Eaarth Making A Life On A Tough New Planet Summary

Many aspects of the Earth have changed over the years since the start of the industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuels as the major source of energy in the developed nations of the world. Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet focuses on these changes to the Earth that have been made, how the human population is going to be affected by these changes, and the new paths we have to take with agriculture and technology to survive on the new planet we created that McKibben dubbed Eaarth. The main idea of this book is to persuade the audience and help them understand that “by some measures we started too late, that the planet has changed and it will change more” (page 181) even if we immediately changed our ways
The ocean levels are rising, the forest are disappearing, the glaciers are melting, and the seasons’ lengths are changing as well. These changes are a result of a rise in global temperature which is believed to be a result of the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is thought that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 ppm and we have already passed this value and it is projected that the amount will only increase until changes are made to stop using fossil fuels and replenish the Earth’s carbon sinks (page 23). The global temperature increase has also created feedback systems, such as water vapor that only continue to increase the global temperature (page 27). The global temperature increase has changed the length of the seasons on Earth, which has in turn affected the lives of insects such as beetles that feed on trees (which has added to the decrease in abundance of the Earth’s forest) and mosquitos that carry infectious diseases that are now able to spread at an increased rate (page