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 … 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.
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This is as clear an explication of how careless humanity has been with the commons they inhabit. The book gives hope that we can still change a disastrous course but also a heaping dose of embarrassment for our ridiculous arrogance and solipsism.
I was a teenager in the late 1960s when I read Ayn Rand’s novels. I was still reading for story and too young to understand Rand’s philosophy. I never returned to reread her books. Bill McKibben’s Falter has educated me on Rand and the impact of her ideas on shaping the world we live in today.
The list of Rand-inspired movers and shakers is impressive: Alan Greenspan was a personal friend of Rand and people who revere Rand include Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson, Ronald Reagan, Mike Pompeo, Ray Dalio (a Trump confidant), and Donald Trump.
Rand called her philosophy ‘objectivism,’ which is really libertarianism. It’s anti-government, believing there should be no limits on the individual’s self-interest and quest to personal achievement. There is no consideration of the needs of others, the people who can’t or won’t do for themselves, those leeches on society. Don’t limit my rights and privilege for the common good and tax my wealth for the government to give to those people.
It is a philosophy readily adopted by business. Unimpeded growth without restraints is the goal of capitalism. Drill for all the oil and dig for all the coal anywhere, without limit. It’s someone else’s problem to clean up any mess we create. Too bad if we contaminate the water or air or devastate the land or cause earthquakes.
Right-wing politicians love Rand; don’t tax me to pay for programs that benefit the losers; small government is good government. This leads to obscenely rich business owners, like the Koch brothers, funneling money to right-wing politicians who will protect their interests.
Then there are the Silicon Valley visionaries funding research into aging and how to live forever and genetic engineering and the creating of AI.
Are these good things? Will these technologies improve human life? Or will they create a larger socio-economic divide, even a separation between regular humans and improved humans? What would a world without death look like? Would those living suppress the number of humans to be born?
McKibben asks, has the ‘human game’ begun to ‘play itself out?’ Has our progress advanced to the point that we are negatively impacting our species? Is continual growth sustainable? Growth in technology, wealth, improvement via genetic engineering?
Can we alter climate change? Will we slow down growth to a sustainable rate? Will we put our effort into renewable energy? We are the only species on Earth that can place limits on ourselves, band together to achieve outcomes that improve our mutual community. But…will we? Or will humanity’s future look like the movie Wall-E, brain-dead screen-addicts floating in space while a robot runs our lives?
“There are people who…hate the idea of society, who organize campaigns against public transit, who try to dismantle public schools and national parks, who instinctively head for the gated enclave. I don’t think their rule will last forever…but they currently possess a savage leverage, perhaps power enough to end the human game…
“The endless efforts to gerrymander districts, suppress voting, race-bait, gin up cynicism in our politics, confuse us about issues such as climate change–these are nothing more than efforts to weaken society so it can’t exert power over its most dominant individuals.”~from Falter by Bill McKibben
Will the pendulum be swung away from disaster by nonviolent activism and a WWII era rise in commitment to the common good–fighting for our lives? Our fate is in our hands.
I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.
Bill McKibben has written a compelling and essential work My question is will the CEOs of major oil companies who have denied the impact of the destruction of our earth ,our health and quality of life be able to deny the cancer ,lung disease and illness of all of ourselves and future offspring for the billions they have made Bill Mc Kibben writes The human project has long been a group effort We are born big brained and vulnerable It took a tribe , a band , a clan ,a community to raise humans to adulthood Another name for human solidarity is Love and when I think about our world in its present form that overwhelms me The author is wise where are the adults Where is the Love
No one has done more than Bill McKibben to raise awareness about the great issues of our time. Falter is an essential book ― honest, far-reaching and, against the odds, hopeful.
I braced myself to plunge into this book about the largest and grimmest of situations our species has faced, and then I found myself racing through it, excited by the grand synthesis of innumerable scientific reports on the details of the crisis. And then at the end I saw the book as a description of a big trap with a small exit we could take, if we take heed of what Bill McKibben tells us here, and act on it.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Bill McKibben has written a book so important, reading it might save your life, not to mention your home: Planet Earth. Falter is a brilliant, impassioned call to arms to save our climate from those profiting from its destruction before it’s too late. Over and over, McKibben has proven one of the most farsighted and gifted voices of our times, and with Falter he has topped himself, producing a book that honestly, everyone should read.
A love letter, a plea, a eulogy, and a prayer. This is Bill McKibben at his glorious best. Wise and warning, with everything on the line. Do not miss it.