Starred review from February 11, 2019
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.

March 1, 2019

McKibben (environmental studies, Middlebury Coll.; The End of Nature) continues his decades-long exposition of the ever-increasing dangers of climate change as well as considers how artificial intelligence may threaten our future. The author combines these two threads to warn that humans may be reaching the end of their "game" on earth. He first presents a data-rich examination of the implications of rising global temperatures, then turns his attention to the ideas that have led to our current economic inequality, specifically, the libertarian ideas of Ayn Rand that have influenced many politicians and most entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He also discusses the new frontier of gene editing and its implications for combatting disease, but also for creating designer babies, which could increase societal inequality. After discussing new trends in space exploration, he notes that no planet has the benefits we should hope to salvage here on earth, presenting a sobering case for hope and a plan of action that focuses on nonviolent resistance and solar panels. Absorbing and gracefully written, this work will leave readers with much to consider. VERDICT Highly recommended for thoughtful audiences with a concern for life on our planet.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
The noted environmental activist reprises his proposals to save humanity.For the past 30 years, McKibben (Environmental Studies/Middlebury Coll.; Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance, 2017, etc.), founder of the environmental activist organization 350.org, has been issuing urgent warnings about the consequences of climate change and the need to promote sustainable energy sources. In Enough (2003), he added to his concerns genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, which he sees as posing dire threats to humanity. Ticked off by "a dozen high profile books devoted to the idea that everything in the world is steadily improving"--notably Enlightenment Now (2018), in which Steve Pinker demonstrated his "trademark perkiness"--McKibben underscores his arguments and proposes cautiously hopeful solutions. He blames the fossil fuel industry, headed by greedy energy moguls such as the Koch brothers and Exxon executives, for impeding reforms that could stave off disaster. Offering ample evidence of the damage caused by climate change, the author feels certain that people around the world "are not just highly concerned about global warming, but also willing to pay a price to solve it" by seeing their energy bills rise, with the money spent on clean energy programs. He cites a study that concludes that "every major nation on earth could be supplying 80 percent of its power from renewables by 2030." McKibben is less persuasive in his analyses of the threats of artificial intelligence and gene editing, mainly because he gleans his information from newspaper and popular magazine articles rather than peer-reviewed scientific studies that would give his assertions more weight. Against both technologies, he recommends nonviolent resistance. Although open to the idea that new jobs will emerge when robots replace people for much work--solar panels can be installed only by humans, for example--he would like us all to take it slowly. Similarly, we need to resist gene-editing technology. While now such techniques can repair or eliminate genetically caused disease, he sees, in a dystopian future, the creation of designer babies.A compelling call for change that would benefit from stronger sources.

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Starred review from April 1, 2019
McKibben, prodigious and committed, has been calling for and leading action against global warming for 30 years, explicating its catastrophic impact on the living world with steady lucidity while also specifying with exceptional candor and perception the ethical and emotional dimensions of the ever-growing crisis. In his latest warmly engaging yet exacting chronicle of the damage caused by our reliance on fossil fuels, he exposes in appalling detail the lies and cover-ups orchestrated by carbon-industry executives and the political dominance of reckless billionaires (many of them disciples of Ayn Rand and her crude cult of selfishness) who betray basic human solidarity. In contrast, he documents the promise of solar energy. At his most provocative, McKibben shares unnerving concerns about helter-skelter, potentially ruinous deployments of artificial intelligence and the advent of bioengineered humans. Ultimately, his primary focus in this deeply caring, eloquently reasoned inquiry into environmental and techno-utopian threats is on how we are imperiling the human game ?that is, the entirety of our ceaseless activity as individuals and societies. Profoundly compelling and enlightening, McKibben balances alarm with hope as he celebrates the climate-change resistance movement and the human love that works to feed the hungry . . . that comes together in defense of sea turtles and sea ice, and of all else around us that is good. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

"He has gathered the most vivid statistics, distilled history to its juiciest turns, and made the case as urgently and clearly as can be: The whole breadth of our existence--the 'human game'--is in jeopardy."