McKibben’s Article: Underwhelming?

Global warming freaks me out.

I say this with the full knowledge that my pro-environmental sentiments are driven—at least in large part—by my own selfish/self-preservation instincts. I’ve harbored a fear of rising sea levels, increased vector-borne disease, and skin cancer pandemics since early high school, when I took a history elective titled “Foreign Policy Debate.” We spent the entire semester researching foreign policy, as it pertained to global warming and tactics to alleviate its repercussions.

Ever since then, I’ve considered myself more familiar than average with the topic of global warming and how disastrous it could be and already is.

I think it was because of this—because of my prior anxiety around the topic of global warming—that I found McKibben’s article underwhelming.

I consider myself a fan of McKibben, but I thought he just didn’t do justice to such a severe topic. He spent a lot of time talking about the danger global warming poses to the Adirondack tourist & vacation business. But those businesses can adapt, he suggested, and they seem to be already working toward that end. Likewise, McKibben discussed a major change to the Adirondacks species demographic (especially with regard to trees). He lamented the potentially tragic loss of the turning leaves, which are most flamboyant on the trees that are most threatened by climate change.

Ultimately, McKibben’s concluding point was as follows:

“Who wants to pay more for gas [an example of a politically unpopular method to reduce carbon emissions]? But then, who wants to stare at a hillside of brown in September? If the scientists are right, that may be the choice we’re right now making” (56).

Even if McKibben was going for a poetic finale, I found that this final point really did not do the subject justice. Ultimately, the repercussions of climate change are far more than aesthetic. Climate change could mean far more economic hardship than those attributed to vacation businesses, and far more destruction to the land than a simple shuffle of local species and post-disturbance-esque species succession.

I also understand that McKibben’s article is specific to the Adirondacks – his intent was not to warn us about the loss of coastal cities and nations, and his intent was not to tell us about the massive fatalities that could potentially results from widespread disease. He even admitted that these outcomes are, as yet, impossible to accurately predict. So, all in all, I can’t be too bitter about his local focus, and obsession with the stunning Adirondack foliage (which I share).

However, the Adirondacks aren’t a bubble; the land and its inhabitants will suffer along with the rest of the world as we grabble with “bigger issues” than a brown hillside, so perhaps his article could have benefitted from making more mention of those bigger national and international issues.