Kindle Notes & Highlights
To McKibben, contamination of the upper atmosphere with anthropogenic greenhouse gases is the ultimate sign of nature’s end, or at least the end of humanity’s ancient relationship with the natural world: “We have not ended rainfall or sunlight; in fact, rainfall and sunlight may become more important forces in our lives. . . . But the ‘meaning’ of the wind, the sun, the rain—of nature—has already changed.” Coming of Age at the End of Nature attempts to reveal how this change in fundamental relationships has influenced the first generation to grapple throughout their lives with these altered
...more
“doing nothing is as much of an action as doing something.”
“Don’t you want to keep the planet nice for your grandchildren someday?
Responsibility to future generations
If I am responsible for my grandchildren’s inheritance, then I’d like an apology from my grandparents, thank you, for destroying the species and open spaces I might have wished to share the planet with, or for the synthetic chemicals I’ve carried in my body since I was a fetus.
Responsibility of past generations
But my impatience—in this case, at least—is not the result of a carefully cultivated short attention span. It’s a result of growing up with the overwhelming knowledge that we’re running out of time.
Known responsibility
I didn’t even let myself think about giving that talk, because then I would have had to answer to myself, to why I didn’t.
Constant sense of guilt and responsibility
His words are inspiring, but they’re not easy to put into practice, as I discover when he returns to Miami a few days later, leaving me with an abandoned nursery, a musty storeroom full of jumbled tools, and a broad swathe of dusty land that, he tells me, is mine to plant from one mountain chain to the next.
Weight of responsibility
In both places, though, the ghosts of Haiti’s past lurk. They’re present in the fort itself, a crumbling landmark from the days when the French got rich off this land through a system of brutal slavery and rapacious plantation farming. They’re present in the central square of Gonaïves, where Haitian slaves first declared their independence and where subsequent generations have marched against native-born dictators and foreign interveners alike. They’re present in the shiny new aid trucks, T-shirts, and billboards, the latest manifestation of a centuries-long American effort to refashion this
...more
Responsibility being placed on others
Hundreds of people drowned that first night, trapped in low-lying areas where there was no chance for escape, and widespread flooding has isolated thousands more. Hunger is starting to set in.
whose responsibility?
- those whom she blamed for Haiti's state?
- everyone's?
As I lie in the darkness, willing it all to stop, the unexpected sound of singing cuts through the rain. It’s coming from the next room over, where a dozen girls are draped across chairs and stretched out on the cement floor. The older girls, I slowly realize, are soothing the fears of the younger ones with familiar hymns. From song, they shift into prayer. Each girl says her own. Aloud. Simultaneously. The rhythmic prayers form a new type of song that is percussive, hypnotic, lulling. As a fallen-away Catholic, I am sometimes skeptical of religious ritual, but if there were ever a time for
...more
the smell would be unbearable if there were any choice but to bear it. It’s a nauseating mixture of everything that has been submerged and is now rotting—animal carcasses, human waste, heaps of trash.
This marks the end of our first attempt at Georges’s dream.
Nature's or human's responsibility?
Passe Reine, a small mountain community that wants to help with the reforestation project.
Accepting responsibility
when it comes to casting blame for the tragedies of this place, it’s easy to point fingers. Why Haiti? Because of the French. Because of the Americans. Because of the elites. Because of the masses. Because of our sins. Whether there’s some special cosmic punishment or reward lined up for this particular plot of earth, I don’t know.
Trying to place responsibility
And vast armies of volunteers, from the Occupy Sandy movement to Seventh-Day Adventists to Bill Clinton, had come to pick up garbage and dispense supplies.
Taking responsibility?
Our efforts felt as much archaeological as restorative: entombed within the huge dunes was the detritus of dozens of lives, artifacts that Sandy had swept from roads and beaches and deposited here,
Decades to grow, hours to kill.
Since Sandy howled up the East Coast, there has been plenty of discussion about how to prevent such a disaster from repeating itself, most of it focused on infrastructural improvements.
Avoiding responsibility
There’s no question that if doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, thoughtlessly rebuilding communities in low-lying coastal areas is certifiably nuts.
We must change the way we conceptualize our relationship with the coast, to recognize its risks as clearly as we do its rewards.
It is the day after solstice, that tipping point of winter when vitamin-deficient Alaskans turn their faces south to the horizon and worship the slow return of the sun, convincing themselves that the next five months of winter will be bearable because each day will be lighter than the last.
the daily journal of the forest floor:
Aerial missions to trap and introduce mountain goats in the 1950s
Taking on nature's responsibility
“A thing is right,” Leopold wrote, “when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.”
Six of us sat in a brick tower on a beautiful East Coast campus discussing Sandra Steingraber’s book about the accumulation of PCBs in the human body and asked ourselves: how do we live in such a broken world?
Avoiding personal responsibility
Somehow this was the ultimate betrayal.
Not taking responsibility personally
After college I found that I couldn’t see the places of my childhood in the same way
Weight of responsibility
Like all small towns, Kodiak has dynasties that can trace their legacy down a family tree rooted in place:
Nature Imagery
It was never a choice to stay—just a decision not to leave.
I work for Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge now, part of an agency with a mission to protect and conserve. I talk to people about the native mammals, about the spine-tingling awe of watching bears catching fish at a waterfall, about endangered whales that migrate past our coasts.
The bone-white fins of Kodiak’s first wind turbines tilt on the hillside above town, but our local politicians still can’t agree about the reality of climate change. Most of this island is a federal refuge, but the migrating birds and fish that depend on its habitat also depend on the health of a wider, unprotected environment.
Political Statement
I’ll think about what I want so badly
to keep, about the kind of world that I want for my friends’ young sons and daughters. And I’ll hope.
at local nonprofits because we believe in a more sustainable future with our hearts in the right places. And nonprofits know how to take advantage of youth.
Personal opinion based on experience
I have always foraged around the house; I’m from the country.
I was planning on making spiced jam that I thought would go well with prosciutto and ciabatta.
I only went Dumpster diving a couple times, and I never went alone.
Even though the food has become trash on its way to the landfill, to rot with defunct electronics, cat litter, decapitated Barbies, “organic” and inorganic goods, and even though young people in Portland were making it look hip, normalizing the behavior, rooting through a Dumpster for bagels still felt gross—desperation mixed with thievery.
When I was stuck, broke, and alone, I stayed with some homeless people in a tent city.
The epitome of urban desperation
I’ve heard that we have programs in some public schools to teach children that food grows outside, not in fluorescent grocery store aisles, because our built environment disconnects us from our basic nature. But nature is more complicated than what is outside. It isn’t just the plums growing on the tree; it’s also adapting to the structures that control access to food, and succeeding in spite of them. Maturing in a recession means experiencing food scarcity, and we’re still the same basic creatures
Biological standpoint and also explaining context (recession)
- speaks to personal point of view
Later, perhaps, he would be cooking at home and posting photos of his dinner to Facebook or Instagram—inviting his friends to join him through their screens.
Speaking to lost value of food and quality time with other people- no technology disconnect
Though our winter clothes helped conceal it, we were the only twenty-somethings in this crowd of older birders.
Implying younger people do not appreciate nature/ nature's beauty?
It would never have been this far outside of its range, or out in broad daylight, unless it was having trouble finding food.
He could share the news with an online network of bird aficionados, who would trek from the far reaches of New England for the chance of a sighting. Or he could keep it to himself and leave the owl in peace.
With slow and silent wing beats it swept low over a snow-covered clearing and toward someone’s house, landing with a sway of needles in a lone pine tree.
Highly descriptive imagery
Gone was the official boundary between us and the owl.
Gone is the boundary between us and nature- owl is symbolic of humanity's marketing of nature (everything)
Two days later, we read on the email list that it had died, pitifully emaciated, the skin under its perfect-looking plumage riddled with parasites.
Birding didn’t kill the owl and neither did we. But suddenly my supposed love of birds felt miserably selfish. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to Jackson, shouldn’t have exploited that great gray owl’s darkest hour. We could have stayed home and never entangled ourselves in the quiet little tragedy that played out in the woods that week. Then I wouldn’t feel guilty, wouldn’t feel pain for the plight of an owl.
Consequences of meddling with nature
I would keep on spending time with birds.
Acknowledging impact and disregarding it
A guide pointed to the mountains of trash, crowned with seagulls, where garbage trucks trundled like gigantic green cockroaches among the mounds, and intoned: “This is from you.” “Don’t worry,” the guide added, “here is the recycling center, where we take what’s old and make it new again.”
Guilt replaced by industrious maximers of industry
