Eaarth: Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully

The closing chapter of Eaarth concentrates on three things if changed could help us reach the  "350" mark in time to survive this new world. Those three things are agriculture, fossil fuels and the internet.

I would like to concentrate on agriculture. When I still lived in my home country Uganda, every holiday we would visit my grandmother in the village. In our culture wealth is typically not only measured in money, in children, livestock and most importantly land. My grandfather is a son of a tribal chief and therefore had a lot of land,s o every holiday when all his grandchildren were around we would all work in the gardens, whether it was weeding, planting or harvesting.

McKibben describes that in order to survive on this new Eaarth we will have to move from mono culture farming to more small variety farming but this old new way of farming, needs something important people. He says " For one thing, all the kinds of innovative farming I've described share one feature: they require more people than conventional farming. Not one Kip Cullers in his mighty machine, but lots and lots of folks down on the ground. For a hundred years we've substituted oil for people, which is why we have more prisoners than farmers in the United States; now we need to go the other way"( McKibben 174-75).

The first part of this excerpt brings back the nostalgia of old traditional farming, where farmers and their families would farm small pieces of land for their own use and to bring income into their homes. In the rest of the chapter McKibben talks about the great yields that come from variety farming, higher resistance to pests, the nutrients that aren't taken from the soil. These benefits are only enjoyed when we switch from machinery and back to the use of our hands that are able to feel and see the tiny details that in Eaarth are very important. The more we can help the soil to retain more water and nutrients, the longer we can survive and industrial mono culture farming will not do it.

The last part of the excerpt " For a hundred years we've substituted oil for people...." this clause really caught my attention, it not only applies to farming, but our everyday lives. McKibben shows how we have replaced neighboring, farming, etc with machinery. I also thing McKibben is trying to discredit the idea that science and technology will dig us out of this mess. They will, but we need people; and equating people to machinery is to show us that we need lots of people, efficiently working people. So yes, technology is important but people are equally important and only if all work together will we be able to survive this new earth.

This book had a lot of shock value, as far as the numerical evidence but it is a great start to a solution. McKibben's idea of less growth and more maintenance, drives home the idea of sustainability. For him to call this chapter "Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully"is a pattern and method to practice. There is no abrupt change, it is a change of heart, mind and methodology in order to ensure our survival.