Book Review

Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet

By Bill McKibben

St. Martin’s Press, New York. 2011

Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet is a book concerned with the massive change going on with our planet. Bill McKibben offers a stark message about global warming and how it is changing our world faster than we realize. He claims that Earth has changed so drastically, that it no longer deserves the same tag. “Eaarth” is the place we now dwell, and it is an unforgiving, ruthless, and morphing place.

Around 20 years ago, McKibben wrote a book titled The End of Nature. In this book, he was one of the first to bring global warming up into the light of the general public. Then, the main concern was with greenhouse gasses versus total climate change. It was more of a thought provoking book than a cold-hard-fact type of book. The effects of global warming were not as prominent as they are today, so his writing was not taken as seriously as he had hoped. He had expected to get some sort of rise and potentially light the match to a revolution that, from today’s perspective, should have begun back then.

 The book is made up of four chapters, each with their own purpose in terms of global warming.  The first chapter of Eaarth, “A New World,” begins by describing all the great things about earth, how we’re in this “sweetest of sweet spots” (1) that has allowed human civilization to evolve. Throughout the chapter, it provides us with oodles of facts and statistics. It basically puts into words the world we are currently living in; needless to say: the new world. McKibben spends a lot of time talking about how it is too late to what we have done since the Industrial Revolution, and that we need to learn how to live on our foreign neo-planet. Everything we’ve done up to this point is a “crescendo of cascading consequences” (23), and everything is being effected: weather, to plant life, to bacteria and insects.   

The second chapter, “High Tide,” speaks about the changes we need to make in order continue living on this planet. McKibben basically calls for an entire adjustment of our current habitual lives. “We don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot” (50). He continuously is mentioning the current generation’s grandchildren and how we need to leave them a world to work with, not to completely clean up; if that’s even possible, of course. Politics, the economy, and science come into play here. The struggle between well developed countries and less developed countries is a struggle when trying to make change. The latter doesn’t have the funds to change fuel sources at the snap of a finger, so the US and other well developed countries need to be mature in the situation and take charge of the change.

“Backing Off,” the third chapter, considers the difficulties behind working towards a future that we were not expecting. With the US constantly seeking growth in multiple areas, McKibben urges us to slow down. We need to reevaluate our expectations and goals, like fixing our infrastructure and economy versus expanding in other areas that are less relevant to the success of our nation. He suggests that communities across the country need to come together as a whole, and once that is in place, we can branch out to other counties and help them to help everyone; we need to start local and then spread out.

Finally, “Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully” suggests what life may be like if we can make these changes. The main focus is weaning our dependence off of fossil fuel because our oil sources are going to run out sooner rather than later. A reevaluation of our farming is also in need. The soil we use now is depleted from drought, so in order to grow excellent yields, farmers will need to relocate and reconsider how to effectively grow crops.

Though there are mixed reviews across internet land, I am leaning towards the negative aspects of this book. McKibben has a ton of sources to back up his stacks of information, but there comes a point when enough is enough. I felt as though the facts and numbers he continually threw around were more of a surprise factor or scare tactic versus trying to make a point about climate change. He often repeats himself and jumps around from idea to idea, and even sometimes does not finish explaining his thoughts completely. Sometimes he would even go off of a rambling tangent, which would cause me to reread and try to figure out how he even got to certain topics. Because of this, it makes the book awfully difficult to follow.

The book was successful in delivering the message and being able to back up information, but I could have easily read all these things somewhere else, in a much much much much much more concise manner. To be quite honest, it was tough to finish the book. If I’m reading about the demise of the planet I live on, I would rather be interested and thusly concerned with what I’m reading about, versus reading simply because I need to. Bill McKibben has written twelve books in the last twenty plus years. I feel as though his writing style should have improved by now, or he would have gotten a better editor.

All in all, Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet is a great book to get information from, that is if you want to read similar thoughts over and over again, and don’t mind sifting through a lot of fluff in order to get to the main point.