Twenty years ago, with ''The End of Nature'', Bill
McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about
global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded;
now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've
waited too long, and that massive change is not only
unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar
globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding,
and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've
created, in very short order, a new planet, still
recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well
call it Eaarth. That new planet is filled with new binds
and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend -
think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or
the trillions it will take to transform energy systems.
But the endless economic growth that could underwrite
such largesse depends on the stable planet we've managed
to damage and degrade. We can't rely on old habits any
longer.Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling
back - on building the kind of societies and economics
that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and
create the type of community (in the neighbourhood, but
also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather
trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change - fundamental
change - is our best hope on a planet suddenly and
violently out of balance. |
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