One of the first writers to sound the alarm on climate change was Bill McKibben.

His 1989 book, The End of Nature, introduced a mainstream audience to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions, and propelled him to eventually form the international environmental group 350.org in 2007.

McKibben’s latest book, Falter, is a depressing vindication of his first one. Thirty years ago, he warned that human beings were altering the planet in such a way that we would imperil our own existence. Today, he says, “we are even…