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<address><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.utne.com/environment/bill-mckibben-falter-zm0z19uzhoe">https://www.utne.com/environment/bill-mckibben-falter-zm0z19uzhoe</a></address>
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<h1 class="css-twhgrd">The End of Nature, Part Two</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-fgeroe">Michael
Engelhard</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">utne.com</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">3 min</div>
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<em>Photo provided by Henry Holt & Co.</em>
<p><span>After decades of efforts to protect
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
and attacks on it thwarted, the pendulum,
with the last election, swung back again.
Oil reserves suspected under the caribous’
calving grounds have been fast-tracked for
drilling. Federal environmental
regulations and agencies are being watered
down or dismantled. Science has taken a
back seat to short-term profits.
Meanwhile, in that far north where haywire
thermoregulation manifests urgently,
visibly, and pervasively, homes topple
from eroding ocean bluffs, skeletons
emerge from thawing soil, polar bears
starve, snowmachine riders drown in
thinning sea-ice, shore-bound walruses
trample each other to death, and
permafrost melts, spewing methane into an
already hothouse atmosphere.</span></p>
<p><span>The specter is nothing new. The
activist and environmental studies scholar
Bill McKibben was the first to raise
broader public awareness of a climate
crisis with his 1989 classic</span> <em><span>The
End of Nature</span></em><span>. Despite
mounting, incontrovertible evidence in the
past 30 years, the problem has worsened,
that book’s gloom, sadly, has been
vindicated. “The human experiment is now
in question,” McKibben warns in</span> <em><span>Falter</span></em><span>,
a sequel of sorts. He’s the founder of
350.org, the first global citizens
movement to fight anthropogenic climate
change—the organization’s name refers to
its goal of reducing atmospheric carbon
dioxide to 350 parts per million, the
upper limit of what is considered safe to
avoid tipping-point chain reactions.
Favoring localized economies and
alternative energy forms, McKibben, no
Luddite, advocates for social and
environmental justice. The primal threat,
he insists, are entrenched elites averse
to structural change, because “so far,
things have been working out”—famous last
words from a skydiver with a faulty
parachute.</span></p>
<p><span>Somewhat jarringly jetting to global
hotspots, McKibben reports scenes fro</span><span>m
the frontlines: dead coral fields
resembling “an empty parking garage,”
flights into Delhi canceled when smog
makes the runway invisible, or cannon fire
in the “war zone” of vast, hellish Alberta
tar sands operations, meant to scare off
birds for their own good. He allows that</span>
<em><span>Falter</span></em><span>’s
bleakness “cuts against the current
literary grain” of upbeat TED talks and
current-affairs books that chart recent
improvements in living standards. Many of
those come at a high price, with costs to
the environment. “Because of the way power
and wealth are currently distributed on
our planet,” McKibben writes, “we’re
uniquely ill-prepared to cope with the
emerging challenges.” Yet, “Resistance to
these dangers is at least possible.” One
may object to or tire of his metaphor of
the human enterprise as a game. But we’d
still better listen to him.</span></p>
<em><span>Falter</span></em><span>’s pages
brim with “sentences uttered with your back
to the wall,” in Thoreau’s phrasing. For
relief, McKibben injects humor, summarizing
cryogenics as collecting heads in a giant
thermos, or describing a Silicon Valley
mogul whose self-centeredness “makes Ayn
Rand look like Mother Theresa.”</span>
<p><span>Our backs always have been against
the wall in the grand quest for survival.
The ability to cooperate in nomadic bands
and pass on lessons learned, resulting
from our sophisticated brain, led to our
species’ ascendancy. It’s also what might
enable us to resolve this current mess.
Unfortunately, the technology that serves
to establish global action networks keeps
us enslaved. “A man with a phone more or
less permanently affixed to his palm is
partway a robot already,” McKibben writes.
Virtual worlds can be isolating,
alienating, trapping us inside
make-believe realities or social-media
echo chambers, while the foundation of all
known life crumbles around us.</span></p>
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<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2pt; color: black;">The
fallacy that some fix, some invention sprung from ape
minds can save our civilization and the planet is
easily uncovered. It’s what got us in trouble in the
first place. Take the Global Seed Vault dug into an
Arctic mountain on Svalbard. Climate-controlled, using
coal mined nearby for refrigeration, it stores samples
of crucial food crops and is intended to last for
ages. Heavy rains already once flooded its entrance
tunnel and then froze. Forests denuded? Dig up coal or
drill for oil. Feed exponentially growing populations?
Industrial agriculture. Oceans overfished? Design more
efficient sounders and sonars for trawlers, farm
seafood, or switch to lab-grown protein substitutes.
Species extinction? Transplant wildlife or dabble in
resurrection biology. Congested cities? Air taxis and
Amazon drones . . . The next, large-scale step in our
can-do frenzy, geo-engineering, holds its own set of
unforeseen or ignored consequences. Ultimately, these
are not technological or even political but moral
dilemmas.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2pt; color: black;">The
refusal to act in the face of crisis or acting
half-heartedly, sluggishly, is a choice. This, too, is
part of our mental makeup. We evolved facing dire
wolves in plain sight, not creeping automation or the
latter-day, nebulous foe that will uproot our
descendants and extinguish our other-than-human kin. A
writer doesn’t owe readers hope, only honesty,
McKibben states, offering “engagement not despair.” Do
not expect solutions from </span><em><span
style="letter-spacing: 0.2pt; color: black;">Falter</span></em><span
style="letter-spacing: 0.2pt; color: black;">, but
trends smartly examined, which may yet ring in a
sustainable future.</span></p>
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