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Average rating3.2
One of the earliest warnings about climate change and one of environmentalism's lodestars 'Nature, we believe, takes forever. It moves with infinite slowness, ' begins the first book to bring climate change to public attention. Interweaving lyrical observations from his life in the Adirondack Mountains with insights from the emerging science, Bill McKibben sets out the central developments not only of the environmental crisis now facing us but also the terms of our response, from policy to the fundamental, philosophical shift in our relationship with the natural world which, he argues, could save us. A moving elegy to nature in its pristine, pre-human wildness, The End of Nature is both a milestone in environmental thought, indispensable to understanding how we arrived here.
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McKibben lays out the causes of climate change and explores the possibilities of what it means for the future, and the present.
He doesn't offer many answers, as he recognizes that it's impossible to know exactly what will happen. He does, however, make the case that it's already too late, we've already changed the atmosphere and everywhere on Earth is now touched by humankind.
This is what he means by “end of Nature,” our idea of Nature as that which is unspoiled by humanity is forever gone. We've changed the atmosphere and thus there is nowhere left on this planet that is unspoiled.
While he occasionally falls into the nostalgic view of Nature common to many nature writers, his argument is compelling and well-written.
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