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The End of Nature

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 1,067 ratings · 65 reviews

Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth.

This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published June 13th 2006 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 1989)

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Dec 05, 2007 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: curmudgeons-for-justice, nature-girl

Dragged myself through this puppy. It was a tough go, but I somehow felt it was the environmentally responsible thing to do. Basically he makes the point very forcefully that we really have paved paradise. Damn. I recommend putting away all sharp objects and hiding anything that can be used to hang yourself before reading this book. Dead bird on cover says it all.

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Jun 18, 2007 Anna rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment

The great problem with this book was the way it approaches nature--namely that he wants to leave humans out of it. He seems more angry that we exist as a part of the world than interested in thinking of productive ways of dealing with the the concerns regarding the environment that we are facing.

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Mar 13, 2013 Andrei Taylor rated it 2 of 5 stars

The end of nature is a enviromental awareness novel about the end of nature as we understand it. We have ended nature through our need for growth.

Bill shows that it is not nature itself that is ending but rather the nature that has been blossoming for years. Through genetic engineering we may be able to save our world, but this created world will lack the beauty of the old world. We will have trees and plants but these genetically modified versions of our trees and plants will not do justice to...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Janet Gardner rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

McKibben writes beautifully, and his heart is in the right place, but finally this book fell just a little flat for me. The biggest problem was that I read it twenty years too late: I do not need convincing that the world is warming or that human beings are in large part to blame for that. (I had a similar reaction when I recently attempted Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: Gee, you mean spraying a lot of DDT around isn’t a good idea? Who knew?)

Also, I couldn’t quite buy McKibben’s arguments that...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Jonathan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was a let-down. I know that Mckiben is an important thinker and leader when it comes to getting folks to acknowledge climate change and in moving folks to attempt to take action to address the causes of climate change. I am not sure what I would have thought about it had I read it twenty years ago, but reading it today, while I found the descriptions of the problems of climate change and certainly the idea of an “end of nature” compelling, I found McKibbin’s construction of the ways we...more This book was a let-down. I know that Mckiben is an important thinker and leader when it comes to getting folks to acknowledge climate change and in moving folks to attempt to take action to address the causes of climate change. I am not sure what I would have thought about it had I read it twenty years ago, but reading it today, while I found the descriptions of the problems of climate change and certainly the idea of an “end of nature” compelling, I found McKibbin’s construction of the ways we might respond to climate change obnoxious and tiresome.
(Actually, I think I do know what I would have thought twenty years ago… I would have loved it. As a fifteen year old I was completely taken with the mainstream environmental movement. I was very susceptible to any well-written position about the environment: liberal, corporate green washed, or “militant,” and I would have been excited to read McKibbin’s analysis and his explanation of the futurist response to climate change I know I would have been completely taken by his description of deep ecology. When I entered college a few years later and met young people involved in EarthFirst!, I would have engaged in some kind of hero worship, would have felt like I had finally found “my people” and probably plunged head first into the kind of vision of environmental activism that they held out. Instead having never read McKibbin's flowing endorsement of a deep ecology approach to activism I found them on the one hand dangerously exciting but on the other wondered how they reconciled a position of “earth first” with issues of social justice.)
I actually found McKibbin’s proclamation of the “end of nature” interesting. While his sense of personal loss that nature no longer existed, didn’t quite resonate with me, the idea raises all kinds of existential and, I guess, ‘spiritual’ questions. In all honesty, even though McKibbin’s thinking has been available to me the past twenty years, the idea that “nature” as we have traditionally thought about it no longer exists was new to me. His argument is a good and shocking one.
It was when McKibbon turned to how we might respond to climate change that the book became tiresome to me. Admittedly McKibbon gives an interesting treatment to the, bio-engineered man over nature, futurist response. Twenty years ago the grotesque description of this response that McKibbon lays out would have been really helpful to me, because I at the time I was pretty ready to uncritically accept any number of claims by industry or science that we could invent/innovate our way out of ecological crisis. Having this Frankenstein version of our future laid before me would have helped me be more critical of green washing and technocratic solutions to ecological and environmental justice issues.
McKibbon’s championing of deep ecology was really where I felt let down. Yes, he did write about some of the social and economic injustices related to climate change. Particularly he did a good job explaining why uneven patterns of “development” make western capitalist “core” communities’ talk about the need to get by with less, have a smaller ecological impact, etc so hypocritical. But he ignored the reality that there have been and continue to be voices from those “less developed” poorer more peripheral more recently colonized communities that have something to say about the relationship between people and our environment, about the causes of environmental, about what humane and ecological ways of organizing our societies in response to climate change and the end of nature might look like. One might feel it is unfair to fault McKibbon for ignoring these voices in 1989 – the environmental justice movement would not even be labeled and given wide recognition until 1991. But the voices of the communities organizing against environmental racism in the US, the voices of communities directly impacted by every step of the C02 cycle,* the voices of radical third world ecologists, the voices of indigenous peoples all of the world were out there. McKibbon was just another in a long line of folks like Muir, Hoffeman, and Foreman as well as the big mainstream environmental groups and the militants of EarthFirst who didn’t take the time to listen to, learn from and then amplify those voices. I don’t give the big environmental groups a pass on ignoring the environmental justice movement back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and I just can’t give McKibbon a pass either. It is ironic because in a way McKibbon is trying to ‘unpack’ our understanding of nature as this independent force and our assumptions about how humans relate to nature, and it is in part these mainstream understandings and assumptions about nature that minimized or devalued the voices of folks other than western white males in determining how societies might respond to ecological crisis. Looking more deeply at how we’ve constructed “nature,” as McKibbon leads us to do, forces us to think about how our understanding of the environment and our impact on it is as much about social and economic organization as it is anything inherent in humans or our environment.
I just wish McKibbon had acknowledged that there is another choice between human’s engineering every aspect of the earth so that it meets our needs and wilderness = earth and earth uber alis position of deep ecology: and that is that while humans are not inherently more valuable than other life, we as humans we do have a responsibility to other humans and thus trying to our vision of social and economic relationships between has to be part of our understanding ecology. It just does not make sense to organize around an vision for social and economic change that does not prioritize the voices, understandings, and hopes of peoples that have been most directly impacted by environmental destruction, social injustice, economic exploitation, colonization, and domination.
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Jun 16, 2012 Joan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: environmental people

Shelves: adult-books, climate-change, american-history, nonfiction

Today I answered a comment on a group I belong to asking if there is any real point in trying to prevent climate change, and suppose it is too late and we are still fighting to keep it from happening. I reminded the person of what was left in Pandora's box (hope) and that even if it is too late, driving a Prius/Volt or carrying recyclable grocery bags to the store isn't going to hurt anything. I also said I want to be able to at least tell my theoretical grandkid that I tried my best to keep it...more Today I answered a comment on a group I belong to asking if there is any real point in trying to prevent climate change, and suppose it is too late and we are still fighting to keep it from happening. I reminded the person of what was left in Pandora's box (hope) and that even if it is too late, driving a Prius/Volt or carrying recyclable grocery bags to the store isn't going to hurt anything. I also said I want to be able to at least tell my theoretical grandkid that I tried my best to keep it from happening. I also pointed out that without hope, we are inviting terrible responses, on both extremes (bacchanalias and mass murders). At the same time I was writing this I was plowing through this book by Bill McKibben. He makes much the same argument as the person I answered did, only more extensively and thoroughly. But this is one of his earliest books. Clearly he has found reason to keep fighting the effects of climate change, as despairing as he was in this early book. He is the cofounder along with 7 college students of 350.org which has moved to the front of the ecological movement to try to slow down climate change. It was, for example, the organizer of the movement to encircle the White House in protest against the Keystone XL project, which defeated the project. (It has been resurrected by oil lobby and their paid lobbyists in the House of Representatives and Senate). While my answer satisfied me, it wasn't McKibben's argument in his book that satisfied me. In fact, I found the book quite disheartening, if all too convincing. But I keep thinking that something kept McKibben in the fight, and I'll have to read some of his other books to get a better feel for what kept him going. So I give this 4 stars for the historical interest in seeing where the beginning of the movement started. Some of what he was fretting about has actually been defeated, which he was very uncertain about in this book, such as acid rain. That also gives me grounds to hope that more things can still be defeated in this huge mess we have gotten ourselves into. I'm glad I read this book, even if I found it terribly depressing in the midst of reading. (less)

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Jun 21, 2010 Greg Collver rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found this book long on speculation and short on facts. In the middle I considered not finishing the book because the author spent quite a bit of the section "The End of Nature" on his own personal philosophies. He seemed to get back on track in the next part of the book, but the book still seemed like a loose collection of anecdotes, speculation and personal opinion. Not that I disagree with all of his opinions, I found myself agreeing with some of it, but he does not have the clear, systemat...more

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Aug 12, 2009 Jack rated it 3 of 5 stars

This long essay asks two questions: What would our lives be like if nature were not bigger than us? And what would it be like to imagine ourselves smaller?

The first question -- which takes up the first half of the book -- is fascinating. McKibben argues that a core part of what Nature does for us is let us know that the world has rhythms, predicability. That there is beauty out there that transcends us. It gives us a sense that there is something more than us out there. He has a very nice secti...more This long essay asks two questions: What would our lives be like if nature were not bigger than us? And what would it be like to imagine ourselves smaller?

The first question -- which takes up the first half of the book -- is fascinating. McKibben argues that a core part of what Nature does for us is let us know that the world has rhythms, predicability. That there is beauty out there that transcends us. It gives us a sense that there is something more than us out there. He has a very nice section where he acknowledges that this is what religion does, or, for many of us, once did. Nature can help take some of burden off our shoulders, by reminding us as individuals that, even if we screw everything up, the sun will still set gorgeously. But, he asks provocatively, what would we lose if that were no longer true? And he makes a powerful case -- one that has come to feel more like common sense in the two decades since he wrote -- that our large scale changes to the environment, particularly via the green house gases, are creating a world that is more volatile. Moreover, it is more volatile because of what we did. Beyond all the palpable damage those changes will cause, knowing that we did it will take away from us the solace of nature.

This may be overstating the point a little -- the Grand Canyon's going to be impressive for a long time, as are the brilliant red of the cardinals that live in the hedge outside my door -- but the point is there. I came across McKibben's book when it was repeatedly references by Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods. Louv makes a more modest case, but one so persuasive that, over a few years, it changed my approach to fathering, and had a large role in where we currently live. Louv argues that children need, at a very deep level, to be a part of nature. Not "Nature" like on t.v. or in an aquarium -- that is, Nature as some abstract bit of environmental knowledge, possibly at risk, certainly over there somewhere. Instead, they need to have nature -- things growing, unpredictably -- somewhere close, where they can palpably interact with it. This lead to a lot more hikes in my family, and lot of wandering off paths and poking at things. Nature as a body-contact sport. I feel like my kids, and I, are better off for it, even if we got some scratches and scars to show for it. And this interpretation of McKibben that Louv offers is particularly compelling, in saying that we need to not imagine ourselves separate from nature.

And that is the sense in which McKibben challenges us to be smaller, to live more simply. To imagine living as if we had NOT been given dominion over the land. My profession makes that hard. It's an enormous challenge to figure out how to enact a more humble way of living. Biking around town helps, sure, but it hardly seems like enough. McKibben seems less compelling here -- he gestures towards Deep Ecology, but doesn't seem himself to really know how to fully do it. He reads the science too carefully, I think, to really believe half measures are enough. But, is a half-measure, a bit less carbon release, enough? I'm not sure myself, and struggle with it. McKibben sharpened that struggle, but it sits unresolved. I end up feeling like the Oncler, "Perhaps...."(less)

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Jan 21, 2008 Beth rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: nature

I gave this book a quick re-read after initially reading it for academic purposes years ago and being put off by the doomsday approach of McKibben. Even though I agree with McKibben in general, I don't like this book. It offers nothing but commentary. It leaves the human species out of the equation. Instead of motivating one to action, it takes the winds out of the sails.

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Aug 01, 2012 Chris Gager rated it 5 of 5 stars

Starting tonight. I'm sure it'll be depressing but it's a good thing to awknowledge reality. This book was first published in 1989 and this edition came out in 2006 so there's a more contemporary introduction by the author. Pretty much everything he talked about then is worse now. Predictably discouraging. I'm one who does like to get out into the wild places and feel like they're somehow protected from the generally degrading influence of human culture but the author's point in this book is tha...more Starting tonight. I'm sure it'll be depressing but it's a good thing to awknowledge reality. This book was first published in 1989 and this edition came out in 2006 so there's a more contemporary introduction by the author. Pretty much everything he talked about then is worse now. Predictably discouraging. I'm one who does like to get out into the wild places and feel like they're somehow protected from the generally degrading influence of human culture but the author's point in this book is that this wildness is an illusion. We are changing everything now. Becoming godlike but not in a good way.
Moving along and the message gets pretty repetitive. Maybe he thinks it's so subtle that we won't grasp it? Also, there's too much God/god talk. The author admits his church attendance(Methodist). I don't get it. Intellectually lazy... This book was serialized in The New Yorker but I don't remember reading it. In the 80's, a mostly lost decade for me.
And done a few days ago... Bill M. is a very good writer as his resume would indicate. Left the New Yorker along with others(Garrison Keillor) when Tina Brown came in I suppose. She gone now... Anyway his prose is clear and concise. His main point is more subtle than the title and the dead bird on the cover would seem to suggest. This was my first reading about "Deep Ecology" and Earth First although my ideas are similar. Notes...
- The genetic manipulation theme is suggestive on "Hyperion"'s Ousters and "White Teeth"'s Futuremouse.
- Dave Foreman and Steve Marsden may be the models for the hero of T.C. Boyle's "A Friend of the Earth".
- What might/could save us is a new humility and acceptance but I look around and wonder what are the chances of that? I think the author agrees. He cites as evidence the comment made by Bush the Elder when as President he left for an Eco-Summit in S. America with the words "The American Way of life is not up for negotiation." Wonderful leadership there... Seems like it would take survival of an eco-apocalypse to bring about the kind of spiritual shift we desperately need. Death to consumerism!
- Think about Steven King's "The Stand". Is it apocalyptic or is it utopoian?(less)

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Jun 15, 2009 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been thinking about this book for the week since I finished it. Initially it pissed me off. It's the kind of book that an environmentalist finds depressingly fatalistic. I was frustrated, angry, demoralized, downtrodden. This book is about the past and present state of the environment. It was written in 1989, but may as well have been written in 2009. Its vision of the future is speculative, at best, and relevant only as it elaborates on McKibben's ideas of the present.

My problem with this...more I've been thinking about this book for the week since I finished it. Initially it pissed me off. It's the kind of book that an environmentalist finds depressingly fatalistic. I was frustrated, angry, demoralized, downtrodden. This book is about the past and present state of the environment. It was written in 1989, but may as well have been written in 2009. Its vision of the future is speculative, at best, and relevant only as it elaborates on McKibben's ideas of the present.

My problem with this book is that it presents only one side of the story, a side that needs to be told, but with the understanding that there are also positive efforts toward dealing with climate change. I used to dismiss doomsdayers as being out of touch with the "real world," that there are "realistic" changes that people need to make to deal with global warming. But the fact is that this is just as important as these doomsdayers say it is. This is a global catastrophe and must be taken seriously. These people get themselves into trouble when they start making predictions about the effects of climate change since no one can predict exactly what will happen, and each wrong prediction detracts from their credibility. But the magnitude of these predictions is perhaps not so far off. In a sense, there is no "realistic" way of looking at climate change except in these "exaggerated" terms.

But McKibben barely allows for any hope. He claims to be hopeful despite the enormity of the problem, but he proposes hope essentially as a measure of faith. He gives the reader no substantiation for his hope, and offers no respite from the desperation he has conveyed. We may have reached the "end of nature" but this also means that we have a chance at finding the tools to deal with such a massive problem. The current issue of the Atlantic (July/August 2009) has three separate stories addressing climate change and the technologies being developed to deal with it. There is hope here. There will need to be changes in lifestyle and at some point the problem of overpopulation will need to be addressed. But I no longer feel as dishearted as I did after the "End of Nature."

My other complaint with McKibben's book was with his assertion that as we dissect nature and develop biotechnology and genetic engineering, we lose that sense of awe and wonderment when we see nature. I see it as entirely opposite. The more I know about how nature works, the more in awe I am that it could develop in such complicated and intricate ways.

I'm glad I read this book, as it made me more aware of the problems we're dealing with now. But I think a reading of this book needs to be complemented by other books and articles on the subject.(less)

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May 04, 2007 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, environment

The thesis is clear and probably true: Human beings are now causing so many changes in the world that we cannot think of "nature" as an independent force that acts on us. In other words, "nature" is now (partially) man-made. Parts of the book were moving, but there's better stuff around.

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Feb 13, 2013 Sandie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I am slowly working my way through 'the classics' and this one is on everyone's list. I found this book a powerful argument for how global warming is going to change the earth as we know it. Written in the 80s, not all of his predictions have come true, but some are happening now and others are coming closer to fruition every year. While McKibben does not foretell the end of the earth, he does predict the end of nature as we have known it, and his arguments are persuasive.

Now in this part of th...more

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Nov 04, 2009 AJ rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: do-not-own, nonfiction, 2009

This book was okay... McKibben's main thesis is that humans have done such a grand job dominating nature that it is no longer natural. Thanks to climate change, our weather is no longer due to nature, it's due to human activity, which is why the book is titled The End of Nature.

I think that Michael Pollan offers an interesting counter-argument to this idea in Second Nature A Gardener's Education, where he asks, what is nature when man has been playing around with it for so long? Is man truly dis...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

We have all heard all the dire consequences of global warming, but McKibben explores the spiritual loss connected with climate change and the way human beings now impact nature. McKibben's thesis that "Nature's independence is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us" rings so much stronger today than it must have when he wrote the book in the '80's.

At one point, while reminding his readers of the beautiful and awe-inspiring photos taken of the planet Earth from some of the Apollo space...more

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Jun 27, 2009 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own

Written in the late 80's, this is a disturbing book to read as we approach the second decade of the 21st century. Disturbing because so little of our dialogue about climate change has progressed beyond what was being discussed two decades ago. Doubly so because McKibbin's nightmare, that we might delay action for 20 or more years, is precisely the course we have chosen, and the consequences are sure to be all-the-more dire because of it.

Much of this book is dated now... The science, for certain...more

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Sep 23, 2011 Mike Garrity added it

If you haven’t read Bill McKibben’s classic, you should. It’s been out for more than 10 years now, and it’s kind of sad how little we’ve done to fix the problems he describes. The basic argument of the book is that in mankind recently went through a transition where the natural world stopped being something external to us and became something just as artificial and under our control as our cities and factories. He laments the loss inherent in that transition, but then argues that it means that w...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Annette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nature, ecology, science, environment

Bill McKibben is a well-known author and environmentalist. [return][return]The End of Nature by Bill McKibben was written in 1989 and a new forward was added on the tenth anniversary in 1999. This book provided one of the first well-researched "wake-up calls" related to global warming. I originally read the book nearly twenty years ago and decided to re-read it before jumping into his new book, Eaarth.[return][return]Other than references to current events that now seem dated, the book has stood...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Eileen rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's not a bad book. It's actually thought provoking in some parts because it was published in 1987 and is about the catastrophe our planet is going to face as a result of global warming. It displays hardcore, factual evidence that would convince the '80s skeptical, when we could pretend the environment was in a somewhat manageable state. It's almost comical now to read McKibben's sense of urgency then and to look at how much reform has changed since that point. Let me summarize, next to nothing...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Nina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Perhaps as an environmental studies student who has studied the 30 years of theory that followed and partly responded to The End of Nature, I was unable to see the book without bias. That said, I have never been so frustrated with a book before. Bill McKibben is an excellent writer, and a very good person, but his treatment of the notion of nature is misleading and lacking in depth.

His major thesis is that in the past (a generalized, Western past), we saw nature as being clearly autonomous from...more Perhaps as an environmental studies student who has studied the 30 years of theory that followed and partly responded to The End of Nature, I was unable to see the book without bias. That said, I have never been so frustrated with a book before. Bill McKibben is an excellent writer, and a very good person, but his treatment of the notion of nature is misleading and lacking in depth.

His major thesis is that in the past (a generalized, Western past), we saw nature as being clearly autonomous from humanity-- as something more powerful than we are. With the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer, and greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, and the promise of advanced biotechnology, nature is no longer beyond our power-- our decisions shape what nature will do to us. McKibben seems to be arguing that we are losing a sort of religious mystery in this transformation. Somewhat paradoxically, he also argues that nature will become more unpredictable and frightening as our influence on the biosphere increases.

What is missing is a discussion of humanity and of why we think of nature the way we do. Through many passages of nature writing-- of his own and from others, McKibben presents nature as an ordered, benevolent force of beauty. But he also stresses her danger, mystery and awfulness. This romantic view of nature that McKibben mostly engages with is a relatively recent one. He does not take adequate pains to separate this from prior western views of nature, or non-western views of nature. Part of the reason the recent environmental destruction seems to have a destructive effect on the romantic idea of nature is that the romantic idea of nature was largely a concept that was born in response to the growth of technology and the uglinesses of industrialization. The triumph of technology signals the destruction of the romantic ideal because the romantics threw down that gauntlet and lost.

Even without global warming and CFCs, the view of a nature that has eluded the influence of humanity forever is being challenged by ecologists and archaeologists. The inseparability of man and his habitat is a recent subject of interest for many environmental thinkers and scientists, perhaps partly in response to McKibben's assertion of their former independence. The midwestern prairie ecosystems co-evolved with Native American fire. Many of the plants and animals we are familiar with co-evolved with humans, even when they were not deliberately bred (see Jared Diamond and Michael Pollan). No one in history has ever seen a nature unadulterated by human influence.

McKibben fails also to discuss human nature and the relation between human nature and nature beyond the human body. In many ways our ideas about nature are symbols or contexts for our own self-understanding. The romantic notion of a pure, beautiful and good nature is often related to a notion of the human soul as being "naturally" pure and beautiful. As civilization corrupts out environment, so civilization corrupts the soul. It would be interesting to consider the implications for interpretations of the psyche that a new view of nature has-- either one that breaks down the boundaries between human and non-human or a more technologically driven one that values the human will over everything. What should we make of the fact that our minds are themselves a product of evolutionary processes similar to those that we can now consciously influence through biotechnology or accidentally influence through global warming?

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Mar 03, 2012 Farida El-gueretly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pop-science

I liked this book a lot. Although it had some apocalyptic feel to it, I liked how he intertwined social, anthropological and environmental issues altogether. The fact that he gets us to question our very own ideas of nature and how these essentially perpetuate the problem, by providing personal as well as substantiated evidence for this, makes one oscillate between reason and personal affiliation to nature, whilst simultaneously questioning the very notion of the "oscillation".

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Dec 28, 2012 Wesley Korpela rated it 3 of 5 stars

One of McKibben's more dry reads but informative, nevertheless. The environment and climate change is the number one issue our world faces and it's becoming more and more dangerous the longer we ignore the issue. McKibben, like always, does an excellent job capturing this message for the reader. If you were to start anywhere in reading a McKibben book, I would start with this book and continue on to Eaarth.

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Jan 11, 2012 Hilary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: environmental

Although this was written 2 decades ago, it (unfortunately) is still very relevant. As expected, we've chosen the "defiant" path towards our eventual doom. The facts in this book were mostly not news to me, but I found McKibben's concept of the "end of nature" interesting. The final chapter was the one I found the most profound, as it offered outlooks on the future and some possible paths that we, as a civilization theoretically have to choose from, though the choice doesn't work on the individu...more

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Feb 11, 2009 Kurt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nature, non-fiction, environment

Even though this book was written 20 years ago in 1989 it is still very relevant and even more insightful today. The author laments the loss of the entire natural world. With the consensus recognition (yes, it was consensus even back in 1989 despite what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, & Faux News feed you) that humans have literally caused long term significant changes to the atmosphere and climate, virtually no place on the planet remains intact and free from the touch of man.

As a lover of Na...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Monica Newman rated it 4 of 5 stars

As early as 1989 Bill McKibben could see the writing on the earth and he wrote about it in this book. It is "a kind of last song for the wild" and he does it as an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy. It helped me understand very complex, and now political environmental issues, in a simple and meaningful way.

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Jul 27, 2010 Joel rated it 3 of 5 stars

His main thesis (i.e., nature is dying from man's cruel onslaught of industrial activity) is reiterated in about 10 trillion different ways. I read this book while touring around Ireland in mid-October 2009. Interesting at parts, especially when he is describing the acidification of a nearby lake, but largely forgettable.

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Jan 26, 2013 Bud rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bill McKibben makes an argument that with the number of people on the planet and the levels of carbon dioxide and ozone produced, "nature," as represented by biota uneffected by humans is no more. He spends most of the book thinking about and reacting to the notion that nature is dead. Thought-provoking.

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Feb 05, 2010 Laura Pollard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: environmentalist-novels, political, non-fiction

A great book about what will happen when this nature ends and a new one begins. The only reason that this book only got 4 stars is because it is slightly dated. This book would have been a lot more shocking had I read it before global warming became a really well-known and generally acknowledged concept.

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Sep 16, 2012 Caroline Glassberg-powell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Scared the living daylights out of me: it's all true. He talks to you from 20 years ago, concerned with the same issues which we should be concerned with, and still have failed to collectively address the problem. Well-written with facts intertwined with personal stories to give it that touch.

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Apr 10, 2008 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to Jen by: someone at GMC probably

Amazing that this book was published so long ago - Everything that was true then is even MORE true now and causing even bigger problems (global warming, for one). Although I loved the book and thought it had a great deal of stunning details, I felt it could be a bit more organized. It was a flurry of emotion, facts, people, and places that I can't seem to put in any one order in my head. Looking back, I feel amazed at how thin of a paperback it actually is.

Bill McKibben is brilliant, and I have...more

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About Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is the author of Eaarth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He 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 maga...more

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Books by Bill McKibben

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (Library of America #182)

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“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.” — 22 people liked it

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