Bill McKibben: Eaarth

In the book's first chapter, what really struck me was not the slew of statistics, which I believe many of us are already somewhat exposed in science classes; it was the case by case scenarios that fleshed out the realities of what global warming might mean to a specific place. Place matters, especially when those who live there have cultivated a sense of attachment--it's home, an abode of the soul, where we belong.

McKibben outlines two ways of going about "imagining the effects of climate change," one being traditional(data-oriented), the other anecdotal. I'm writing out the bullet points that triggered something in my mind and heart:

Traditional

• Engineers in Dublin are convinced that higher tides caused by climate change are eroding the famous O'Connell Bridge that spans the River Liffey at the foot of the Irish capital's main thoroughfare.
• The residents of Ocean isle Beach, North Carolina, are spending as much as thirty thousand dollars each to place giant sandbags in front of their homes in an effort to ward off the ocean. "There used to be a street in front of our house, and then a row of cottages," says Lisa Schaeffer. After Tropical Storm Hanna her home stood just five yards from the sea.
• Reduced winter ice cover means that evaporation will proceed year-round, and hence the water level in Lake Erie could fall between three and six feet in the next seventy years, making shipping difficult (for every inch the lake drops, a commercial ship must leave behind 270 tons of cargo) and shifting the shoreline several miles in Sandusky Bay. Moreover, the range of the official Ohio state symbol, the buckeye tree, may shift north, out of the state entirely and into the territory of its college football archrival, Michigan.

Anecdotal

• "Juan Antonio's eyes are full of tears," Vidal reports. "If good rains do not come, he says, he will pack his bag, kiss his wife and two children goodbye, and join the annual exodus of young men leaving hot, dry, rural northeast Brazil for the biofuel fields in the south." Droughts in the region are longer and more frequent now than in the past. "Climate change is biting," a Brazilian agronomist named Lindon Carlos tells him. "It is much hotter than it used to be and it stays hotter for longer."
• "Tekmadur Majsi farms in the upland Nepali village of Ketbari," Vidal writes. "Small floods once a decade or so are routine, but now they've grown larger and more common." Majsi is not hopeful for the future. "We always used to have a little rain each month, but now when there is rain it's very different. It's more concentrated and intense," he tells the reporter. "It means crop yields are going down."

Or increasing pests and disease in Cordillera Blanca,Peruvian Andes; or melting of snowcap, therefore lack of cool climate for beans in Mount Speks, Uganda; or water flooding the main catherdral in Gonaives, Haiti....

Why cite these so extensively? I've been asking myself. These scenes stay in my head for a long time, because somehow they seem to matter. They're not sob stories, melodramatic, or sensational newsflash, but in each place, there are people living, struggling to live at least, and life has become even harder. I want to believe that if cultivating compassion, empathy, and a sense of communal suffering will change those living in comfortable bubbles to heightened awareness and therefore instigate real action. I think if we really understand that driving cars, consuming mega-farm produce, and having the thermostat on incessantly are direct causes for environmental disaster, maybe some, maybe, will seriously reconsider this.