Falter
Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A powerful call to arms from an eminent environmentalist
Thirty years ago, environmentalist Bill McKibben’s bestselling The End of Nature – long regarded as a classic – was the first book to alert us to global warming. Now, in Falter, he suggests that the human game may have begun to play itself out. Climate change, robotics and artificial intelligence may spell the end of humanity as we know it. Unless we act now.
Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervour that keeps us from bringing them under control. Drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first global citizens’ movement to combat climate change, it offers some ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history, and we must face the reality or watch the civilisation our forebears built slip away.
This is an inspiring and clearheaded guide to saving not only our planet but also our humanity.
‘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.’ —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
‘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.’ —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction
‘The most effective environmental activist of our age. Anyone interested in making a difference can learn from McKibben.’ —Tim Flannery
‘McKibben is the world’s best green journalist.’ —Time
‘Probably the country’s most important environmentalist.’ —The Boston Globe
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three decades after bringing news of climate change to a broad audience with the book The End of Nature, environmental scholar McKibben once again examines the impact of global warming in unsettling look at the prospects for human survival. He notes at the outset that, as a writer, he owes his readers honesty, not hope, of which there's little to be found. McKibben does find cause for optimism in two human "technologies" or innovations nonviolent protests and solar panels "that could prove decisive if fully employed." But he suspects that humanity won't do so. He also examines how Ayn Rand's outsize influence prevented American government from effectively responding to global warming and how Exxon concealed its own researchers' findings about the threat. His analysis factors in two other developments, in addition to global warming, as causes for worry. Unregulated artificial intelligence could lead to self-improving AI which would "soon outstrip our ability to control it," and which might eventually deem human life unnecessary. Meanwhile, advances in bioengineering have brought new plausibility to seemingly fantastic concepts such as designer children and even immortality; McKibben makes clear that such "progress" would radically change what it means to be human. Readers open to inconvenient and sobering truths will find much to digest in McKibben's eloquently unsparing treatise.
