The Green Glance | McKibben sets a vibrant course for Earth’s renewal

Nathan Zucker Columnist

It’s certainly not an encouraging time for tree-huggers or environmentalists of any stripe. Global warming, rapid deforestation and dwindling energy reserves indicate that the future will be a difficult one, beset with troubling questions of how to manage a destabilizing climate and declining resources.

All this bad news often leads to complacency; it is hard to imagine working diligently for a greener future when so many forces are conspiring to destroy the natural world. However, we must search for a motivating vision of rejuvenation—one in which ecosystems are gradually healed to benefit both Earth and mankind.

Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist and scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, points out that the road to renewal exists in our own backyard: the Northeast. Whereas McKibben lamented the perils of climate change in his 1989 classic The End of Nature, he returned in 1995 with a different message. Hope, Human and Wild discusses the rejuvenation of the northeastern United States that has occurred in this century. McKibben sees this intense period of ecological revival as a model for correcting greater society’s woes.

Anyone who explores the wonders of Adirondack Park will be likely to think that this incredible wilderness has existed forever. When I spent three days backpacking the Adirondack High Peaks after high school graduation, the paradisiacal views of endless forests, mountain ridges and crystal-clear lakes did not give a hint of civilization or ecological decay.

Surprisingly, the views would have been significantly worse had I taken the same trip 100 years earlier. Agricultural and timber interests devastated the Adirondacks during the 19th century, polluting rivers and clear-cutting ancient forests. Since the land’s protection in 1894 by the New York State Constitution, a sheer miracle has taken place; wilderness has returned to its former glory, erasing the sins of the past.

“In the Adirondacks, and to a lesser extent throughout the rest of the rural east, we have been given a second chance. This second-chance world…retains sufficient vigor to reassert itself,” writes McKibben in Hope, Human and Wild.

Preserving wilderness, however, is not the only mark of a healthy relationship with the land.

Settlement must also be sustainable, and humans need to learn to work with the rhythms and patterns of the Earth. McKibben discusses this issue in Wandering Home, a book that mentions the Adirondacks but is more extensively devoted to Vermont’s Champlain Valley.

In this Valley, community-supported agriculture, biodiesel manufacturing and ecological forestry are just a few of the experiments in sustainability that are now underway. McKibben champions the balance between conservation and sustainable use, pointing out that simply setting aside wilderness areas does not resolve global warming or the energy crisis.

The key to change, McKibben claims, lies in the power of community. In the Champlain Valley, an emphasis on local foods and farmers’ markets has contributed to the renewal of community ties. Similarly, McKibben documents in Hope, Human and Wild how a group of his Adirondack neighbors resisted the pollution of a new landfill through peaceful protest and town meetings. These examples point toward a better, smaller and more responsible society—one in which we find renewed ties to the landscapes and people of our home.

When thinking of environmental protection and sustainability, students may be tempted to look far away to places such as Alaska, the Serengeti or the rainforests of Costa Rica. McKibben’s work shows that this is a flawed vision; preserving wilderness in exotic places while de-emphasizing community action and regionalism will never lead to a greener society.

It is in our own backyard where such a transition begins, from the cleaner waters of the Hudson River and the restored forests of the Adirondacks to the deep wilds of northern Maine. Living smaller means honoring our home, a place that already displays the Earth’s miraculous power to heal itself given time and support.

“The diary of my journey is a primer for retreat, for climbing down from the untenable heights on which we find ourselves. For imagining new ways that might sustain natural recoveries—like the one I see around me in the East—and spreading them to other corners of the globe,” concludes McKibben.

—Nathan Zucker ’10, a Latin American Studies major, is writing about environmental issues that affect both the Vassar community and the world at large.