elders? I think elders need to pay attention to young people. And McKibben fails to discuss other community and nation-shaping issues with profound implications for Eaarth: religious divisions, corporations as citizens, poverty, war, wealth distribution, and education.

You won't find all the answers in these 200 pages of text. To be fair, McKibben never claims he has all the answers. I expected a deeper, richer analysis of the development of Eaarth.

Bill McKibben has become one of the worlds leading climate change activists. In this book he explains how he sees CO2 changing the Earth and how he thinks people should deal with it. His assesment of the problem is arrived at with the help of some of the most extreme climate alarmists such as James Hansen and joe Romm. His solutions are myopic and incoherent.

His analisis is mostly anecdotal, but he is good writer and his anecdotes are interesting. He seems to have things that he just likes and things that he doesn't. He appears to live a charmed, small town, rural lifestyle and he likes small scale businesses, small farms and local government. He disdains large businesses and institutions, although he supports Obama and one would presume he expects the federal government to enforce his version of societal change.

He is also something of a ludite. He gives a very good description of the work we can do with the concentrated energy of fossil fuels and wants us to puritanically and drastically cut it. He's against nuclear energy--says it's too expensive, but I think he just doesn't like the idea of a big plant producing a huge amount of energy. One area where he is not a ludite is computer technology. He is for "net neutrality". I wonder if he knows what that means. I think it means that the government can claim some credit for the success of an industry which has grown conspicuously without the government's assistance.

For a good counterpoint to this book, I would recommend Peter Huber's The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy. On Feb 15, 2000 Bill McKibben and Peter Huber had a very civil debate which illustrated their contrasting approaches to energy and the environment very well. You can listen to it or download it as an MP3 here:

[...]

-----------EDIT-------------
Sorry about the missing link. Non-the store URL's are not allowed in reviews. It's sort of hard to find and a bit dated, but for those interested in this topic, it's worth listening to.

-----------EDIT-------------
I put the link in the first comment.

Quite a few people pointed me towards this book. Not quite sure why. It's basically all about what his church group in Vermont thinks and that Obama is going to save everything. Maybe he wants a mulligan on that last part? At this point nature is greatly being lost in politics, so why do we think our "leaders" are truly going to do anything?

To be fair to Mckibben, he has a new piece recently published in Rolling Stone and on their website titled Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, which in five pages brings a much more succinct and pointed message than this entire book. It does have an alarmist feel which I attribute more to the editorial at the mag than Mckibben but overall I found it a much more enjoyable read at a much smaller fraction of time invested. I suggest anyone who follows the climate, or has concerns about the future, check this piece out.

I also found the Great Disruption by Paul Gilding to be a much more interesting look at where our rampant consumerism, destruction of the natural world and our own forced ignorance is taking us...and no, the irony hasn't lost me that I'm reading about sustainability and lashing out at consumerism while ordering books on the store and writing this on my Macbook.

http://www.the store.com/Great-Disruption-Climate-Crisis-Shopping/dp/1608193535/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342537282&sr=1-1&keywords=the+great+disruption

EAATTH: The best review I have read since the
first global ocean scientific study of 1972. The
author and editors have a scholarly work worthly
of a librarian's reference. shelf. Any public speaker on the warming of the planet would be well advised to quote from this work.

Karl Grube, Ph.D.

Despite my disappointment with Deep Economy (I liked the ideas; I just didn't find it very compelling), I was very excited to see that Bill McKibben had authored a new book on how global warming is affecting the planet and how we can adapt. The first half of the book is a well written and completely terrifying description of the effects of global warming that our planet has already experienced. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is more or less a rehashing of Deep Economy, and it makes the very same mistakes.

Much of the third chapter is a history lesson, in which McKibben explains the reasons our economy has focused so much on large, nationwide government-funded initiative in the past and the reasons it no longer makes sense to stay on this trajectory. Although it was a fairly strong argument, I'm not sure I completely bought into it. McKibben says that we no longer need the big national projects that have defined us in the past, but I disagree. Tackling climate change is just such a challenge, and it will require a huge, nationwide project to get our emissions under control (sorry Bill, I'm with Thomas Friedman on this one).

I believe everything McKibben says about global warming, which makes me desperately want to believe in his vision for a sustainable (even though he dislikes that word) future on our "new planet." Unfortunately, McKibben just doesn't convince me that his vision for the future is one that our country can embrace. Like Deep Economy, the last 2/3 of this book, is full of stories about local businesses (mostly in Vermont) that are thriving, but anecdotal evidence is not sufficient. McKibben is advocating a huge shift in our economic mindset, and he just doesn't offer enough evidence that this kind of change is really feasible.

An excellent book detailing the destruction we have wreaked on our planet and our creation of a new home we must all now re-learn to live on. Despite the subject matter, Bill McKibben manages to avoid an entirely bleak outlook, instead offering a vision of hope for the future, if we can change the ways in which we live and our concepts of "growth" etc. I would recommend this book to all.

If you are concerned about global warming, this is the best book I've found on the subject. McKibben is yet again ahead of the curve, preparing us for the next phase which unfortunately we're headed to; a globally warmed world. A must read for all members of the human race.

This book wiped me out...made it difficult to eat for several days...and hard to sleep. However, it lit a fire under my smoldering passion for the environment and has gotten me off my couch potato butt and back into my effort to do all that I can do, with all that I have, in the time I have got.

Read it. Pass it along to friends. Visit [...] to find out what to do next.

Best wishes,

Elli