Eaarth Bill Mckibben Summary

Coexisting with each of its counterparts, Mother Earth and the system in which we live in effortlessly orchestrates the fundamental basis of not only human existence but nevertheless all of the life in which it contains. The climate of our Earth however, has been continuously changing since the beginning of its formation about 4.5 billion years ago although; it wasn’t until around the early 18th century that a widespread concern occurred in American minds regarding the treatment of our environment. This altered perspective made way for understanding that humans have made the biggest impact to our planet, biosphere, and atmosphere etc. drastically more so than any other organism. It is commonly argued in Jared Diamond’s The Worst Mistake in

In the first chapter of Eearth, McKibben states that for the majority of human existence we have lived in the “sweetest of sweet spots”. This is a reference to Earth when it had a “correct” temperature for sustaining a diverse world. This diverse world had contained all walks of life that it was able to sustain due to the globally average temperature. Later in that chapter, McKibben states we no longer live on that planet, and that it might as well have a different name because of how much this planet has changed. The purpose of this paper is to structuralize McKibben’s thought process through a summary of why the increase of carbon dioxide emissions has created and is still creating an alternative Earth, while exploring why it is so hard for civilization to cut down on these carbon emissions.

The Authors main point is that the world that we all know or think we know exists no longer. Bill McKibben talks about the infamous picture of Earth that makes it look as though it is rising in a black sky, is not the earth that exists today. He states that humans, “by burning fossil fuel, have raised the temperature of the planet nearly a degree Celsius” (McKibben, 2010). And it is this human implication that has caused the world to exhibit strange and completely altering affects. Because of the fossil fuel consumption of the people on Earth we are now seeing ice sheets melting at an unprecedented rate of 40% more (a recorded 1.1 million square miles smaller). We are witnessing rain droughts in places like northern China who didn’t experience rain for a hundred days, which is a

The Great Warming by Brian Fagan claims that environmental changes (most commonly prolonged droughts, El Niños, and La Niñas during the Medieval Warm Period) affect human civilization, including human’s trading abilities, overall movement, and quality of life. He examines the world’s ancient climate warming, known as the Medieval Warming, between the 10th and the 15th centuries, also mentioning the preceding and succeeding centuries. Fagan gathers his research using studies conducted by archaeologists, historians, and paleoclimatologists. Throughout his book, he refers to direct methods to study climate change, such as instrument records and historical documents, and indirect methods, such as ice, deep sea cores, coral records, and tree rings. Fagan digs into the rise and fall of multiple civilizations around the world as an effect of The Medieval Warming Period. As well as examining civilizations across the world, he attempts to connect the climate change patterns during The Medieval Warming Period to the current global warming faced today. The Great Warming discusses positive and negative connections between climate change and human civilizations across the world, starting in Europe and working its way into Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and even covering the arctic ice caps; however, throughout the book, Fagan has a hard time connecting his various ideas back to one main topic and can easily stray from his point about the effects of climate change.

Climate change is not a new concept. It has been mostly referred to as global warming in the past. As much as people would like to file this issue away as something to deal with at a later date, it simply cannot wait. This problem we face is costing us billions of dollars, forests and wildlife are being eliminated, and people are dying. Starting to sound like a big deal, right? Future generations will be affected the most. People who do not even exist will have to pay for what we, all people, have done to this earth. To begin to make changes, one must realize the severity of the issue. Bill Mckibben, author of “Recalculating the Climate Math,” conveys that “We’ve already raised the world’s temperature by one degree—enough to melt almost half the ice in the Arctic, kill off huge swaths of the world’s coral, and unleash lethal floods and drought. July and August tied for the hottest months ever recorded on our planet, and scientists think they were almost certainly the hottest in the history of human civilization” (Page 3 of 5). Global climate change is a serious problem because it increases natural disasters and is the cause of extreme weather.

Anthropocene refers to the start of a time where human influence on the earth’s ecological and geological state rapidly increased. This rapid increase is known as the “Great Acceleration” which takes place from the mid-20th century and continues on today. A push was made to distinguish this time from the previous epoch known as the Holocene period because of the dramatic impact that humanity is now having on the environment. The Anthropocene period is characteristically different because the changes in the ecological environment are being rapidly affected and changed due to human activity not purely natural means. While humans were active during the Holocene period they did not begin to affect their environment

It is very easy to get the information from the media in this current society, but it is difficult to distinguish that whether it is right or wrong. There are many different perspectives and thoughts on the same issue, such as global warming. To choose which argument is true is up to the people. These days, many people take on a very serious subject, global warming, and they argue whether it is worth to worry about future or not. While many people consume an excess of energy that produces carbon dioxide, the issue of global warming becomes more critical. Since global warming is a severe problem in the world, Bill McKibben wrote the article about the climate change, “The Reckoning.” He tells that people need to care the three important

Anthropocene is a time period where the “effects of the humans on the global environment have escalated” (Crutzen 23). The Earth is no longer in its natural state but is “moving into a less biologically diverse, less forested, much warmer, and probably wetter and stormier state” (Steffen 614).

The essay opens up with McKibben talking about how the political campaign against global warming is flawed because at our current point there is nothing much that can be done to fix it.(Mckibben,1) He then goes to state that humans are the biggest culprit behind global warming and supports this by giving examples such as SUVs and American ignorance.(2,9) He concludes by saying that if ten percent of America were to go green, it still would not save the planet, but ten percent could get the government’s attention to pass laws making everyone go green. (11)

In the article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”, Bill McKibben opens by saying that back in 2012, according to the statistics, Canada surpassed the global record high for climate temperature, destroying other previous records. Despite the research and the displaying of data, no one is doing anything to address the issue. McKibben takes three distinctive numbers that shed light on this issue 2 degrees Celsius, 565 gigatons, and 2795 gigatons, to validate and support his argument. Firstly, the ongoing problem of climate change in our planet is fundamentally a matter of individual moral responsibility that is inspired by the understanding that individuals are deliberately harming the environment. Secondly there has not yet been an effective collective state response to the issue of global warming, despite almost two decades of ongoing and reoccurring negotiations and the near universal participation by states in the UNFCCC. Thirdly, because this issue has been put on hold for longer than it was initially expected, greenhouse gases are being emitted into our atmosphere, polluting our environment. The South-North issue and an ongoing debate comes into effect as all the greenhouse gases that are created and used in the Northern hemisphere are being emitted into the southern hemisphere. Hence, my thesis is: Even though global warming and climate change has been a continuing ongoing global problem for many years, individuals and institutions have humanity

This is true because as the months come and go, it is getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that the world is in danger. “In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter” (Nobel Speech p. 15) This is true because with more and more pollution in the tiny shell of the atmosphere, it is getting harder to ignore that the Earth as many know it is getting changed in a bad way. This links to the claim because the world spinning out of kilter is an effect of climate change and global warming.

The 21st century, when calculated in terms of Earth’s lifetime, amounts to approximately a quarter of a second. Our sun is estimated to have existed for four billion years and calculations suggest it will exist for another six billion years. With more than half of Earth’s life remaining, somehow humanity has managed to create an unprecedented spike in climate change in this tiny sliver of the earth’s lifetime, by human induced alterations occupying less than a millionth of the elapsed time on Earth. The accelerating rate at which our planet’s finite resources are being depleted is in essence due to our energy dependency and exponential population growth. The exploitation of energy brought by the industrial revolution, and the exponential

The environmental science principle behind the article deals with climate change and how it works. Climate change described by our textbook states, “The greenhouse effect describes the heating of the earth’s atmosphere. The “greenhouse effect” keeps average temperatures above freezing and supports life, but too much heating can be harmful in greenhouse or in our atmosphere. Over the past 200 years, we have been emitting heat-absorbing gases (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCs) at a dramatic increase. As a consequence, more heat is retained in the atmosphere (Textbook Citation). As these greenhouse emissions are being released into the atmosphere, it is causing the Earth’s average temperature to increase which if something is not done immediately, it will cause a domino effect of disastrous outcomes.

In the last few decades, climate change has been a significant scientific and economic controversy for major debates. Some scientists believe they have already given enough research and proof to justify climate change as being a real, prevalent issue while other scientist and politicians thoughtlessly reject the theory altogether. This problem is very important for a few reasons; climate change could potentially define the fate of the entire human race, and because of this we might need to implement new laws regarding emissions of greenhouse gasses that could cost the world trillions of dollars. This subject is no laughing matter, and in today’s world you have to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to believe in it. The amount of research backing up these claims of climate change is irrefutable, but there are fundamental problems with locating the exact cause of it. Scientists are in a battle to discover if humans are the source of climate change or if planet Earth is undergoing a natural cycle that slowly increases the average temperature of itself. All that is known today is that when carbon dioxide and other compounds chemically similar to it are released into the atmosphere, the Earth gets hotter, decreasing the amount of Arctic ice and increasing the sea level. Disregarding money, climate change is a real, and very serious issue that has a tremendous quantity of research supporting it with, unfortunately, a deadly ending if not

Climate change has been changing for over 650’000 years. The carbon dioxide levels have never been higher then 300, so whats changed? Since the 1900’s global sea levels have increased by 17cm. Since the industrial revolution we’ve seen a spike in the levels of carbon dioxide but we haven 't understood what that means for the earth. Too much carbon dioxide is not healthy because those gases unbalance the resting temperature of the Earth. The amount of carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas, we need to realize that CO2 is not the only gas in the atmosphere not being able to leave the Earth creates increasing temperatures creating a snowball effect. Since the Industrial Revolution the burning of fossil fuels has been a big thing, since then we see the significant incline of CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the Industrial Revolution was a major breakthrough for us as a community, at the time we didn 't think of the effects it could have long term. The ozone layer is broken