Customer Rating:  
Summary: Important topic; good idea; average execution
Comment: Eaarth has 2 main sections: 1. Where we are/how we got here, and 2. What do we do. Overall themes are on target, but become highly repetitive shortly within each section. Reading the 1st half of each section more than covers the message of the book; Eaarth could easily be half as long, and as a result twice as interesting.
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Summary: Required Reading
Comment: This is a wonderfully enlightening book. It should be required reading for every Earth citizen.
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Summary: Where's planet Earth?? It's gone. We now live on planet...EAARTH.
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"Apollo 8 was orbiting the moon, the astronauts busy photographing possible landing zones for the missions that would follow. On the fourth orbit, commander Frank Borman decided to roll the craft away from the moon and tilt its windows toward the horizon [since] he needed a navigational fix. What he got, instead, was a sudden view of the Earth, rising...
Crew member Bill Anders grabbed a camera and took the photograph that became the iconic image perhaps of all time. "Earthrise," as it was eventually known, that picture of a blue-and-white marble floating amid the vast backdrop of space, set against the barren edge of the lifeless moon. Borman said later that it was "the most beautiful, eye-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it. Everything else was simply black or white. But not the Earth...
BUT WE KNOW LONGER LIVE ON THAT PLANET. In the four decades since, that Earth has changed in profound ways...The world hasn't ended, but the world as we knew it has--even if we don't quite know it yet...it's...a different planet. It needs a new name. EAARTH."
The above is found in this monumental book by Bill McKIBBEN. He is an environmentalist, writer, and author. The "Boston Globe" in 2010 says "he's probably the nation's [that is, the United States] leading environmentalist" and "Time" magazine described him as "the world's leading green journalist." McKIBBEN is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.
We have waited too long. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different.
Generally, the first half of this book surveys the evidence for climate-driven impacts on the planet's major features. The second half offers a solution by way of a new mindset, by taking an imperfect but provocative look at "the architecture for the world that comes next, the dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent."
Finally, this book is well-written telling it like it is but offering hope, optimism, and even humour in places.
In conclusion, this is an important book telling us that climate change is a real & present danger and how we can possibly cope with that danger. I leave you with the words of the late, great astronomer and planetary scientist Dr. Carl Sagan, inspired by a Voyager 1 spacecraft image of the Earth as seen from 3.7 million miles away:
"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is, nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we must make our stand."
(first published 2010; preface; 4 chapters; main narrative 210 pages; notes; acknowledgments; index; about the author)
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Eaarth Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Comment: Maybe we live on a tough planet, but if McKibben is right we are headed down a path of disaster. How to divert that from happening is the theme of this book and how to preserve our resources is discussed with passion.
This is an important book for the whole population to read and McKibben outlines what we need to do to save the planet for future generations.
Todd Washburne
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Summary: Fun Summer Reading on 104 degree Days
Comment: EAARTH by Bill McKibben was written to serve not just as a Nightmare Wake Up call about Global warming, but provides suggestions about what ALL OF US should be doing, right now, to keep this present nightmare from becoming a Post Apocolyptic vision of reality. Actually, the first stance McKibben upholds, is that even under the VERY BEST scenarios for future global warming levels, we will never live on the old EARTH. No, whether we were to all cut back to AMISH levels with our carbon footprint, we have done too much damage. The book's first section provides hard facts and figures about Global Warming/ Climate Change. I sat outside reading this book in 104 degree weather, so that my body AND mind would absorb the lessions.....things are HEATING UP. You'll want to read the first part of the book with a highlighter on hand, because the (well footnoted and researched) factoids will slap you in the face. For example, you might wonder WHY the USA and other countries drag their feet ,when it comes to switching over to Green Engery. As it turns out, the Oil Companies have 10 TRILLION DOLLARS invested in Infrastructure, including oil wells, off shore oil rigs, refineries, pipelines, super tankers, etc. Given just that ONE FACT, from ONE PAGE, allows you to make some fast deductions about WHY the Oil Companies TALK about green technology, but do nothing about it. (except make sure it never happens.) And, of course what might happen if we removed 10 TRILLION dollars in infrastructure investment? If you thought the housing meltdown was a mess, an overnight switch to GREEN ENERGY would destroy our planet's economy. Another little factoid from the first part, was 5 out of every 6 off shore oil rigs in the world, are off the Gulf Coast of Southern USA. Again, it sheds a LOT of light on why the Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi politicians were upset that there was a mortitorium on Off Shore Oil drilling. Even tho we dont get a large percentage of our oil from those wells, they certainly provide a large chunk of $$$ to the struggling economies off the Southern Gulf Coast. Naturally, global warming stand-by facts and figures make their ominous appearance as well. The number of "hottest ever" years on record in the past decade, the number and severity of Gulf Coast hurricanes, not to mention hurricanes (and Typhons) in places that never saw them before, the melting of the glaciers worldwide, ultimately removing the amount of fresh water glacial meltwater provides to major rivers running thru China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and S.E. Asia. Even tho some figures might seem like a rerun of Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, there's more indepth analysis, and more recent (summer 2009) facts about the ever increasing RATE and SEVERITY of climate change. I read the book in bits and peices, because hopelessness starts to wash over you, when you wonder if your grandchildren will ever grow up on a planet without water rights wars, food availablibilty wars, massive electrical black outs, and summers with 120 degree heatwaves becoming the norm in Northeastern USA. By the time I read the first part of the book, the heat was getting to me, and not just the 103 degree summer sun.
McKibben's EAARTH's second part provides some HOPEFUL sollutions to the mess we are all in. He also pops some pink clouds that some of us want to hide behind. In fact, if you have ever read WENDEL BERRY, and his anti-agribusiness farming philosophy books, you will have a bit of an idea what McKibben's solutions entail. First off, he is NOT a proponent of Nuclear Energy. Building enough Nuclear Reactors to eliminate just ONE TENTH of the global warming threat, would cost us 8 TRILLION DOLLARS. Instead, he believes our culture needs to change top to bottom. Smaller farms, neighborhood gardens, home gardens, that lead to the END of Agri-businessmen owned farms which extend farms for hundreds of miles. He lets us know how insidious our dependence on OIL has become, from the OIL COMPANIES supplying furtilizers, (instead use manure) bug sprays (instead use the right insects, and plant species, evolved or developed for the climate in your area). Recycle plastics, localize electric grids, invest in infrastructure renewal and economical mass transist, and most of all, END the sickening SURGE of populations from the FARMS into the CITIES, since it takes more farmhands to farm green. I became impressed when I realized the book had no political finger pointing agenda. ( We are ALL TO BLAME.) Also, even tho he scares us with the HARD FACTS, McKibben at least gives us some hope to avoid a global apocalypse before the 21st century ends. (or, before 2050 arrives, take your pick on scientists and their data.) If we are to slow down the global warming time bomb, we need to work together to HEAL THE WORLD, or watch as billions die from a lack of water, food, tropical diseases moving north, and the end of our craving for fuel to feed our ever growing technologies.
Like most Cassandra's, I doubt anyone will listen to McKibben. The oil Company Lobbyests, the LIVE FOR TODAY economic policies, and the horrific waste in the wealthiest countries, almost garrantees that the destruction of this beautiful green earth. The past 10,000 years of climate stability allowed Humanity to develop agriculture, animal husbandry, science, and finally, the Industrial revolution's smokestack timebomb. The Author knows our Children and grandchildren will be asking us WHY DIDNT YOU LOVE US ENOUGH TO SAVE THE EARTH? And of course, the answer will be, "It's not that we dont love YOU, we just loved money MORE." Ideally, this book would to be read by every responsible adult, especially the Oil Company CEOs, and the heads of the USA's EPA, and DEPT of INTERIOR. It ought to be read by CHINA and INDIA, who are causing global warming to speed up from burning coal. However, its going to take a LOT OF PEOPLE, reading this book, and others like it, to make a TRUE grass roots change. With almost 30 pages of FOOTNOTES, this book cant be tossed into a stack of books by pundants who work for their Oil Company overlords. It's only thru educating ourselves with these books, that we can argue their "nothing to fear" agenda with clear, scientifically based facts about where we are now with the world's climate, and the world's ENERGY use, and dependance on OIL BY PRODUCTS like plastics, fertilizers, and polyester clothing. This book has SOME GOOD, SOLID answers, that are logical, tried and tested for years. Likewise it contains a REAL grass roots policy for slowing and capping global climate change. McKibben states that Leisure hours have fallen back by ONE THIRD since 1950, as we work longer and longer, for the same standard of living. I wish we'd all buy this book, and maybe a couple other books like it, and read them, absorb them, and talk about them NOW, before we dont have any leasure time left.
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