Word: mckibben
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ultimately, McKibben is a sentimentalist, not a scientist, for which The End of Nature suffers. The book's last chapter dissolves into a series of ruminations about what McKibben terms an "anthropocentric" society that values human life above all other forms. In order to forestall the end of nature, he says, humanity needs to begin thinking about the earth as a whole...
This argument sounds innocent enough at first, but as McKibben realizes, it has problems. Part of what McKibben loves in nature is his house and his garden in the Adirondacks. He acknowledges that in the interests of the entire globe he might have to give up such space and energy-wasting luxuries...
...hopelessly mired in anthropocentrism, but I find McKibben's argument a bit elitist. The people who would suffer most by a general cutback in technology are those who don't have a house in the mountains. Citizens of underdeveloped countries and America's own poor depend on technolgy as a means of providing food, as a gateway to better lives. Who is to be sacrificed so that the wealthy of today and tommorow can enjoy gardens...
There are no easy answers to the global warming problem, and McKibben knows it. And the problems inherent in his final arguments are far outweighed by superb writing...
...McKibben wrote for The New Yorker for several years after leaving Harvard, and it shows. The End of Nature cultivates the quietly lyrical style that is the magazine's trademark. Nowhere is this background more evident than in the closing of the second chapter when McKibben explains why the "green-house effect" is an apt name for the global warming problem...