The End Of Nature: The Influence of Man on Nature's State

Our perfect natural world has now been ruined due to the acts of humankind losing its sense of nature as an infinitely renewable source. In Bill McKibben’s book The End Of Nature, he ventures out into discussing the major flaws that the world, in general, has committed which, involuntarily, is leaving Earth or nature to degrade. He bases his arguments on global environmental issues such as acid rain, the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer, and the massive disasters of tropical rain forests.

McKibben goes on to explain his point of view and other people’s points of view on why Earth has entered a huge environmental crisis and uses the example of humans living the golden age before World War II. McKibben discusses the main adverse effects on global warming caused by human activity and he also discusses the potential effects that these issues will bring, for example, the disruption of climate, rising sea levels, etc.

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The main strategy that McKibben uses to spread his message is by using strategies such as Pathos and Logos, which connect to the readers emotionally and logically.

The beginning part of this book talks about McKibben’s thoughts on how global warming caused by human activities can cause a large amount of catastrophic damage to Earth. He uses logos in this section of the book to convey his message using statistical data and giving the reader a starting point. He also brings up the idea that global alterations caused by human actions will lead to the end of the idea of nature.

The underlying motive of his idea of the “end of nature” is his argument, which is a “binge, a half-century of unbelievable prosperity and ease” (86). His other blame would be “an ideology… that man is at the center of creation and it is therefore right for him to do whatever pleases him” (151). McKibben uses Pathos here to grab the reader's attention and emotions to explain his point of view on how the global environment is suffering from technological industrialization.

Although McKibben’s ideologies seem a bit pernicious, it is most easily seen in the contempt that he wanted to express the working people of the U.S., in which he sees them as selfish and not as human beings. This gives us the readers a sense of the usage for Ethos in which he presents his ideologies in trying to persuade the reader into thinking on McKibbon’s perspective instead. McKibben gives us the readers a vision of being able to see a world where nature is not affected by human actions and decisions, but even he himself thinks that it is very unlikely to happen. Given this, he uses Pathos to emotionally involve the readers to see a happier perspective but in reality, the harsh truth speaks for itself. McKibben also brings up how Earth and everyone is overly polluting itself with substances such as plastic after World War II and how our cars, our houses, and chemical substances have led us to the decision of picking one side or the other, a technologically advanced planet with no return of “nature” or implementing nature into our lifestyles. This leads to readers having to think and to evaluate his reasonings, and this can be seen as a form of Ethos. Having mere arguments presented to the reader can immensely influence the thoughts of the reader and how the message from Bill is being conveyed.

McKibben has shown a strong passion for Earth’s future and he has presented very knowledgeable arguments that can be implemented into our society into fixing the damage done by our own hands. This can show us, the readers, that the problem that McKibben presented to us includes all three strategies, ethos, pathos and logos. His ideologies can be interpreted as Ethos since he is very thorough with his own thoughts. He also invokes a few questions and scenes that the readers can sense as being emotional or as if they have been affected emotionally by a scene in the literature. Most of these strategies were presented well and thorough which helped McKibben’s argument