Summary Of The End Of Nature

Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature”, as the title suggests, is a book on nature and how it has changed over time. McKibben has written four books which are all nature readings. This particular book has an introduction and five chapters. The first two chapters titled “Part I - The Present” discuss the present state of nature while the last three chapters titled “Part II - The Near Future” are the predictions of how nature will change in the future. McKibben suggests that man has brought about destruction of nature by his attitudes and behaviors towards it. An artificial nature has been created due to human interference. Continuing changes caused by human interference has led to an imbalance in the atmosphere causing fast-paced changes in the environment that were not seen in the past.
In the introduction, McKibben has compared the state of the environment today with that of ten years ago. He points out that the most important factor for the condition of the environment today is the disparity that is seen between the changing world and reaction of the human society to this change. He further mentions that natural calamities such as hurricanes, tornadoes and storms can no longer be considered acts of God but are more so acts of humans, who have become the driving forces in the occurrence of these calamities. Destroying the earth by
McKibben explains how human beings are reluctant to change their ways to preserve what is remaining of the Earth. He quotes George Woodwell, “There is no question that we have reached the end of the age of fossil fuels” and suggests that humans continue to utilize oil and coal at an alarming fast rate and also discusses man’s addiction to fossil fuels and also proposes an alternative to use of fossil fuel – bioengineering. McKibben says that the act of causing climatic changes has made humans equivalent to God and they can no longer be referred to as ‘created’ but are now actually the