In the first chapter of Eaarth, Bill McKibben illustrates the earth as a different, changed planet given the name Eaarth. The beautiful blue earth we once knew from the Apollo 8 picture "Earthrise":
is no longer the planet we live on. McKibben addresses his readers with a straightforward approach, and it works. I'm not lying when I say, when I first started reading this book, I was not as aware of global warming or climate change. It was so lightly discussed in my science classes in middle school that I didn't care about it at all. But it means more to me now. Simply, global warming is happening to the entire planet and affects everyone and everything. The burning of fossil fuels have raised the temperature of the environment causing an increase in rainfall, acidity of the seas, methane gas leaks from the frozen tundra, the melting of the glaciers at the poles, etc. The effects that I didn't know about sparked my interest! I find it ironic when McKibben stated, "The idea that humans could fundamentally alter the planet was new." Reading this book now I feel that I am going to be responsible for global warming in the coming years and will truly see the changes. Scratch that, I have already seen the changes. The fact that McKibben wrote this book about ten years ago is astonishing because many societal issues haven't changed at all.
The most important point that McKibben made, in my opinion, was
"If you got a spare month some time, google global warming and grandchildren."
After reading that I felt the urgency in his tone and I felt guilty for adding to the carbon dioxide in the air that is causing global warming. I was also touched by the fact that having grandchildren is so far into the future for me, decades. How can I, myself, help to sustain our environment for the future?
Chapter 1 was eye-opening for me because it states an important truth, the earth is not the same as it was and will never be as it was. Depressing, but true.
I have decided to link a song for each of my Eaarth posts. The first is below!
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