Name: Falter
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9781250256850

Bill Mckibben

Falter

Bill McKibben

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 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 itself.

Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Deyana

I remember liking this book, but then it got really, really bizarre. Little did I know that this would segway quite well into discussions about the ever-arriving apocalypse, along with similar discussions in another course the following quarter regarding the fin-de-siecle. I think the part I got lost was the part that started talking about genetic mutations and A.I., and thinking back on it, the subjects of the book did seem a bit all over the place--but all the more to think about, I suppose.

Bryan Alexander

(Full disclosure: Bill is a friend. He was a neighbor for almost 20 years and blurbed my books.)

Falter is a bracing, ambitious, yet very accessible book. McKibben's goal is to outline what he sees as the great threats facing humanity - not mere challenges, but forces that could clobber or just end civilization. And then he gives us hope.

The dire threats start with climate change, as befits one of the world's leaders in that field. Falter then adds genetic engineering and bad forms of AI. One of the book's strengths is how clearly it explains these issues, combining deep research with engaging, even funny prose.

How does this lead to optimism? McKibben begins by showing that a planetary shift away from fossil fuels is within our grasp, led by the realization of cheap solar power. Next, he argues that nonviolent activism is a recent (century-old) development, and it's one we need to both study and use, because it can transform the world. He then suggests we slow down our current pace of rapid technological and economic development, in order to enjoy what we've achieved, and also to address inequalities in that enjoyment.

There are many highlights and provocative thoughts. For example, in discussing how the energy industry fought to sap climate science for a crucial generation, when it admitted to itself that anthropogenic climate change was happening and they were leading it, McKibben asks us to consider how to view this: "There should be a word for when you commit treason against an entire planet." (73) Later, he asks us to rethink what "conservative" and "radical" mean, as climate change activists, nominally liberal, want to conserve a vanishing world, while right wingers, putatively conservative, seek to change or allow the transformation of the world (192).

I'm not sure I fully buy the idea of slowing or pausing development at peak human. Partly that's because I see human ingenuity as having both more capacity in general and more room to grow across all kinds of fields, from health care to storytelling and space travel. I also see more possibility in the growing integration of the species across borders, including the emergence of new organizational forms. I hold out hope for technological ways to address climate change, including carbon sequestering devices.

But having this kind of argument is all too rare in 2020, and it's the strength of Falter that it lets us think this hard about the future. Strongly recommended.

Falter

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