Mr. McKibben, we meet again...

I’ll be honest, I was not a McKibben fan when I read his first book 'End of Nature'—which, admittedly, was well over a decade ago.  I was in high school, with that youthful optimism, hope, and ambitious goals… and that book crashed into all that like a wrecking ball.  It was so doom-and-gloom, scary and depressing I immediately donated it to the library upon finishing it.  Was that book the reason I went into the armed forces instead of going straight to college for my environmental studies degree? No.  But I mention this to illustrate just how delighted I was to find out that we’d be reading two of his books for my Nature & Society class.
‘Hooray, let me fire up the pit and get the hot poker ready for my eyes.’

So needless to say I was pleasantly surprised with the second chapter of Hope, Human & Wild.  Now I don’t know if McKibben went on antidepressants or just realized that scaring the hell out of people might not be the best way to go about motivating them into change, but there was a noticeable change in my mood while reading this book vs. the first one—primarily in that homicide was no where on my mind, and my optimism, hope and ambition were still intact.  My thoughts on this chapter will be posted by itself, but I am curious to see if these feelings last throughout out this entire book, let alone the second one... or if the harbinger of the Apocalypse will return.