Welcome to a New Planet: Eaarth

In a 2010 book called "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" by Bill McKibben, we are presented with a strikingly familiar, yet fundamentally different planet. The semantic difference between Earth and Eaarth is much like the difference one would find if they happened to be an inhabitant of Pluto circa 2006. We're still talking about the same chunk of rock orbiting the sun, however, recent technological findings are forcing us to reclassify our former designations. Of course, the reclassification of Earth to Eaarth is fictional, whereas Pluto's reclassification is an actuality (though both are based on relatively undisputed facts and science).

Through reading Eaarth, I was struck with a plethora of emotions, namely anger, frustration and despair. While these are certainly not enjoyable emotions to experience, they undoubtedly assist in embedding their emotional impact much deeper into my memory and consciousness. When something has a strong emotional impact (be it positive or negative) you are much more likely to recall the event with clarity than you would an emotionally "neutral" event. It is for this reason that I believe Bill McKibben has a motive behind his angering demeanor, though I still think he needs to lighten up a bit.

McKibben starts off bombarding us with alarming and disturbing facts and figures. Some may consider this to be a scare tactic, but tactic or not, this stuff is serious. Over a million square MILES of the arctic ice cap has already melted. Fossil-fuel emissions have raised the acidity of our oceans to 30% higher than it should be. The tropics are now larger than ever, having expanded more than 2 degrees of latitude north and south in the last 30 years. Our carbon dioxide emissions have passed the threshold point of no return (350ppm) and now hover around the 400ppm mark. An enormous 40% reduction in sea ice has been observed since 1970. These statistics are mindbogglingly extreme, and this change is occurring FAST.  No matter how you spin it, our world will never be the same. Welcome to Eaarth.

McKibben continues to urge us away from temporary "fixes" to environmental problems. So you say the sea level is rising? Well, why not simply build an impenetrable waterproof wall around threatened low-lying areas? That should do the trick. McKibben explains how this is the primary way humans tend to deal with problems. We look for the easiest quickest fix, and call it good. People don't like to make sacrifices, especially when the sacrifice is the result of a problem that may not have any direct, personal negative impact. Sure, we can think about how awful global warming is, and how we are willing to help mitigate its effects, but until action is actually taken, our thoughts alone contribute little to nothing. It becomes easy to understand what spawns McKibben's frustrations, and why portions of his book feel as though you're being yelled at by a parent. With planet Earth already dead, we must face our challenging new reality one step at a time.