McKibben's Quandary

Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature and Eaarth were published in 1990 and 2010, respectively. Though written two decades apart, the two books both recount an ongoing and inevitable tragedy being played out on the grandest of stages. Filled with anecdotes on the magnificence of nature and scientific citations on nature’s imminent demise, McKibben’s books read like an obituary for something that will someday die. McKibben writes as is if reading one’s own obituary will somehow enlighten mankind enough to change his ways. There is a precedent for McKibben’s sentiments. The inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, after reading his own erroneously published obituary proclaiming that he was, “the merchant of death is dead,” devoted his vast fortune to fund the prize that now bares his name. What McKibben’s seems too idealistic to realize, is that all things will someday die, the earth included (or our understanding of it). Convincing the world to stop using of chlorofluorocarbons is akin to stopping an individual from smoking. Both acts will likely prolong the length and quality of life. The harmful effects of smoking have been well documented and widely publicized, much like the harmful effects of carbon emissions; yet, people continue to smoke en masse. Government efforts to curb carbon emission will ultimately prove as ineffective as government prohibitions on anything; perhaps, even less so because we depend on carbon for our very survival. Reading our own obituary and making efforts to do better may well satiate our collective moral malaise regarding climate change but the dynamite’s fuse was lit long ago.