Word: mckibben
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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FADDISH as the title may sound, McKibben's book has a real point to make, and it makes it early on. Most of the public debate about the so-called greenhouse effect has focused on the details of global warming: Has it begun yet? What will its effects...
...Although McKibben does not skirt these questions, he argues along different lines. Regardless of the effects, he says, we have already changed the earth's atmosphere and continue to do so. What the result will be--good or ill-no one can tell. But the air today is undoubtedly different from 20 years ago, and will be different again 20 years from...
...nature is an inescapable consequence of the process, McKibben argues. Once humanity contaminates its last spot of virgin earth, nature, a world apart, will cease to exist. In its place will be something that may look like nature and sound like nature and smell like nature, but will not feel the same...
...Nature is at its best when McKibben explains the consequences of his "end of nature." Although not a scientist, he writes clearly and perceptively about several reasonably esoteric subjects--from genetic engineering to the recently-discovered hole in the Antarctic ozone layer. Although his explanations of global warming may seem doom-laden, they contain enough hard facts to give even the least environmentally aware person a serious jolt...
...McKibben's arguments are most devastating when he tries to be frank and objective. He freely acknowledges that he does not know how the world will actually be different in the post-nature era, if at all. Such observations may seem equivocal, but they lend force to McKibben's arguments. No one knows what will happen, McKibben says; nothing is definite. When a world beyond humanity's reach no longer exists, there will be no security...