Learning to ride, falling down, getting back on
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Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, author, and cofounder of 350.org, a nonprofit working internationally to end the use of fossil fuels. He teaches environmental science at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Let’s put aside, for the moment, the thought of mass extinction. . . . Even if that is our eventual due, life will first look and feel different. Life as we know it won’t suddenly end, but it will be crimped; in many places, it already is.
To be under siege from a cloud of blackflies is to feel your sanity threatened. In and out of your ears they crawl, biting as they go; in and out of your nose, your mouth, the corners of your eyes. If you’ve covered up everything but your hands, they will start there and crawl to your wrists, leaving welts wherever they feed.