Bill McKibben, writer for the New Yorker says:

"The idea of nature will not survive the new global pollution -- We have changed the atmosphere, & thus we are changing the weather, we make every spot on earth man-made & artificial. We have deprived nature of its independence, and that is fatal to its meaning."

"The idea in this case is 'Nature,' the separate and wild province , the world apart from man to which he adapted, under whose rules he was born and died. . . . its forces -- the wind, the rain, the sun -- were too strong too elemental. . . . We have produced the carbon dioxide -- we are ending nature."

p. 48.

He argues that "the new rupture with nature is not only different in scope but also different in kind…"

The "new rupture" he speaks of is global warming or planetary climate change. The idea that nature is wild, according to McKibben is false.

He feels that because of excessive greenhouse gas emissions, industrial consumption has "changed the earth's atmosphere and thus, the earth's weather. By altering the air, all places on earth have become artificial or "man made."

pp. 58-59.

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. 1989.

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