Before Bill McKibben started 350.org, his grassroots organization (he makes quite explicit it’s for young people, implying us older folks have dropped the ball) campaigning to roll back global warming, he asked climatologist James Hansen what number he should choose. Having just read James Hansen’s compelling semi-memoir Storms of My Grandchildren (see my review), as soon as I saw that McKibben was putting out a new book, I grabbed it. Well, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet is a scorcher, if you’ll excuse the expression, and no, the title isn’t a spelling blooper. McKibben, who has written extensively on climate change and its politics, has now declared our known planet a goner, transformed by already, and even more so in the future, into a noticeably different place. Like Clive Hamilton (see my review of Requiem for a Species), McKibben catalogues the compelling scientific evidence for unstoppable climate change. While Hamilton is a cogent writer, McKibben is genuinely stylish, lacing his pungent news with verve and humour (yes, humour, despite the grim news).
This is another contemporary must-read book. Fear grips our hearts when we contemplate mankind’s future on Earth (whoops, I must remember to call it Eaarth), so we need to let our rational minds read stories of the future, realistic stories. The tail end of Eaarth presents McKibben’s morsels of hope but they seem scant indeed – more productive, holistic, natural agriculture; distributed, small-scale energy; the Internet as a unifier. Yet the book is laced with the author’s irrepressible, instinctive call to action.
Passionate yet grim. 3½ stars.