Goodbye to All That

In 1984, recent university graduate Stephen Henighan went hiking in Alaska with a friend, an emerging wildlife biologist. As they experienced the state’s austere beauty together, the biologist predicted that by 2050 or so, it would probably all be over. “We would be choking on fumes, murdering each other for the last scraps of food and mouthfuls of fresh water. Why? ‘Too many goddamn people.’”

Three decades later, Henighan has written A Green Reef: The Impact of Climate Change, in which he tries to come to grips with his friend’s dire prediction, not in terms of the science but in terms of the cultural impact climate change is having on our lives and our thinking as members of the human species.

These two excerpts appear courtesy of Linda Leith Publishing.

No Other World

In 2011 the United States launched its last space shuttle mission to...