Bill McKibben - Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

If you viewed Earth from far above (and for better or worse, this book will often take a high, wide perspective), roofs would probably be the first feature of human civilization youd notice. A descending alien would see many shapes, often corresponding to the local weather: A-frames for shedding snow, for instance. There are gambrel roofs, mansards, hipped and gabled roofs. Pagodas and other Asian temples often sport conical tops; Russian churches come with onion domes; Western churches sit beneath spires.

Palm leaves probably topped the earliest houses, but as humans began to grow grain in the Neolithic era, the leftover straw became a reliable roofing material. Some homes in Southern England have thatch roofs five hundred years old; new layers have been added over centuries till, in some cases, the roofs are seven feet thick. Though it is harder to find good stuff to work withthe introduction of short-stemmed wheat varieties and the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer have weakened strawthatch is now growing more popular with rich Europeans looking for green roofs; in Germany, for instance, you can now get a degree as a journeyman specialist thatcher. But at least since the third century BC (perhaps beginning with Greek temples deemed valuable enough to protect from fire) humans have been tending toward hard roofs. Terra-cotta tiles spread rapidly around the Mediterranean and to Asia Minor; slate roofs became popular for their low maintenance; where trees are plentiful, wood shakes and slabs of bark work well. Given that the average human being currently resides in an urban slum, it is possible that corrugated iron shelters more sleepers than anything else.

Do you find this a little dull? Good. What I want to talk about is the human gamethe sum total of culture and commerce and politics; of religion and sport and social life; of dance and music; of dinner and art and cancer and sex and Instagram; of love and loss; of everything that comprises the experience of our species. But thats beyond my powers, at least till Im warmed up. So, Ive looked for the most mundane aspect of our civilization I can imagine. Almost no one thinks about her roof from one years end to another, not unless it springs a leak. Its a given. And so, it will illustrate my pointeven the common and boring roof demonstrates the complexity, the stability, and the reach of this human game.

Consider the asphalt shingle, which tops most homes in the West and is itself, doubtless, the dullest of all forms of roofing. The earliest examples date to 1901, and the first manufacturer was the H.M. Reynolds Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which sold its product under the slogan The Roof That Stays Is the Roof That Pays. Asphalt occurs naturally in a few places on Earththe tar sands of Alberta, for instance, are mostly bitumen, which is the geologists word for asphalt. But the asphalt used in shingles comes from the oil-refining process: its the stuff that still hasnt boiled at five hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Vacuum distillation separates it from more valuable products such as gasoline, diesel, and naphtha; it then is stored and transported at high temperatures until it can be used, mostly for making roads. But some of it is diverted to the plants that make shingles, where manufacturers add granules of some mineral (slate, fly ash, mica) to improve durability. The CertainTeed Corporation, the worlds biggest shingle manufacturer, has produced a video showing what it rightly calls this underappreciated process at its plant in Oxford, North Carolina, one of sixty-one facilities it operates around the country. The video shows a ballet of pouring and dumping and conveying, as limestone arrives by rail car to be crushed and mixed with hot asphalt and then coated onto hundreds of thousands of miles of fiberglass mat. A thin mist of water is sprayed, and as it evaporates, the sheet cools, ready to be cut and then bundled onto pallets in a giant warehouse, to await distribution.