changing the weather, we make every spot on earth man- made and artificial. We have deprived nature of its independence, and that is fatal to its mean- ing. Nature's independence is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us.'
The End of Nature caused quite a stir; some suggested that it would have the same galvanic impact on public opinion that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (also first published in the New Yorker) had had 27 years before. But while many were titillated McKibben's violent...