Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben

Feb 15, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, environment

I cannot remember exactly when I heard about global warming for the first time. I’m sure it was not in school since I was already a college graduate at that time. I was not a voracious reader then and all I was dreaming about was how to land a good job and convince my father to let me get married as I could already support my own family.

That was approximately in the mid-eighties. Few years after the AIDS spread around the world. It was also the time when my handsome brother was egging us, his 3...more

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May 06, 2012 Reid rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read "The End of Nature" for a college class 14 years ago, so it's a little fuzzy in my mind. From what I remember, it was pretty unsettling. It introduced me to a new way of thinking about the natural world, to the concept that humans have, indeed, touched or altered every square inch of the planet's surface.

Eaarth, rather than being merely unsettling, is straight-up frightening. The compelling premise is that we have pumped too much carbon into the atmosphere at this point to halt climate ch...more

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May 11, 2013 Chuck rated it 2 of 5 stars

Last week the Senate showed its lack of backbone by refusing to take up climate legislation. The proposed bill was extremely modest, but it apparently involved too much political risk for Democrats facing re-election, and of course the Party of No held to its predictable position. One does have to wonder why it's so easy for our "leaders" to turn their backs on finding ways to mitigate a likely global catastrophe. I think the answer is that, although there are a few visible signs of a coming cli...more Last week the Senate showed its lack of backbone by refusing to take up climate legislation. The proposed bill was extremely modest, but it apparently involved too much political risk for Democrats facing re-election, and of course the Party of No held to its predictable position. One does have to wonder why it's so easy for our "leaders" to turn their backs on finding ways to mitigate a likely global catastrophe. I think the answer is that, although there are a few visible signs of a coming climate meltdown, much of the evidence is out of sight. And out of sight seems to mean out of mind. Rising global temperatures cause disappearing glaciers, acidification of the ocean, melting permafrost, droughts, and increasingly violent weather conditions. But we we don't encounter much of this on a daily basis, and we seem wired to respond primarily to what is in our immediate environment.

Bill McKibben's latest book attempts to put some of the facts back in the forefront of our consciousness. He emphasizes the number 350 -- that number indicates how many parts per million of carbon dioxide can presumably exist in the atmosphere without imperiling the stability of planet Earth. But, according to McKibben, we're already at 390 and climbing. We no longer live on Earth; we live on a new planet, which he calls "Eaarth".

The first half of Eaarth details the hard truths and looming consequences. But McKibben sees himself as offering solutions, not just prophesying doom. The difficulty is that the "solutions" he offers don't remotely scale up to the problem that he identifies. He argues that we need to rediscover "community", disavow the mantra of endless "growth", and move toward local production of food and energy; and he sees the Internet as a valuable tool in promoting those endeavors. McKibben describes some noteworthy success stories along these lines, but some of his recommendations (per the book's subtitle) are aimed more at coping with the consequences of global warming rather than reversing it. And while those recommendations that might help reduce harmful emissions are salutary, McKibben doesn't provide any evidence that they will get us anywhere close back to the magic number 350.

In the end, I suppose, each of us as individuals must do what we can, and "thinking local" is probably the right place to begin. However, given the magnitude of the problem, solving it -- if it's not already too late to do so -- seems to me to require significant government leadership and intervention, a new Manhattan Project with strong support from governments around the world. It's not clear that McKibben would disagree with this point, but he doesn't actively promote it either. Unfortunately, as long as lobbyists for fossil fuels wield their extensive and expensive power, and politicians care more about their next few years in office than they do about the future of the planet, it won't be just Rome that is burning. No problem, though; we can always adjust our air conditioners while we tune up our fiddles.

Update (May 11, 2013 -- original review written on July 26, 2010): Today's New York Times reports that the atmosphere's carbon dioxide level has now hit 400 parts per million -- a concentration that hadn't occurred during the last 3 million years. But, hey, it's currently only 46 degrees outside, so why should I worry? Out of sight, out of mind. And those who refuse to recognize or address the problem today won't be around tomorrow when the consequences of their disastrous ignorance and inanition become evident. Perhaps their progeny will hold them accountable, but what difference will that make?(less)

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Aug 07, 2011 Stephen added it

I have been following the work of Bill McKibben for several years because implicitly I know he is absolutely correct as far as his assessment of the crises that global climate change is causing and will cause. The book starts out recapping a "weather event" on Lake Dunmore, the summer of 2008 that I witnessed. I could look up the particulars, but suffice it to say we received a summer's worth of rain in an afternoon - so much so that the lake actually flooded. You could not drive around the lake...more

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May 16, 2013 g-na rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star-faves

This book was both excellent and horrible.

It was an excellent, comprehensive look at the damage we are causing to our planet. The author goes into detail about how things are changing here on Earth due purely to the actions of mankind, and as a result, we are now living on a planet different from the one we evolved on; he calls this "new" planet "Eaarth." In all the reading I have done about conservation, climate change, anthropogenic changes, and the like, this is the first thing I've read tha...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Dan Allosso rated it 3 of 5 stars

In the preface to his 2010 book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, Bill McKibben admits “It’s true that we’ve lost that fight, insofar as our goal was to preserve the world we were born into” (p. xv). We grew up on a planet astronaut Jim Lovell described as “ ‘a grand oasis.’ But we no longer live on that planet” (p. 2). So “we’ll need to figure out what parts of our lives and our ideologies we must abandon so that we can protect the core of our societies and civilizations”(p. xiv).

As...more In the preface to his 2010 book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, Bill McKibben admits “It’s true that we’ve lost that fight, insofar as our goal was to preserve the world we were born into” (p. xv). We grew up on a planet astronaut Jim Lovell described as “ ‘a grand oasis.’ But we no longer live on that planet” (p. 2). So “we’ll need to figure out what parts of our lives and our ideologies we must abandon so that we can protect the core of our societies and civilizations”(p. xiv).

As you might expect, the first part of this book, where McKibben explains how the old world has been destroyed, is much more detailed than the second part, where he offers some suggestions on how we might move forward. The scientific consensus is alarming: “We now know that the climate doesn’t have to warm any more for Greenland to continue losing ice,” says a climatologist from the University of Ohio (pp. 4-5). There’s a “50 percent chance that Lake Mead, which backs up on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam, could run dry by 2021 (When that happens, as the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority put it, ‘you cut off supply to the fifth largest economy in the world,’ spread across the American West (p. 6). And “glaciers could disappear from the central and eastern Himalayas as early as 2035, including the giant Gangotri Glacier that supplies 70 percent of the dry-season water to the Ganges River. That would leave 407 million people looking for a new source of drinking and irrigation water” (p. 7). In other words, we have a solid timetable for the water war.

The oceans are “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 (p. 10). “Coral reefs will cease to exist as physical structures by 2100, perhaps 2050.” If I recall, that’s where pretty much all the ocean’s remaining biodiversity is.

McKibben is famous as the man behind 350.org, but even in 2009 as he was writing this he said “we’re already past 350—way past it. The planet has nearly 390 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We’re too high. Forget the grandkids; it turns out this was a problem for our parents…the last time we had carbon levels this high: sea levels rose one hundred feet or more, and temperatures rose as much as ten degrees” (pp. 15-16). And contrary to what others are claiming, McKibben quotes scientists who believe “changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a thousand years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped” (p. 17).

And then there’s peak oil. “One barrel of oil yields as much energy as twenty-five thousand hours of human manual labor—more than a decade of human labor per barrel. The average American uses twenty-five barrels each year, which is like finding three hundred years of free labor annually” (p. 27). “So does modernity disappear along with the oil?” he asks (p. 30).

Already, as only the earliest changes were beginning to be noticed, the World Bank announced “1.4 billion people, it found, lived below the poverty line, 430 million more than previously estimated. What defines the poverty line? $1.25 a day” (p. 76). No wonder “The U.S. military… costs more than the armies of the next forty-five nations combined; the Pentagon accounts for 48 percent of the world’s total military spending” (pp. 144-145). But will that save us at home? According to Nobel winner Steven Chu, “the rapid melt of the Sierra snowpack means ‘we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California…I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going’ ” (p. 156). “And if our societies start to tank, we’ll be in worse shape than those who came before,” McKibben warns. “For one thing, our crisis is global, so there’s no place to flee. For another, most of us don’t know how to do very much—in your standard collapse scenario, it’s nice to know how to grow wheat” (pp. 98-99).

So what’s all this mean? First, we have to stop looking to idiots like Larry Summers, “treasury secretary under President Clinton, now Obama’s chief economic adviser: ‘There are no . . . limits to the carrying capacity of the earth.’ ” (p. 95). (This guy has been president of Harvard!) And Jerry Falwell: “I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We’ll be in global cooling by then, if the Lord hasn’t returned” (p. 12). (Hitchens was right! Religion ruins everything!) And Barack Obama: “speaking about the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks… ‘We don’t want to make the best the enemy of the good.’ ” (p. 81). (That should be his campaign slogan this time around!)

But really, it’s a little hard to see how McKibben navigates from this to a very short description of localism and community-building ending with a retelling of the 350.org event in October 2009. Maybe he wouldn’t have been allowed to publish the book if he had suggested what the world is going to look like. Better to leave to the imaginations of the reader what he means by “dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent” (p. 212). After all, he did mention Mad Max (p. 146)… (less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Greening USiena added it

Shelves: ecology-and-science, development-and-economy, natural-resources-and-energy

(da Edizioni Ambiente)
Abbiamo lavorato duro, ci siamo concentrati sulla crescita senza limiti, e alla fine ci siamo riusciti. Abbiamo creato un nuovo pianeta, Terraa. È un mondo più caldo, squassato da tempeste, alluvioni, siccità e incendi di intensità mai viste. I suoi mari sono più acidi, e dappertutto i ghiacci si stanno fondendo. Come se non bastasse, la nostra ossessione per la crescita è alimentata dai combustibili fossili, una risorsa che oltre a esporci a rischi di ogni tipo, è destinat...more

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Dec 02, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, nonfiction, technology, sociology, environment, science, audiobook

Bill McKibben is a world-famous environmentalist. He is the founder of 350.org, a very big organization whose purpose is to solve the climate crisis. Without a doubt, he has written a very scary book. Well worth reading, to help put climate change into context.

The main point of this excellent book, is that our planet is not the same as it used to be; hence, the title Eaarth. Climate change is happening right now. Sea level is rising faster than expected. Dry areas are becoming drier, while wet r...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Diane Kistner rated it 5 of 5 stars

What would it be like to live on another planet? Like the proverbial frogs sitting in a pot of water slowly coming to a boil, we'll all eventually find out whether we want to or not.

Bill McKibben maintains that we NOW live on a very different planet, a planet that's rapidly becoming less and less like the one humans have inhabited for many thousands of years. And it's too late to turn our space ship around and go back "home." No, we have to wake up and start learning how to live on the planet as...more What would it be like to live on another planet? Like the proverbial frogs sitting in a pot of water slowly coming to a boil, we'll all eventually find out whether we want to or not.

Bill McKibben maintains that we NOW live on a very different planet, a planet that's rapidly becoming less and less like the one humans have inhabited for many thousands of years. And it's too late to turn our space ship around and go back "home." No, we have to wake up and start learning how to live on the planet as it is--not the one we still would like to imagine that we live on.

The first part of this book is bleak, and it needs to be. Too many of us are in complete denial about the condition of our planet and the mass extinctions now in process. So, who cares about how many species are going extinct? Anyone who understands that no man is an island. And that cold/wet weather we've had in 2010 that proves "there is no such thing as global warming"? That weather will only get more unpredictable and violent as time goes by--and, yes, it's due to global warming.

James Hanson and so many other scientists were right, except for the fact that they underestimated how quickly climate change would occur. It's not a matter of what you believe: Nobody is going to be able to sleep through the earth changes--and isolationism, a cache of arms, and a lot of hateful rhetoric is not going to feed anyone's family or keep them secure.

Skills are the new gold, and we need to return to the days when neighbors helped neighbors. We need to press our technologies into service to help us survive, but we also need to return to a Depression-era sense of frugality and saving for rainy days. There will likely be many more "rainy days" in the future than there were in the past. In the last half of the book, McKibben presents some projects that are already underway to help us and our progeny survive on this strange new world that he renames "Eaarth" because our old Earth is already dead. Each and every one of us needs to be thinking about how we can ameliorate harsher conditions, and we need to pick the brains of the old folks before they are gone so we don't have to completely reinvent a bunch of new wheels.

Me, I will be running mycelium, making biochar, permaculturing, keeping chickens, and growing/preserving a lot of our own food. I will be a denizen of the instructables web site and the dumpsters, and I will figure out as many ways as I can to work with Nature and not against her. I will try to help those who are near me who are suffering, and I will cultivate friends who are willing to help others as well. What will you do? A good start would be to read this book, especially if you think climate change is a hoax intended to deny you of your freedoms. I hope all who are blind will begin to see. Life is going to be hard enough with our eyes wide open.(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 Peter Jana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment-and-consumption

McKibben claims that global warming is currently worse than expected. It is not a problem for future generations, something that can be kicked down the road, it’s a problem for us - today. In the 1980s and 90s scientists using computer modeling predicted that global warming would not reach dangerous levels until the mid 21st century when carbon levels were predicted to reach 550 parts per million (ppm). It turns out those models were inaccurate. Fifty years ahead of schedule the Earth experience...more McKibben claims that global warming is currently worse than expected. It is not a problem for future generations, something that can be kicked down the road, it’s a problem for us - today. In the 1980s and 90s scientists using computer modeling predicted that global warming would not reach dangerous levels until the mid 21st century when carbon levels were predicted to reach 550 parts per million (ppm). It turns out those models were inaccurate. Fifty years ahead of schedule the Earth experienced the melting of the polar caps, the expansion of the tropics, the increase of the ocean’s acid levels, and droughts and hurricanes that have destroyed more property than ever recorded.

According to the NASA climatologist James Hansen, a safe level of carbon turns out to be 350 ppm, and we are currently at 390. A report published by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Council stated that climatic changes such as surface temperature and rainfall levels will be irreversible for the next thousand years (14 – 15). McKibben’s point is that environmentally we no longer live on the same planet, thus “Eaarth” to designate the new world in which we live.

The early part of the book pummels the reader with details piled on top of details. It makes for sluggish reading, but it jostles the reader into an appreciation for the magnitude of the problem.

McKibben is at his most interesting about midway through when he espouses a type of anti-Federalism as a way of preventing things from getting worse. Small government communitarianism is what we need, not big government national projects. Primarily, this means a small federal government and local solutions (123-128).

When the country was young it needed a National Project in order to expand and gain power. The transcendental railroad and the highway system are the foremost examples used by McKibben, but you can include events such as the Spanish – American war and the world wars, since they extended the imperial reach of the United States, necessitating a greater need for fossil fuels. Looking at it this way, the Civil War was the catalyst of environmental catastrophe, as it considered federal power and put to an end Anti-Federalism, most radically expressed by southern secession (Chapter 3).

This is a novel perspective and McKibben devotes some time to sketching a brief history of the United States in order to put his views in context. While some might see this as a diversion, I found it to be the most original and interesting aspect of the book.

McKibben’s small government / local-solution environmentalism is opposed to the views expressed by Thomas Friedman in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. For Friedman, there is no way out of economic growth. All countries – big and small – need to grow in order to prosper. Environmental technological projects need to be on a grand scale, such as concentrated clusters of solar panels or thousands of miles of windmills, not only because they can lower our carbon footprint, but because they can help drive economic growth (49-52).

McKibben believes we need to leave the growth model behind. While supporting the idea of a green Manhattan project, he claims that it’s too little too late. Instead, we need to strive for a “graceful decline” by “hunkering down” (124). This essentially means finding local solutions, such as promoting local organic farming and the use alternative sources of energy at the household level - instead of a chicken in every pot, a solar panel on every roof – and keeping our global ambitions limited. As Voltaire would have put it, we need to “tend our garden.” It’s a radical project. In McKibben’s words, it calls for a “different kind of civilization.” This is asking a lot. But from McKibben’s perspective there is no choice because we have already reached the point of no return on planet Eaarth.
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Nov 02, 2011 Barbara P rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just finished reading EAARTH by Bill McKibben and was touched, moved, angered, hopeful all wrapped up together. McKibben was here in Claremont last week to speak on Thursday evening over on the college campus and a conference on Friday/Saturday at our church, Claremont Presbyterian Church. People came from many places in the U.S.A. He named his book earth with two a's because he believes the earth we have known is gone and we have a new eaarth to try and heal from the complexities of global wa...more

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Oct 28, 2011 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

this is depressing stuff, people.

especially the first (and most convincing) chapter, in which mckibben adds an extra "A" to the planet we inhabit. "eaarth" is not the world we've been trying to pin solar panels to for the well-being of our "grandchildren" since the 70's; it's the planet that's already begun changing irrevocably for the worse. in the first portion of eaarth, mckibben calls for a transformation in our approach to environmental action in the wake of the dire circumstances of the 21...more this is depressing stuff, people.

especially the first (and most convincing) chapter, in which mckibben adds an extra "A" to the planet we inhabit. "eaarth" is not the world we've been trying to pin solar panels to for the well-being of our "grandchildren" since the 70's; it's the planet that's already begun changing irrevocably for the worse. in the first portion of eaarth, mckibben calls for a transformation in our approach to environmental action in the wake of the dire circumstances of the 21st century. which is to say that this is the james hansen model of environmental action (apocalyptic, worth getting arrested for), not the globe-trotting thomas freidmann kind (whoo hoo free market to the rescue).

i admire mckibben immensely as an activist. as a writer, he's clear and direct, and follows a tradition of mainstream argumentation made popular by people like michael pollan. as much as i share his urgency and support his ideals, i'm afraid i don't find his approach 100% convincing.

the least persuasive part of the book involves a long digression into american history. to persuade us that a smaller, more humble economy (and social structure) is achievable, he makes an attempt to align it with the ideals of jeffersonain democracy. mckibben has little faith or patience in the role of "big government" to address the ecological crisis (and in the wake of copenhagen, who can blame him?) so he turns to a peculiarly patriotic call for "state's rights" as an alternative. some of the bullet points of this approach are pretty persuasive - especially toward the end of the book, when he discusses local energy solutions - but there's an anti-establishment streak to it that i found rather disappointing.

for one thing, "state's rights" is one of the most diabolical code-words for our racist, confederate past. obviously, mckibben isn't trying to invoke this, but he doesn't address it either, which i found pretty irksome. at the state level, his hope seems to rely on the small-scale and the local. in our era of tea party activism and ron paul fanboys, mckibben has to be pretty careful to distinguish himself from free market libertarians, and a political culture obsessed with a government that's purportedly on its back. and he does avoid the worst of this, for the most part. instead of an unregulated frontier of altruistic individuals, mckibben envisions grassroots collective action and community-oriented governmental solutions. mckibben doesn't want to limit the powers of government so much as have them disperse in a more manageable, human-scale direction.

he lists several admirable examples of these strategies in action, and makes a few brief but persuasive arguments against "green tech" solutions to climate change. still, i couldn't help feeling that he should have made a place for broad, federal-level regulations in his assessments as well. as excited as i am about local energy production, food co-ops and urban agriculture, i can't help but think that a robust carbon-taxing system and a strengthened EPA might play a larger role in the big picture. or, more specifically, that a synthesis of macro and micro is probably the wisest way to move forward. i'm fairly certain that mckibben is in favor of this synthesis as well, but he rarely stresses large-scale solutions and puts a bit too much faith in the example of his own community in vermont. as a result, the book seems to align itself with a breed of individualistic patriotism that i find counter-productive. i'm sure he's simply trying to broaden the eco-tent beyond the usual tree-huggin' liberal crowd, but i'm not 100% convinced this is the tone to do it with.

i think i need to read deep economy next.(less)

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Aug 10, 2011 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: climate-change, ecology

McKibben's characterisation of climate change as the loss of the planet we once knew and the future we thought we had is keen insight. That climate change is far from a problem to solve for our children and our grandchildren; it was a problem for our parents.

The discussion of a different future based on survivability and resilience through a decentralised and re-localised socioeconomy gives some cause for hope. Yet it seems too thin, too many areas of life as we know it left unremarked and unres...more

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Jun 11, 2011 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

I hated this book. Scary shit is going down on this planet that we call Earth (which Bill McKibben insists is a new planet- eaarth - so altered is she). That is Bills's purpose, I think. To scare the crap out of you so that you start DOING something - not to save her since she's already gone, but to learn how to salvage what we do have. Much like the chronic smoker trying to save their dying, cancer-ridden body.
Being scared is not an effective emotion for me and much of what this book did was p...more

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Feb 05, 2011 C.J. Shane rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 and only a few of u...more

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Jan 26, 2011 Fred rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, non-fiction, technology, environmental

Eaarth is about the changing planet. McKibben says that the planet has changed as a
result of global warming and that we're now living on a different planet and we can
never go back to the old one. I accept that. The best parts of the book is the scary
shit which is going to happen.

A warmer planet is one where diseases will thrive, storms will be more intense and
infestations of insects will be worse and more widespread. There will be more droughts
and more intense rainfall because of more moisture...more

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Dec 15, 2010 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

The Earth that mankind knew, and grew up on, is gone. A new planet needs a new name; hence Eaarth. It is a place of poles where the ice caps are severely reduced, or gone. It is a place where the oceans are becoming more acid, because of excess carbon absorbed into the water, not to mention the toxic chemicals and other pollutants being dumped into i...more Mankind has irreparably changed the Earth’s climate and weather conditions. This book gives the details, and tells how to survive on this new world.

The Earth that mankind knew, and grew up on, is gone. A new planet needs a new name; hence Eaarth. It is a place of poles where the ice caps are severely reduced, or gone. It is a place where the oceans are becoming more acid, because of excess carbon 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 Glacier in Bolivia. Those living downstream, dependent on that glacier for their water supply, will certainly care. Since 1980, the tropics have expanded worldwide by 2 degrees north and south. Over 8 million more square miles of land are now tropical, with 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 over $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 chemicals and fertilizer. Eliminate the middlemen, like advertising and transport, and put more money in the farmer’s pocket. Along with local agriculture, consider local power generation.

This is a really 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.

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Sep 16, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bill McKibben writes (and speaks for that matter… check him out on Letterman) directly and succinctly to get across the urgent need to address climate change now, and forcefully. This book, especially the first half, is well worth the read for those new to the climate change world, or those who need a reminder of why they work on the issue. The description of the impacts we are already witness to on this earth (which is so different it needs a new name, hence the title) gets the point across wit...more Bill McKibben writes (and speaks for that matter… check him out on Letterman) directly and succinctly to get across the urgent need to address climate change now, and forcefully. This book, especially the first half, is well worth the read for those new to the climate change world, or those who need a reminder of why they work on the issue. The description of the impacts we are already witness to on this earth (which is so different it needs a new name, hence the title) gets the point across without using much carbon jargon.

The second half, which looks more at solutions to climate change, is also good but a little less convincing. McKibben sees the answer lying in making things exceptionally local, focusing largely on food (and the energy used to produce it) and the energy used to power our homes, but extends this logic to banking and other aspects of life as well. Surprisingly, he even extends this to logic to government as well, making the case for the Federal government to decrease in size. Decentralization is the key, as it not only leads to decreased energy use, but also spreads out the risk that “too big to fail” failed to do.

I agree with much of what he says with regard to the need for more decentralization and community, but I don’t think he discussed the need for national policy one iota (although it does end with a call to political activism). Given that this is more a manifesto or treatise than a policy proposal, this sort of makes sense, but still, I’m not convinced that decentralizing everything will reduce enough emissions to the point where even stronger local communities will be enough to weather the storm.

This book has tons of quotables, but here’s a few to give the gist…

“All day every day we burn coal and gas and oil, from the second we make the coffee till the second we turn out the lights. (And is the furnace still running? The air-conditioning?) If an alien landed in the United States on some voyage of exploration, he might well report back to headquarters that we were bipedal devices for combusting fossil fuel.” (p. 28)

As a native Clevelander, got to include this one… “Reduced winter ice cover means that evaporation will proceed year-round, and hence the water level in Lake Erie could fall between three and six feet in the next seventy years, making shipping difficult (for every inch the lake drops, a commercial ship must leave behind 270 tons of cargo) and shifting the shoreline several miles in Sandusky Bay. Moreover, the range of the official Ohio state symbol, the buckeye tree, may shift north, out of the state entirely and into the territory of its college football archrival, Michigan.” (p. 34)

See my buddy Eliza get a whole paragraph dedicated to her reporting in Peru! (p. 36)

“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. In the halcyon days of the final economic booms, everyone on your cul de sac could have died overnight from some mysterious plague, and while you might have been sad, you wouldn’t have been inconvenienced. Our economy, unlike any that came before it, is designed to work without the input of your neighbors.” (p. 133)

“… [Annually] Americans eat 200 pounds of grain directly, and 1800 pounds that’s been run through an animal first. By contrast, the average Chinese eats 850 pounds of grain with his chopsticks, and only 154 pounds indirectly, via cow or pig.” (p. 177)
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Sep 15, 2010 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business-and-society

Warning: Reading Eaarth may depress you. You should read it anyway, but you should be aware of the possibility going into it.

In short, McKibben argues that over the last two hundred years, we've put so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the levels are now higher than anything we've seen in ten thousand years of human civilization. And that's bad news, because it means we may have started feedback loops in the world's ecosystem that we can't stop. Weather is becoming more extreme: droughts are mor...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Ron rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a really good book to read right now, as people are starting to wake up to the fact that we are no longer at a crossroads regarding energy and the environment, but are starting to have to deal with the permanent and negative consequences of the road we have collectively chosen to travel.
McKibben first paints a picture of how the planet we live on, though we haven't quite woken up to this fact, is no longer that planet that allowed for the flourishing of human civilization. The planet an...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Bob Redmond rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-and-farms

Here's a book to keep you up at night; it did me. Yes, for much of it McKibben explains what he means by "Eaarth:" we have used up the old one, good old "Earth." We killed it. The author of the first general book on global warming (1989's THE END OF NATURE), McKibben pretty much knows what he's talking about.

Ecological disasters are happening with more and more frequency. They are not random events happening more often, either; they are systematic responses to a planet under duress. The polar ca...more Here's a book to keep you up at night; it did me. Yes, for much of it McKibben explains what he means by "Eaarth:" we have used up the old one, good old "Earth." We killed it. The author of the first general book on global warming (1989's THE END OF NATURE), McKibben pretty much knows what he's talking about.

Ecological disasters are happening with more and more frequency. They are not random events happening more often, either; they are systematic responses to a planet under duress. The polar caps, the rainforest, the ozone layer, the Gulf region: are all connected geologically, and so are the extreme weather events we are seeing.

Furthermore, our collective responses to this are predictably failing. Governments have ignored or underestimated the problems, and solutions (reduce carbon levels to 550 parts per million) are incorrect by almost half (they need to be 350… and we are already at 360). So slowing growth is not an option: we need to _reverse_ growth. What is the likelihood of that?

Pretty grim stuff. McKibben's quixotic solutions--more community gardens, more composting, more organizing via the internet--seem weak, but that's actually the revolutionary idea here: instituting, more than anything, the thought that we can do less.

"We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to survive on this Eaarth, but most of it needs to be done close to home. Small, not big; dispersed, not centralized."

And how is that going to happen? We can't waste time worrying about collapse, says McKibben. "Now we must try to figure out how to survive what's coming at us. And that survival begins with words... We lack the vocabulary and the metaphors we need for life on a different scale... So here are my candidates for words that may help us think usefully about the future. Durable. Sturdy. Stable. Hardy. Robust."

The book flags towards the end, as like David against Goliath, or some Cool Hand Luke, McKibben shows his hand… there ain't a lot there, just a few beans and a sling. Some words, and a few examples of a few people casting their voices into the maelstrom. McKibben has laid out a global agenda, and his examples, even the impressive 350.org efforts, are necessarily local. Is it enough to get everyone moving in the same direction, however slowly?

We will find out.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: I read a good review of it in the paper, and then somewhere else, and then a friend mentioned it. I had liked McKibben's introduction to Thoreau's WALDEN, and by the third time someone mentioned it, I was moved to track it down.

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Jul 12, 2010 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

I agree with others that the first half of this book--that is, the scare-the-s$%t-out-of-you half--is superior to the second, in which my interest waned.

He spends the first half reassuring you that the planet has been irrevocably altered (mainly by us) and that we must face the facts: we won't be living the way we are now (well, 99.9% of us won't) in the near future. Why? Because economies of the world will flounder as the price of fossil fuels go up, as the oceans rise, as resources dwindle, a...more I agree with others that the first half of this book--that is, the scare-the-s$%t-out-of-you half--is superior to the second, in which my interest waned.

He spends the first half reassuring you that the planet has been irrevocably altered (mainly by us) and that we must face the facts: we won't be living the way we are now (well, 99.9% of us won't) in the near future. Why? Because economies of the world will flounder as the price of fossil fuels go up, as the oceans rise, as resources dwindle, as fisheries disappear, as sources of fresh water disappear, as shipping costs go up, etc. What should we do then? Start shifting our economies to a very small, very local, very stable and sustainable ones, less susceptible to global influences. And we should do it now before it's too late to make a nice, easy transition.

Then again, you have to imagine that people can get together and actually agree to let the economy shrink. Can you imagine many Americans (or Europeans) agreeing to spend and use less energy for the sake of the future? Imagine somone NOT buying a Jeep Wrangler or NOT taking vacations or NOT putting in a hot tub because they believe "in the greater good." It's pretty hard to imagine anything will change people's consumer habits except for when something is unaffordable or not available anymore. As in, you can't eat Atlantic cod because their is no more Atlantic cod to eat (or it's too expensive). Or, you can't buy a Jeep Wrangler because they don't get manufactured anymore because no one can afford one.

It is pretty insane, though, to think that the developed and developing world is going about it's business either without care or without knowledge (or in denial?) of say, the melting of the artic, or the end of cheap oil, or the coming water crisis, or the massive destruction of carbon sinks known as rain forests, or the planetary chemistry experiment we play everyday by turning on lights, driving our cars, watching movies, brewing coffee, etc., etc. To put it blunty, S$%T is going to go down! We even know it now, and humanity is basically going to just watch it happen, knowing that it is going to happen. Then again, who says humans are capable of doing what Bill McKibben is asking.

In the end, I say, be optimistic: ride your bike to work if you can; buy only local food; walk instead of drive; have a job that doesn't require a far commute. But, it's hard not to be realistic. I mean, s#$t, have you been to Vegas? Try to imagine people NOT going for seconds at the all-you-can-eat endangered seafood buffet. Um...yeah.(less)

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Jul 06, 2010 Keith Akers rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bill McKibben really gets it. He gets so much of it, that part of me just wants to pass over the parts that he doesn't get. But he seems to consistently come up short on details, just as he did with "Deep Economy," which also had so much right but bungled the ending; so this is a well-written, important, but flawed book.

The really important thing, and what McKibben gets right, is that the basic problem that we have is with economic growth. Dealing with climate change, not to mention peak oil, so...more Bill McKibben really gets it. He gets so much of it, that part of me just wants to pass over the parts that he doesn't get. But he seems to consistently come up short on details, just as he did with "Deep Economy," which also had so much right but bungled the ending; so this is a well-written, important, but flawed book.

The really important thing, and what McKibben gets right, is that the basic problem that we have is with economic growth. Dealing with climate change, not to mention peak oil, soil erosion, deforestation, and the "environment" generally, means an end to economic growth. Because virtually every political leader (at least in public) does NOT get this fundamental point, this book is important.

Living on Eaarth means living without economic growth, and this means that the huge amount of debt that we have (not primarily government debt, by the way) just isn't going to be repaid, and our economy is going to come crashing to a halt. It means a completely different economic system and a completely different way of life.

But McKibben does not show, while he tries, how we can feed ourselves and stay warm in the winter. There is actually some significant debate over whether organic agriculture can feed the world. This is not just a "culture war" -- even people who understand the importance of organics aren't sure.

And what about soil erosion? To me this is a critical issue for the long term. He quotes Jules Pretty as saying that farmers can create a meter of soil in ten years. I'm sorry, I can't take this seriously without more evidence. That would be a rate perhaps 1000 times greater than the normal geological rate of soil formation! If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

More to the point would be the insight that we have to drastically change our diet to a largely or entirely vegan diet. He does acknowledge eating less meat, but misses the point that vegetarianism / veganism has to be the starting point of a new food policy, not a throwaway line in to keep the vegans happy. Anyone who thinks we are going to keep up anything faintly resembling the current American diet on "Eaarth" is fooling themselves, and this should be the starting point, not a casual aside.

Moreover, so far as staying warm in the winter goes, he advocates using wood. He acknowledges not everyone can "do" wood, but he misses the essential point: biofuels, including wood, can't begin to meet current energy needs. The vast preponderance of the needed approach lies elsewhere: like, using less energy.

The one important point in the second half that I agree with is his comments about the internet. Of all the toys of industrial civilization, this is the one we will probably keep, although it's quite energy intensive and takes a lot of obscure metals. So we may be vegans employed on the organic farm living in our communal super-insulated housing and playing music for each other in the evening, but we'll still have computers and the internet.

In short, I can confidently recommend the first half of the book for which I would give five stars, but when he starts getting into specifics, he starts to stumble. (less)

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Jun 19, 2010 Bradley Jarvis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first part of this book will scare the daylights out of anyone who isn't blinded by oil company hype or willful ignorance. It even scared me, and I already had some pretty dark ideas about the future. Global warming is here, it's irreversible, and it's going to get a lot worse very quickly. Deniers like to point out that science isn't always right, and in this case they're correct; the scale and progression of the changes we have made to our planet have been seriously UNDERESTIMATED.

The seco...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Zoe Aleshire rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well, I had some problems with McKibben (if you're curious, find the history of the ecofeminist movement, a response in part to the DeepEcology movement he spearheaded in the late eighties/nineties) and I feel like maybe, yes, this book has responded to these issues. He spends half the book convincing the reader that this earth we have grown used to living on and with is a thing of the past (hence the title). This new eaarth is more hostile in many ways, irreversibly different... but maybe not w...more

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Apr 10, 2010 Bakari rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-books-read, science, technology

I’ve read in the past one or two of Bill McKibben’s articles in maybe Mother Jones, but this is the first of his books I’ve read. I think it’s also the first book I‘ve read about environmental issues. Eaarth is indeed a great introduction about what we have done to the planet, particularly here in U.S. If we listen to loud mouths like Sarah “drill baby drill” Palin, Glenn Beck, and other non-scientific minded and intellectually deprived individuals, we’re not going to understand the full scope w...more I’ve read in the past one or two of Bill McKibben’s articles in maybe Mother Jones, but this is the first of his books I’ve read. I think it’s also the first book I‘ve read about environmental issues. Eaarth is indeed a great introduction about what we have done to the planet, particularly here in U.S. If we listen to loud mouths like Sarah “drill baby drill” Palin, Glenn Beck, and other non-scientific minded and intellectually deprived individuals, we’re not going to understand the full scope what is taking place on this planet right now.

McKibben explains well how the earth we once knew is no longer. It is now eaarth, and we better learn how to deal with the new reality. He opens with the “New World” chapter: “Imagine we live on a planet. Not our cozy, taken-for-granted earth, but a planet, a real one, with dark poles and belching volcanoes and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat. An inhospitable place. A different place. A different planet. It needs a new name: eaarth.”

This is the vain of the entire essay of a book. At first it’s a bit frightening to read. Just what he describes in words without pictures makes you really start thinking about what has been and is being done (by powerful corporations!) in the name of progress. He doesn’t use a lot of jargon or scientific terminology. He simply explains how the choices we have made in producing things have led to forms ecological destruction.

Most of what he says shouldn’t be new to us by now, but I think in his book he frames the issues in a political and economic context to understand them from global and local perspectives. Thus we need the people we elect to political offices to be crystal clear and take a stand about saving the planet—not just for future generations, but for right now.

He also calls for localism, where we do indeed produce and consume locally. And surprisingly he also has some very useful ideas and examples of how the Internet can be useful for the type of changes we need to make.

I think for many of us, the poor economic conditions we’re facing are causing us to rethink our priorities. I personally don’t just hop in my car anymore and go driving around town. And I‘m always on my family about conserving energy around the house. But that’s just me. There’s so much more that needs to be done and is being done, especially around the world.

McKibben doesn’t give a doomsday message, but his reportage and analysis is not without warnings. It’s probably too bad that it is going to take more Katrinas, heat waves, terrible storms, etc, before we really understand what ecologists like McKibben are talking about. And even then, people won’t listen because they think they have too much to lose by admitting that the earth is being wrecked by our over consumption (80% of it by us in the U.S.) and production of goods. He points out that there are many things we can do, but what we can’t do is “refreeze the arctic or regrow the rain forest.”(!)

The book is a very engaging read, though the four chapters are much too long. He should have broken them up more. Nevertheless, he’s certainly educated me, and I‘ll be reading much more about these issues. (less)

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Jun 04, 2011 Adam Kranz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-problem-of-civilization, wealth-and-power-inequality, sustainable-agriculture, non-fiction, history, environmental-history, appleton-public-library

"Eaarth" is founded on the premise that the world we live in is already so significantly altered by climate change that it deserves a slightly different name. The first module of the book proves this point. The oceans have acidified, glaciers and ice caps are melting, animals are shrinking; droughts, floods, storms, crop failures, massive tree die-offs (due to environmental change and pests that need warmer weather to survive), etc, have gone from exceptional to expected. The next chapter illust...more "Eaarth" is founded on the premise that the world we live in is already so significantly altered by climate change that it deserves a slightly different name. The first module of the book proves this point. The oceans have acidified, glaciers and ice caps are melting, animals are shrinking; droughts, floods, storms, crop failures, massive tree die-offs (due to environmental change and pests that need warmer weather to survive), etc, have gone from exceptional to expected. The next chapter illustrates the crippling kinds of effects and feedbacks that will plague our efforts to respond to climate change. Just as we need to mobilize massive resources to change our civilization in dramatic ways, we are being hit with the very expensive, demoralizing consequences of the existing climate change. While he is much less in-your-face extremist about it than Derrick Jensen, McKibben acknowledges that there is no way out for civilization at this point - the best case scenario is a "controlled descent." The rest of the book looks at how that might happen - what future society would need to look like in order to survive, and what precursors we have to that society today.

Insofar as it emphasizes the already-occurring damages of climate change and looks at ways we need to act in the future to deal with its effects, Eaarth is very similar to James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. While McKibben lacks the peculiar charm of a cantankerous old British scientist, he makes up for it in far superior research, superior prose, and much, much deeper and more realistic thinking.

While Lovelock supports solutions by huge institutions, McKibben acknowledges many times that the gigantic, top-heavy, "too big to fail" systems we have today are both responsible for the crisis and incapable of coping with it. Having all our eggs in a few "too big to fail" baskets means that we're screwed when somebody makes a few mistakes, or when climate change throws a curve ball too damaging for one part of the system to handle. In McKibben's new world, systems will be local, small and manifold, rather than huge, bulky, and risky. The diversity of small systems will be robust, locally appropriate, and adaptable. Unlike Lovelock, McKibben realizes that nuclear power is simply too expensive to invest in as a source of fossil-fuel-free power - there isn't enough time or money, especially in a climate-changed economy. McKibben is also simply a superbly readable prose writer - in the best possible use of that term. He makes his points in such an elegant, subtle way that you almost don't realize he's making an argument at all. It's compelling and a very quick read.

McKibben sees a least-worst path through the nightmare of climate change. If we take it, we can survive the worst of climate change, prevent it from getting even worse, and even pick up a few extra quality of life points along the way - local food is more nutritious and tastier, smaller, more self-reliant communities make happier people, and small, local systems for anything promote equality and allow regional culture to flourish.(less)

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Nov 03, 2010 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: computers, culture-and-politics, economics, employment, entertainment-and-recreation, environment-and-earth-sciences, history, general-science-math-technology

Very good overall, with a couple of quibbles. The first part is an angry, impassioned jeremiad about the recklessness and obliviousness with which most of humanity, including those who make the big decisions, have treated the long-obvious and growing crises of global warming, pollution, and depletion of the world's soil through short-sighted and profiteering chemical-based farming. McKibben comes by his frustration and outrage honestly, as he wrote about these issues forcefully in 1989, sounding...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

An excellent book. While none of the concepts or data were particularly new to me, since I live and breathe this stuff at work, it's still persuasive to read it all in one place. The basic argument is that we have, through our pollution causing global warming, already altered the planet profoundly - enough so that it ought to have a different name, Eaarth. That new Eaarth can't be put back to the old Earth, even if we stop polluting completely today... which we are politically and socially unwil...more An excellent book. While none of the concepts or data were particularly new to me, since I live and breathe this stuff at work, it's still persuasive to read it all in one place. The basic argument is that we have, through our pollution causing global warming, already altered the planet profoundly - enough so that it ought to have a different name, Eaarth. That new Eaarth can't be put back to the old Earth, even if we stop polluting completely today... which we are politically and socially unwilling to do. We should except massive species extinctions, along with higher costs for almost everything - from local highway taxes, since our roads will be washing out frequently from stronger storms and floods, to food, as the oil that subsidies modern agriculture runs dry. The path forward, McKibben argues, is to stop pegging our happiness on growth in the economy, getting used to living well with less, growing more (if not all) of our food and energy close to home and adopting a more Jeffersonian dispersed agrarian state- and localism rather than a Hamiltonian strong centralized federalism. In this regard, some of his arguments are more persuasive than others. Anyone living a harried work life at a cubicle (me) can dream of a nice quiet gardening lifestyle, freer from cares and more connected to nature; but I would have liked to have seen some serious economic analysis of the reality of that envisioned world. McKibben acknowledges that reversing course would be painful for "generations" but doesn't specify exactly how. Are we talking massive unemployment? The abandonment of many industries? Would it really work, I wondered, particularly since he sees the information highway of the Internet as a saving grace. Not only can we learn to garden and compost from how-to YouTube videos, McKibben argues, but we can get all our entertainment and hankering for escapism (since no one will be flying for vacation in his envisioned future) from the Internet. But, knowing something about the economics of Internet information, this seems naive. Who's producing all this escapism content? What advertisers are paying to keep those organizations employing those information producers afloat? Even in the bloated fossil fuel-dependent society we live in today, those answers are hard to come by, so how will a nation of small farmers maintain that kind of media? It's just one example of the types of questions that go unanswered. Not that McKibben has to answer them in this slim volume (about 200 pages). It's enough for him to raise them, persuasively. He does that.(less)

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Mar 04, 2011 Brendan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book should be required reading for all members of Congress! McKibben does an excellent job at describing the challenge we face after years of abusing our environment. He describes a planet that is essentially a finely tuned organism that has been thrown out of balance. It seems like every day the news describes some location that is experiencing dramatic and "record" weather occurences - from flooding in Australia to record snow in the U.K. to high temperatures in the Midwest. As McKibben...more

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