|
Book Description
From the Publisher: More than simply a
handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, The
End Of Nature is a groundbreaking plea for radical and life-renewing
change. The author argues that for the world to survive, we must make a
fundamental philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature. From the
Inside Flap: 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 the survival of the globe is dependent on a
fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more
relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental
cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid
rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses
some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s.
The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures
that surveys the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply
a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction,
this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature
enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
One Amazon Reviewer
Terrific Explanation Of Forces Leading to Global
Warming! Anyone familiar with the author's other books on man and his
fateful connection to the natural environment owe it to themselves to read
this seminal offering first published over a decade ago when the
phenomenon of global warming was a hotly argued and angrily debated issue.
The publication of this new 10th anniversary edition arrives in a world in
which most of the author's frightful prognostications regarding the
negative consequences of the hotly-debated "Greenhouse Effect" issue of a
decade ago have been proven to be accurate and true. If anything,
McKibben's warnings were, in retrospect, conservative. For example, five
of the ten warmest years on record have been in the last decade. Thus,
"The End Of Nature " must be regarded as an intriguing book that
comprehensively covers a critically important phenomenon; the massive
intrusion of man, technology, and civilization into the natural order of
the world's ecosystems to the point that we have ripped them asunder.
While the Bushes and Gores fiddle away in their Washington offices, the
forces of man are still engaged in such a maddening and suicidal
plundering of the world's biological treasure house. The author's basic
thesis, now well validated by over a decade of dramatically documented
data regarding the globe's climate changes, is that though our massive
intrusion into the delicate balance of gases, fluids, and temperature
gradients so important in determining the world's weather patterns, we
have altered and fragmented the earth's natural balance in an order of
magnitude so large and so overwhelming that it has now permanently negated
nature's capacity to operate autonomously, independently, and naturally.
We have in essence replaced natural forces with our own efforts, and have
now become the single most important and decisive element in climatic
calculus that determines the weather. As a result, it is no longer
possible to pretend that nature is something that just happens out there,
and that we are merely subject to its forces and its whims. Instead, the
author argues, it is human actions and human interference that now
fatefully orients and influences the forces determining the weather. Yet,
we live in a culture so embedded in patterns of denial about the effects
of scientific and technological intrusion into the natural world that we
seem to now regard the natural wilderness as mere grist for amusement
parks. We seem so disconnected to nature or to its delicate balancing acts
that we have no regard for the consequence of our continuing intrusions
into its innermost workings. We seem to have forgotten our dependence on
the elements of the natural world in order to survive, and consequently do
not comprehend the disastrous consequences our massively ignorance,
interference, and corruption of the natural world around us will likely
bring. Instead, we worry about our stocks and mutual funds, ignoring the
facts that the world's potable water is disappearing as the world's
population increases geometrically. We worry about our property values and
our next promotions, never recognizing the degree to which our
materialistic culture and our over-consumptive way of life is condemning
us and the rest of the world to oblivion. So we fiddle as Rome burns. In
any event, this is a terrific book, one that anyone interested in where we
stand and where we are heading both culturally and globally needs to read.
This, along with other books such as Lew Ayre's "God's Last Offer" and
David Suzuki's "The Sacred Balance", can give the interested reader a
better idea of what kinds of possibilities await us in the new millennium.
Enjoy!
|
|
