4 - Sunday, January 14, 1990 ~ North Shore News Bors Hunter ONE OF the most depressing books I’ve read in the last de- cade probably, is Bil! McKibben's controversial The End of Nature. Oddly enough, it also inspired me — in the sense that it got the juices going one more time. A wiser, older chap, West Van- couverite Ben Metcalfe, once told me that the only thing that kept him going was his anger. To that extent, McKibben’s book does its job beautifully, It is impossible to get through it without becoming angry. A good part of the anger I felt was, however, directed at the author. Let me give you an example of why. McKibben’s thesis is that nature is no longer ‘‘aut there,"* chugging along on its own steam. It has become part of the man- made or at least man-affected en- vironment, for the profound but simple reason that everything in nature is now in the process of be- ing transformed by humanity’s ac- tions. Fair enough. Excellent point. Worth telling. But McKibben goes on from there to say a lot of things like this: **The end of nature probably also makes us reluctant to attach ourselves to its remnants, for the same reason that we don’t usualiy choose new friends from among the terminally ill. 1 love the moun- tain outside my back door — the stream that runs along its flank, and the stream that slides down a quarter-mile mossy chute, and the place where the slope flattens into an open plain of birch and oak. But I know that in some way I resist getting to know it better — for fear, weak-kneed as it sounds, of getting hurt. “I fear that if I knew as well as a forester what sick trees look like I would see them everywhere. } find now that | like the woods best in winter, when it is harder to tell what might be dying, but { try not Drivers guilty of drinking RECENT CONVICTIONS in North Shore courts have resulted in the following fines and penalties for drinking and driving related offences. NORTH VANCOUVER: William Andrew Rawlinson, 43, trailer parking lot c/o Mosquito Creek Marina, 415 West Esplanade, North Vancouver (over .08, $750 fine); Robert Allan Guerrero, 22, 208 Riverside Drive (impaired, $500 fine); Trevor John Samuel Pierce, 38, 4-90 St. Andrews Avenue, North Vancouver (over .08, $500 fine); Dean Owen Cosby, 22, 45-612 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver (over .08, $750 fine). FOR PROFESSIONAL REAL ESTATE SERVICES CALL BUS: 985-8231 RES: 984-SALE (7253) to love even winter too much, because of the January perhaps not so distant when the snow will fall as warm rain. There is no future in loving nature.”’ You see what I mean? Icis not just that this is, indeed, a weak- kneed attitude. It is, more to the point, insidious. [know exacdly what McKibben means. | have been living in a state of near-despair for 20 years at least, ever since my first reading of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. In fact, come to think of if, the dif- ference between Carson’s book and Mckibben’s is instructive. Silent Spring boiled with righteous wrath focused on the destruction that ignorant, greedy selfish people were doing to nature, and hence to us all. Bur it aimed at changing what was hap- pening. One never fur a moment got the feeling that Rachel was ready to lie back in the weeds and let the bulldozers run over her. McKibben, by contrast, is a whiner who confesses over and over again that he has basically thrown in the towel, except for the minor action — almost a non-fic- tion in his case — of writing a book about our inevitable doom. Lhave read articles like this be- fore, but never an entire book. The author wallows in his despair and rubs it off on you. He offers a tiny spark of hope, but it is so small against the dark brush strokes of his apocalyptic prose that it is almost worse than no hope at all. And the reason it is all so depressing is because I suspect in my heart of hearts that he is describing perfectly the condition of an overwhelming majority. “We could limit ourselves vol- - Stewarts Antiques 439 1 Main St: untarily. he writes, “choose to remain God's creatures instead of making ourselves gods."* En terms of reversing the trend toward the destruction of nature, Mickibben says this would involve a renunciation of material pro- sperity, a willingness, for instance, to pay enormous taxes on fossil fuels, to keep our home temperature down around 12°C in winter, (0 cut Our wardrobes to the bare minimum. Above all, it means changing our deep-rooted, age-old habits of taking care of Number One, not only in terms of our own nuclear families. our clans, our artificial nation-states, our linguistic groups, our races, and finally our species itself. As McKibben puts it, to ‘‘take the side of nature over culture.”’ If this is the bottom line of whit we must do to save ourselves and our planet, f, for one, quail before the enormity of it. I have enough trouble getting my kids to turn off their bedroom lights. | have enough trouble tryine. to get around to converting my cat to natural gas. { have enough trouble trying to cut down on beef. E have plenty of trouble trying to avoid purchasing new energy- gobbling devices, let alone throw out what we have. I find it nearly impossible to free myself from the use of one CFC-based product or another, whether it’s a fridge or foam cushions. In this sense, | am very much like Bill McKibben at heart, and that's what made me so mad about his book. By admitting to being weak-kneed when it comes to fac- ing and grappling with the full eco-disaster, he spoke, I fear, to almost all our conditions. Maybe yet another new ‘‘eco”’ prefixed word should be coined: eco-nihilism. 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THE CORPORATION OF THE DISTRICT OF WEST VANCOUVER PUBLIC NOTICE AMBLESIDE REVITALIZATION BELLEVUE AVENUE Please note that Bellevue Avenue requires one additional layer of paving which is scheduled to be applied in Spring 1990 as warmer/drier weather permits. In the meantime, arrangements have been made to provide for re-marking of all crosswaik areas at all intersections on Bellevue Avenue between 13th and 19th Streets. The markings (in either paint or tape) wilt be completed at the earliest possible time on dry pavement. All drivers (and pedestrians) are reminded to observe the speed limits and rules of the road regarding pedestrian rights-of-way while exercising caution and courtesy. Enquiries — 922-1211 Revitalization Project Manager (Local 239), or Planner, Zoning and Development (Local 206). 1990 Janua-y Van. 879-2313 285 Main St.. “Van “876-5234