From Lexington, Massachusetts on August 29, 2010 to the David Letterman Show on August 31, 2010,  Bill McKibben speaks about his book Eaarth, global warming and climate action.

Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth provides countless examples of the conundrum our whole world is in because of global warming and peak oil. He suggests taking action: conserve energy and resources, make changes locally, and work together within your community. Some of the recommendations include community farming and community-based energy.  It’s a must read!

The first challenge is to make sure that everyone understands the problem (there’s too much carbon in the environment), the severity of the problem (dangerous weather patterns are risking the livelihoods and lives of all of us), and the immediacy of the problem (at 398 parts per million we’ve already surpassed the prescribed 350 parts per million of carbon in the environment).  Eaarth provides the facts — it enables us to see and feel the consequences.  They are real, and they are painful.

It’s clear that we need change, both locally and at a national level.  We all need to act at home, at work, and in our communities.  That means grass roots/bottom up: working diligently in every way that we can think of in order to reduce our carbon output.  We can all conserve energy and water, recycle and reuse, and also help our employers to make changes at the workplace as well.

We need political action: with a price on carbon set at the federal level, innovation for clean energy can be undertaken in earnest.  Feed-in tariffs in Germany are an excellent example of how government policy enabled growth in the clean energy sector, especially solar power.

With top-down and bottom-up efforts, we may be able to stall the global warming trend.  It will take enormous changes to actually reverse the trends so that the glaciers refreeze.  But we all need to do our part.  No one is immune from the consequences; no one should be immune from helping to preserve our environment for us, for our children, for our grandchildren, and for the plants and animals that share this planet with us.

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