Thread by @ElizMizon

Just finished @billmckibben's 1989 @NewYorker essay THE END OF NATURE (took me a few hours, split up over the weekend).

Written the year after I was born, it demonstrates how much of the science of #ClimateEmergency has been known for decades...🪡🧵1/10

newyorker.com/magazine/1989/…

Every Bill McKibben text is the Very Best of creative non-fiction, but this piece hits hard more than 3 decades later:

"As long as the desire for endless material advancement drives us, there is no way to set limits.

If our way of life is ending nature..." 2/10

"...it is not radical to talk about transforming our way of life."

I was moved by how close this is to @antonioguterres' statement just 3 weeks ago that it's those pursuing fossil fuels, not climate activists, who are the "dangerous radicals". 3/10

The entire essay makes a repeatedly compelling case for sweeping changes to how we understand our place in Earth.

But this paragraph, towards the end of the piece, opened up for me just how unnatural even our most 'environmental' gestures of dominion have become: (4/10)

It also spoke to a stark, repeating experience I've had recently but haven't been able to articulate: being overwhelmed by the systemic imprint in everything, from the landscape, to our excuses.

It's not hypocrisy. It's a glitch in our social psychology that arises... 5/10

...to help us survive economically, and/or emotionally, the current growth-addiction (capitalism).

We can change these coping strategies and our *individual* actions. But we HAVE to change at scale: that means refusing growth-addicted politicians/parties/social theories. 6/10

(And crucially, not in favour of any other bleak, fascistic, totalitarian system that has arisen before. A new, constructive politics [look up @OlufemiOTaiwo], anti-imperialist critical thinking [a la Chomsky], not being an arsehole, etc.) 6a/10

McKibben: "...our special gift is reason. Part of that reason drives the intelligence that allows us to master DNA or build big power plants. But our reason could also keep us from following blindly the biological imperatives toward endless growth in numbers and territory."
7/10

Anyone I'm acquainted with or following my TikTok/Twitter will know that helping build the 'climate movement' has become increasingly important to me.

But I have to believe it won't exist much longer, and will soon just become the new paradigm. If it doesn't...
8/10

...we could lose our ability to choose what happens next.

The most frustrating thing? That paradigm is in politicians' reach, and yet they're moving at a snail's pace. (Could it have anything to do with the fossil fuel money they've taken?)
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…

9/10

Here's McKibben's latest, another exquisite essay on #ClimateActionNow, 32.5 years later. Thanks for hanging in there, Bill.

I just wanna repeat it to govts like "stop hitting yourself":

stop burning things
stop burning things
stop burning things

10/10
newyorker.com/news/essay/in-…