Dear friends,

I am introducing a book by Bill McKibben, titled "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet".  You must read this book straight through to the end.

Overview

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.

'Eaarth' is the name McKibben has decided to assign both to his new book and to the planet formerly known as Earth. His point is a fresh one that brings the reader uncomfortably close to climate change. Earth with one "a," according to McKibben, no longer exists. We have carbonized it out of existence. Two-a Eaarth is now our home.

That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend—think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we've managed to damage and degrade. We can't rely on old habits any longer.

Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back—on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change—fundamental change—is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.

What's in this book ?

 A passionate appeal. . . . McKibben's engaging and persuasive book will add greatly to the sense of urgency. It will add realism to the case for strong adaptation to the changes that our past and current actions are bringing to our natural world.

Bill McKibben may be the world's best green journalist . . . What really sets Eaarth apart from other green books is McKibben's prescription for survival. This won't be just a matter of replacing a few lightbulbs McKibben is calling for a more local existence lived 'lightly, carefully, gently.' It's a future unimaginable to most of usbut it may be the only way to survive.

Bill McKibben is the most effective environmental activist of this age. His book Eaarth prompts urgent questions about the nature of the environmental catastrophe at hand... [Eaarth] offers a view of economic growth not typically encountered in mainstream discussion, with all its moral dimensions unmasked and clarified... The urgency of his moral advocacy demands attention.

Superbly written . . . McKibben is at his best when offering an elegant tour of what is already going wrong and likely to get even worse. . . . Eaarth is a manifesto for radical measures.

As per US newspaper San Francisco Chronicle, this book  is 'A valuable slice of acid-tongued reality.'

 With clarity, eloquence, deep knowledge and even deeper compassion for both planet and people, Bill McKibben guides us to the brink of a new, uncharted era. This monumental book, probably his greatest, may restore  reader's faith in the future, with us in it.

The terrifying premise with which this book begins is that we have, as in the old science fiction films and tales of half a century ago, landed on a harsh and unpredictable planet, all six billion of us. Climate change is already here, but Bill McKibben doesn't stop with the bad news. He tours the best responses that are also already here, and these visions of a practical scientific solution are also sketches of a better, richer, more democratic civil society and everyday life. Eaarth is an astonishingly important book that will knock you down and pick you up.

Stark, no-nonsense manifesto about global warming and its unstoppable effects. In accessible prose and a tone of wistfulness about the state of our planet, environmental activist McKibben (Fight Global Warming Now, 2007, etc.) demonstrates how global warming has already occurred and is irreversible. He describes a new "Eaarth," where the cumulative effects of the release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have already changed the planet. If the average count of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 275 parts per million during the last 10,000 years, it is now already 390 parts per million, well over the 350 parts per million that McKibben says is the tipping point for permanent planetary transformation. The author provides sobering details about the accelerated melting of glaciers, which will eventually lead to a global water shortage as life-sustaining rivers lose their sources of water. He lucidly explains that increasingly erratic weather patterns result from hotter air that holds more water vapor, triggering higher rates of evaporation and desertification in some regions, and torrential downpours and floods in others. The reason that global warming is difficult to undo, writes the author, is because "we don't know how to refreeze the Arctic or regrow a rainforest." He bravely makes the difficult argument that we have already moved to a planet where natural catastrophes will soon be a way of life. At this point, installing wind and solar power as fossil-fuel substitutes is likely to be a futile effort, as the process to change energy sources is exceedingly slow and politically treacherous. Providing inspirational examples from his home state, Vermont, McKibben envisions a future inwhich humanity transitions from unfettered growth and a dependence on external markets for sustenance and fossil-fuel-driven energy, to smaller, self-contained communities, growing food locally and generating sustainable distributed electricity. An absolute must-read.

 

Sources :

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/collections/mc/5a4QkININ4ZvgLX7iLNJ7e?&cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Collections_NewPPC_2-__-environmental%20issues%20books

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7099898-eaarth

https://nook.barnesandnoble.com/products/9781429935852/sample?sourceEan=9780312541194

http://us.macmillan.com/eaarth

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=18365016629&cm_sp=collections-_-item_1_13-_-bdp