June 18, 2010
Host: Chris Mooney
Global warming, we're often told, is an issue we must address for the sake of our grandchildren. We need to cut carbon because of our moral obligation to future generations.
But according to Bill McKibben, that's a 1980s view. As McKibben writes in his new book Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, the increasingly open secret is that global warming happened already. We've passed the threshold, and the planet isn’t at all the same. It's less climatically stable. Its weather is haywire. It has less ice, more drought, higher seas, heavier storms. It even appears different from space.
And that’s just the beginning of the earth-shattering changes in store—a small sampling of what it’s like to trade a familiar planet (Earth) for one that's new and strange (Eaarth). We'll survive on this sci-fi world, this terra incognita—but we may not like it very much. And we may have to change some fundamental habits along the way.
Eaarth, argues McKibben, is our greatest failure.
Bill McKibben is a former staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, and author of the famous 1989 book The End of Nature, as well as over a dozen other works. He is currently a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, and founder of the global warming grassroots organization 350.org, which lobbies for tougher climate policies. In 2009, the group conducted what CNN later called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”
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Comments from the CFI Forums
ROCK’N ROLL !
I was even going to recommend Mr. McKibben a few weeks back, when I heard some reviews of EAARTH.
A couple decades back I read “End of Nature” shortly after it came out and it was actually an emotional experience, for the story it told and in that I was finally reading a smart guy saying things I was thinking and feeling. First assurances that I wasn’t the crazy one after all and that awful changes were in motion. The subsequent years have only succeeded in proving him correct.
On the one hand I want to say awesome, on the other hand I know his message is hard, hard medicine.
Chris did another excellent job of interviewing.
As for the content of McKibben’s book, Mooney put it best when he described reading Eaarth as:
“A stunning act of negotiation between hope and despair.”
but who will listen?
Brilliant, I’m just about finished reading Eaarth - final chapters…
It’s a book that has given me a great deal to think about.
BTW is there a transcript available?
Sadly, we don’t regularly do transcripts, Mike. I wish that we did, but you can imagine that it would be a big cost and labor, and at least as of now, that isn’t built into the plan….but I understand that some parts of some of these shows may wind up being transcribed and published in Free Inquiry.
chris
Chris Mooney said, during this interview: “I agree with you [Bill] that the scientific community is growing more in the “James Hansen mold”, that is, the more you talk to them the more you find out that they are really scared, but there probably are some pretty serious researchers who think that Hansen is a little bit too alarmist. Do you think that is fair to say, or no?”
Well Chris, it certainly sounds like you have talked to some “pretty serious researchers” who think Hansen is going too far with his public statements. Hansen is saying that if civilization actually burns all the coal, the tar sand oil, and the shale oil, or maybe its just the coal and the tar sand oil, the chain of events this will set off will end up in Earth’s oceans boiling away. This is a very serious assertion, coming from the scientist the President of the National Academy in past has called the best climatologist in the world.
If you have any names to name, in the way of “serious researchers” who just think Hansen is off his head this time, please come up with them. What is with the beating around the bush?
On another topic, I think McKibben should transport himself in a thought experiment to some decades from now, and pretend he’s lost two or three decades in age. Let’s say the Earth’s atmosphere contains 550 ppm by then and all hell is breaking loose. [Bill can insert his favorite doom scenario here] Now what does he do, this new young Bill McKibben, born into this disaster, where memory exists of how we who are alive today simply refused to do the slightest thing to stop it. Bill says in this interview he’d be doing nothing. Its party on, or what, just try to survive, or commit suicide, or what? Does he seriously think that some human beings will not be organizing aimed at the biggest collective effort of history to remove gases from the Earth’s atmosphere to try to restore the planet to stability, over the how ever many centuries it will take?
Where does he get this arrogance that what drives him, whatever it is that has him take action when so many others just despair and do nothing, where does he get this arrogance that what drives him will not constantly reappear in future humans? Without hope, they say, there is no life. I would put it differently - beyond hope of accomplishing anything meaningful, there is faith - a kind of power you can set against any odds at all, because it is an expression of what you are made of. This kind of power is what a mother will draw on when she attacks a grizzly bear about to kill her child. There is no question in her mind of needing to know there is some realistic possibility of success before she acts, or that she needs to know her child will not be killed before she can get close enough to bring the attack home. She just gives it everything she has, because that is what happens sometimes. Bill has found power to act now, and future humans will find power to act then, and each is doing their best under the circumstances they find themselves in.
I’ll get to the podcast tomorrow while jogging.
Review in NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Greenberg-t.html
Unlike many writers on environmental cataclysm, McKibben is actually a writer, and a very good one at that. He is smart enough to know that the reader needs a dark chuckle of a bone thrown at him now and then to keep plowing through the bad news.
———————-
A book review in WSJ today on two other books “WRONG” and “The Rational Optimist” had a throw-away critique of McKibben as a pessimist—
....And if you revere Bill McKibben or any of the other tribunes of “fashionable pessimism,” you’ll probably bridle at Mr. Ridley’s swift dismissal of their prophecies of the “end of nature” or the “coming anarchy.”
Sadly, we don’t regularly do transcripts, Mike. I wish that we did, but you can imagine that it would be a big cost and labor, and at least as of now, that isn’t built into the plan….but I understand that some parts of some of these shows may wind up being transcribed and published in Free Inquiry.
chris
Thanks Chris, pity. Just wanted to quote some extracts.
Still, I’d like to thank you’re regular interviews with McKibben, Oreskes and others on this issue.
Where does he get this arrogance that what drives him, whatever it is that has him take action when so many others just despair and do nothing, where does he get this arrogance that what drives him will not constantly reappear in future humans? Without hope, they say, there is no life. I would put it differently - beyond hope of accomplishing anything meaningful, there is faith - a kind of power you can set against any odds at all, because it is an expression of what you are made of. This kind of power is what a mother will draw on when she attacks a grizzly bear about to kill her child. There is no question in her mind of needing to know there is some realistic possibility of success before she acts, or that she needs to know her child will not be killed before she can get close enough to bring the attack home. She just gives it everything she has, because that is what happens sometimes. Bill has found power to act now, and future humans will find power to act then, and each is doing their best under the circumstances they find themselves in.
Jackson, I’m not sure what your point is?
Are you saying McKibben is arrogant for trying to do something? He has done more through his writings and the 350.org than most people. We need more people with conviction, guts and intellectual honesty.
So we should just wait for the worst to happen and deal with it then? His point is to do as much as we can now to avoid a worse situation. In fact, he came across as incredibly *humble*.
It’s the precautionary principle.
And what do bears have to do with it????????????? In a fight between a bear and person, the bear is going to win.
This podcast was very depressing. I can see the world dividing into camps of :
The religious, who believe they should do nothing because the environmental disaster portends the second coming of Jesus/Mohammed and the end times/apocalypse and to intervene would be admitting lack of trust in god/allah.
The extremely poor countries who are just now finding their technology feet, and will not want to give up a chance to dig their way out of poverty.
The deniers who do not believe in AGW, nor will they ever believe in AGW no matter what the evidence to the contrary.
I know I’m missing a few other ‘camps’ I thought of while tossing and turning last night after listening to the podcast…. 
This podcast was very depressing. I can see the world dividing into camps of :
The religious, who believe they should do nothing because the environmental disaster portends the second coming of Jesus/Mohammed and the end times/apocalypse and to intervene would be admitting lack of trust in god/allah.
The extremely poor countries who are just now finding their technology feet, and will not want to give up a chance to dig their way out of poverty.
The deniers who do not believe in AGW, nor will they ever believe in AGW no matter what the evidence to the contrary.
I know I’m missing a few other ‘camps’ I thought of while tossing and turning last night after listening to the podcast….
I’ve just finished reading McKibben book and listening to the interview not once, but twice.
In a way it is depressing.
Earth is now Eaarth. It’s not the same planet.
We’re not acting to protect the interests of hypothetical descendents: we need to act to protect ourselves, our societies, cultures, economies and infrastructure. It’s not a problem for the future, it’s a problem for now. It’s an issue greater than terrorism or the war on drugs (or the various other pseudo-wars).
We’ve missed our opportunity to prevent climate change: the best we can do is mitigate the damage and aim for a a slow, gentle decline as McKibben says.
Asanta has a point, there are so many cultural and economic forces that need to be “convinced” of the reality of AGW it seems almost impossible.
In a way it’s a big ask - we are trying to reverse the habits and thinking of nearly 300 years of “growth”. An impossible ask perhaps.
Where to from here? I’ll keep blogging and becoming more active in the climate change - indeed, the more I know the more convinced I am of the need to act. But perhaps it’s time to start cultivating those skills of self-reliance McKibben speaks about.
In some respects I say to myself “But that’s nuts! You don’t want to become one of those freaky survivalists!”
But I think this year we’re staring to see the climate really start to shift: records temperatures, epic rainfall and floods in the USA, China and Europe.
Life on old Terra just got a bit tougher. And it may get tougher still.
Chris - thanks for this brilliant series of interviews with McKibben etc. on the climate change issues. I’ve read Hack the Planet, Eaarth and ordered Merchants of Doubt. These will all be valuable cultural artefacts in the future when historians ask “What did they know about climate change” and “How did we get into this mess?”.
I just finished Merchants of Doubt. It was good. I will be rereading it again soon.
I just listened to Bill McKibben and agree with him 100%. Here is what I have to say about today’s world that we live in,“The worst thing that ever happened to planet earth was the inception of the human species.”
I wouldn’t agree with that. The earth has been pounded by huge asteroids, and soaked by the spewing ashes of megavolcanos. In the end, mother earth has a lot more time than we do. Humans are their own worst enemy. We will drive ourselves into extinction, another species will take our place, and earth will move on. We may or may not turn the earth into another Venus, but in the end, the earth will continue on it’s path around the sun, and the sun will continue its travels through the universe.
I just listened to Bill McKibben and agree with him 100%. Here is what I have to say about today’s world that we live in,“The worst thing that ever happened to planet earth was the inception of the human species.”
I think carrot, corn, spinach, broccoli, watermelon, and tens of dog breeds and other man-made animals and plants would disagree with you.
Evidently you are both too young to know the effects of humans on this earth. That’s a shame because there is a lot to learn about what humans are doing to this planet. I speak not only from what I have learned, but also from many years of experience traveling around the world to all seven continents. Some more than just once and I have also visited (about seven times) almost all the countries of Europe.
The person that wrote the comparisons of spinach, broccoli etc., is way out of the ballpark and doesn’t make any sense at all.
The other reply stating that the sun will continue its travels through the universe is most likely true except earth and all of our solar system’s planets will eventually be swallowed up by a much larger and hotter sun.
In the same reply. It is true that the earth was pounded as you say by asteroids etc., but at that time there is a big difference from then and now. That difference is that no life is known to have yet evolved on earth.
But you are very correct by stating that humans are their own worst enemy. That statement alone pretty well sums up what I’m talking about.
Evidently you are both too young to know the effects of humans on this earth. That’s a shame because there is a lot to learn about what humans are doing to this planet. I speak not only from what I have learned, but also from many years of experience traveling around the world to all seven continents. Some more than just once and I have also visited (about seven times) almost all the countries of Europe.
The person that wrote the comparisons of spinach, broccoli etc., is way out of the ballpark and doesn’t make any sense at all.
The other reply stating that the sun will continue its travels through the universe is most likely true except earth and all of our solar system’s planets will eventually be swallowed up by a much larger and hotter sun.
In the same reply. It is true that the earth was pounded as you say by asteroids etc., but at that time there is a big difference from then and now. That difference is that no life is known to have yet evolved on earth.
But you are very correct by stating that humans are their own worst enemy. That statement alone pretty well sums up what I’m talking about.
Thank you very much for calling me ‘young’ 
I am quite probably older than you and as well traveled. Yes, I know that the earth will travel around the sun obliviously until it is swallowed by a dying sun. Not sure what you mean by saying “no life is known to have yet evolved on earth”. We are here, we have evolved here on the earth. Yes we are our own worst enemy, but the earth will continue along its path, whether we are on it or not. By changing our lifestyles to reign in global warming, we will preserving the earth as a place where we can survive as a species, the earth doesn’t give a damn, it has been through extinctions many times in the past, and will continue on its merry way.
The person that wrote the comparisons of spinach, broccoli etc., is way out of the ballpark and doesn’t make any sense at all.
Sure, from the perspective of a dodo, for example, that person (that would be I 
) is indeed out of the ballpark, but in my opinion and that of a carrot (if it could form an opinion) you’re wrong.
That looks like a fun book, CC. I think I’ll have a look at it. Thanks.
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