Thirty years ago
Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate
change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he
suggests, has begun to play itself out.
Bill McKibben’s
groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of
languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to
alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even
as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist,
new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten
to bleach away the variety of human experience.
Falter tells the
story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that
keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on
McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global
citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible
ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history --
and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization
our forebears built slip away.
Falter is a powerful
and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our
humanity.