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mburnamfink's review against another edition
3.0
Naomi Oreskes is *pissed*. She has a right to be, after writing of Merchants of Doubt and seeing the same damn thing happen again and again. The framing for this book is a Chinese historian writing about the collapse of Western civilization due to climate change from the year 2300, but the frame is really weak. What this essay actually about is recent events in climate change policies, such as the collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and a cold, clinical future history of ice sheets melting, mass migration, plague, famine, geoengineering disasters, and as the title would suggest, the end of Western civilization. The first part, about recent developments, is well-documented with footnotes. The speculation is backed up by scientific papers, but is distant and far from compelling as literature.
Oreskes takes out most of her ire on two groups. The first is the neoliberal carbon-combustion complex, a political, financial, and technological assemblage that profits off of burning fossil fuels, and uses it's ideological muscle to prevent even the slightest preparation for the oncoming disaster. The second group are Baconian reductionist scientists, who's cult-like love of objectivity prevented them from understanding human and planetary systems together, or speaking in the proper tone to alert the rest of humanity. For what it's worth, I think Oreskes is mostly right about the neoliberal carbon-combustion complex as dangerously short-sighted wreckers driving our political system, but Oreskes is a historian of science (and I'm one too, sorta), and slamming reductionism and specialization in science seems very abstruse. It's not even a particularly interesting or heated contribution to the never-ending argument on epistemology and scientific methods.
So yeah, this book is short, angry, oddly balanced, and not particularly literary. It's well researched, but unlikely to be enjoyable or interesting to anyone who doesn't already agree with Oreskes.
Oreskes takes out most of her ire on two groups. The first is the neoliberal carbon-combustion complex, a political, financial, and technological assemblage that profits off of burning fossil fuels, and uses it's ideological muscle to prevent even the slightest preparation for the oncoming disaster. The second group are Baconian reductionist scientists, who's cult-like love of objectivity prevented them from understanding human and planetary systems together, or speaking in the proper tone to alert the rest of humanity. For what it's worth, I think Oreskes is mostly right about the neoliberal carbon-combustion complex as dangerously short-sighted wreckers driving our political system, but Oreskes is a historian of science (and I'm one too, sorta), and slamming reductionism and specialization in science seems very abstruse. It's not even a particularly interesting or heated contribution to the never-ending argument on epistemology and scientific methods.
So yeah, this book is short, angry, oddly balanced, and not particularly literary. It's well researched, but unlikely to be enjoyable or interesting to anyone who doesn't already agree with Oreskes.
gwenaelle_vandendriessche's review
3.0
Ce livre m'a été recommandé par un professeur d'écologie.
Présenté comme un livre de science-fiction, ce livre serait l'analyse de l'époque actuelle (21e siècle) faite en 2393 par un historien chinois. Tel un livre d'histoire, il raconte les faits marquants et les mouvements idéologiques majeurs de l'époque. Tel un cours d'histoire, je l'ai trouvé assez ennuyeux... L'idée est excellente, mais je m'attendais à un peu plus de science-fiction qui aurait pu attirer le lecteur moins préoccupé par l'état de environnement.
Présenté comme un livre de science-fiction, ce livre serait l'analyse de l'époque actuelle (21e siècle) faite en 2393 par un historien chinois. Tel un livre d'histoire, il raconte les faits marquants et les mouvements idéologiques majeurs de l'époque. Tel un cours d'histoire, je l'ai trouvé assez ennuyeux... L'idée est excellente, mais je m'attendais à un peu plus de science-fiction qui aurait pu attirer le lecteur moins préoccupé par l'état de environnement.
sogarfi's review against another edition
Interesting, but not super engaging. I wish it had been more.
Hopefully will not be used to much in Smith
Hopefully will not be used to much in Smith
heather_rushforth's review against another edition
5.0
I really liked the perspective of someone looking back through centuries to our time.
antisocialsciences's review against another edition
dark
sad
fast-paced
1.75
this book is not helpful nor informative about climate change...
thatbookishwriter's review against another edition
3.0
A read that once again, makes me look at humanity and wonder what the heck we're doing.
andyogm's review against another edition
3.0
Cool piece of speculative future worldbuilding from a pair of historians of science. Interesting application of the SF method of political critique.
ssindc's review against another edition
5.0
What a splendid little novella! What a startlingly effective clarion wake up call!
One of the reasons I love sci-fi, fantasy, cyberpunk, speculative fiction, dystopia and that ilk is that it permits us to step back and examine the absurdities of real life or question the most basic assumptions of our daily lives. So much of these genres focus on politics, economics, religion, philosophy, and sociology without the constraints of the world (or country or community or gravity or time) that we live in. The genius of this book is that it is poignantly, studiously fact-based until, basically, 2014, at which point the inevitable sweep of history takes over, and the train accelerates and, ultimately, leaves the rails.... (Oh, by the way ... we're on that train!)
Here, the authors - serious science historians - simply fast forward to a (frankly) far-more-likely-than-not-future in which climate change, science denial, dysfunctional government, delusional economics (think the economist's invisible hand as a religious totem), combine to lock us into our current trajectory ... which takes us to a time and place that, well, sure isn't what I hope for my (adult) offspring (and my prospective grandchildren or, for that matter, western civilization).
My sense is that this is a terrific companion to, among others, David Wallace-Wells' daunting but powerful The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2795194668; Hope Jahren's highly accessible and artfully crafted, The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go From Here, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3225659029; Michael Klare's All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3421674484; and, for more literary readers, Elizabeth Rush's Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3037763428 ... Anyway, you get the idea...
Frankly, one of the most stunning aspects of the book is that it was published in 2014. (Sadly, the story arc doesn't need Trump, Mitch McConnell, Fox News, or the rest of the anti-science cabal to get where it's going, which is all the more frightening, but I digress....) One wonders if the authors are considering a post-Trump era revision....
Buy it (under $10!), read it (you can read the novella in an hour, but budget a couple of hours to take advantage of the endnotes and enjoy the authors' interview), and share it (or give one or more as gifts).
One of the reasons I love sci-fi, fantasy, cyberpunk, speculative fiction, dystopia and that ilk is that it permits us to step back and examine the absurdities of real life or question the most basic assumptions of our daily lives. So much of these genres focus on politics, economics, religion, philosophy, and sociology without the constraints of the world (or country or community or gravity or time) that we live in. The genius of this book is that it is poignantly, studiously fact-based until, basically, 2014, at which point the inevitable sweep of history takes over, and the train accelerates and, ultimately, leaves the rails.... (Oh, by the way ... we're on that train!)
Here, the authors - serious science historians - simply fast forward to a (frankly) far-more-likely-than-not-future in which climate change, science denial, dysfunctional government, delusional economics (think the economist's invisible hand as a religious totem), combine to lock us into our current trajectory ... which takes us to a time and place that, well, sure isn't what I hope for my (adult) offspring (and my prospective grandchildren or, for that matter, western civilization).
My sense is that this is a terrific companion to, among others, David Wallace-Wells' daunting but powerful The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2795194668; Hope Jahren's highly accessible and artfully crafted, The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go From Here, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3225659029; Michael Klare's All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3421674484; and, for more literary readers, Elizabeth Rush's Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3037763428 ... Anyway, you get the idea...
Frankly, one of the most stunning aspects of the book is that it was published in 2014. (Sadly, the story arc doesn't need Trump, Mitch McConnell, Fox News, or the rest of the anti-science cabal to get where it's going, which is all the more frightening, but I digress....) One wonders if the authors are considering a post-Trump era revision....
Buy it (under $10!), read it (you can read the novella in an hour, but budget a couple of hours to take advantage of the endnotes and enjoy the authors' interview), and share it (or give one or more as gifts).