The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future Reviews

• 
  Matt

  +++ this just came through over the alt-facts-channel +++
  
  There's no such thing as Climate Change says the White House:
  
  
  
  
  __________
  
  
  A View from the Present
  
  The following photos have been taken in the last week at different areas of Germany. I wouldn’t go as far as to say this is a “collapse”. But it isn’t over yet, and summer has only just started…
  
  
  
  [click for source article]
  
  
  
  [click for source article]
  
  
  
  [click for source article]
  
  
• 
  David Rubenstein

  Not really a book, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have written a historical essay from the point of view of a future Chinese historian. The history recounts the scientific, political, and social events during the years 1988 to 2093. The essay shows how, even though scientists predicted the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions on the earth's climate, politicians and corporations weaseled out of the implications, rationalizing their actions (or inactions), and shrugged off responsibility for the ensuing catastrophes. The authors coined an interesting phrase, the carbon-industrial complex, to mean the industries that have big economic stake in continuing our burning of fossil fuels, even when other sources of energy may be cheaper and cleaner. In the history, global warming brought a large rise in sea level, leading to disastrous permanent flooding of all coastal regions around the world.
  
  The essay is followed by a glossary and an interview with the authors. The authors maintain that by writing their essay from the perspective of a future historian, it would not seem like so much "scolding". Even though I agree with virtually everything in the essay, I found it to be off-putting--it did seem like scolding. Just not from a person living during our own age, but from someone living in the future.
  
  Some reviewers of this book find it to be too "technical." I suggest that they put their thinking caps on--politicians are hiding behind technicalities, because they think they are smarter than experts. They are not. They are just louder.
• 
  Emma Sea

  The format is quite an effective and interesting method of communicating the seriousness of climate change, however there's a few things that brought the rating down for me.
  
  1. the book finishes at page 52 of 89 = 57% The remainder of the book is a lexicon of terms, and an interview with the authors. This left me feeling I'd definitely overpaid at US$4.99
  
  2. The bulk of the essay discusses the (actual) historical scientific/economic background to the current situation. The "collapse" part is only about half of the - already short - essay
  
  3. And even then, they get their effects through pretty broad supposition e.g. a second black death killing vast numbers of people, which somewhat dilutes the fairly shocking death tolls we're going to have just from disruption in agriculture and distribution. Considering this is being written as SF/Spec Fic, the account the authors give is vague and unsatisfying e.g. "Surging insect populations also destroyed huge swaths [sic] of forests in Canada, Indonesia, And Brazil" (p. 25). Way to be vague. Any writer worth zir salt knows you should be as specific as possible. Although this is written as an 'academic essay' it doesn't mean you can't paint the reader a picture. If you're not going to do that - if you're not going to communicate vividly to a lay reader - what was the point?
  
  4. The 'future historian' identifies one problem with 'Western Civilization' as being the separation of economics, science, and the broader social contexts in which they exist. And yet this is exactly what this account does - it talks about 'populations' and 'people' but gives us no real sense of what it was like for humans in this 2040-2093 period as the world they knew crashed and burned around them. There's little sense of lived life and the messy, illogical choices that humans make. Although there's mention of "governments were overthrown, particularly in Africa" there is zero content on how this might have been done, and what forms of governance might have risen in their place. Details like this would make a world vivid and interesting.
  
  On the plus side, all the points for good footnotes and a solid reference list.
  
  Overall an excellent idea, based on solid science, but executed with a broad brush, in a single colour; unengaging and dry. While this is a 'history,' good history is far from dry.
• 
  Alan

  Just so you know, I am a PhD marine scientist and I have been studying and teaching environmental science, including climate change, for over 20 years.
  
  One of the biggest problems with scientific discoveries is that scientists seldom publish their work in a forum or a form that is accessible or understandable to the non-scientific community of voters, policy makers, et al. This short book/long essay by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway is a fantastic addition to the conversation on climate change and its potential effects.
  
  If you are looking for a sic-fi novel, look elsewhere. If you are looking for an overview of what climate change or climate science is, look elsewhere. But if you are interested in considering intersections between science, communication, business, history, creative thinking and climate change then this little book is for you.
  
  FYI, this is not a light version of "Merchants of Doubt" (also a fantastic read). This book is instead, a way to consider the path we are on and seem determined to stay on with respect to climate change regardless of what science discovers and which actions it recommends.
  
  The writing is clear and concise, but not what I'd call brilliant though the ideas presented are. We are on a downward slope and have been for decades when it comes to climate. We know the causes of climate change. We know the effects, current and future if we don't change. This book outlines much of what science can predict with confidence.
  
  The one criticism I have is that the authors resort to a techno-fix for climate change rather than letting it run its course. Perhaps the alternative was simply too bleak to imagine...
  
  5 stars. Important message...should be read be everyone
• 
  Bettie

  
  
  Description: The year is 2393, and a senior scholar of the Second People's Republic of China presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment, the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies, entered into a Penumbral period in the early decades of the twenty-first century, a time when sound science and rational discourse about global change were prohibited and clear warnings of climate catastrophe were ignored. What ensues when soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, drought, and mass migrations disrupt the global governmental and economic regimes? The Great Collapse of 2093.
  
  This work is an important title that will change how readers look at the world. Dramatizing climate change in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, this inventive, at times humorous work reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon industrial complex" that have turned the practice of sound science into political fodder. The authors conclude with a critique of the philosophical frameworks, most notably neo-liberalism, that do their part to hasten civilization's demise.
  
  Based on sound scholarship yet unafraid to tilt at sacred cows in both science and policy, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature. It includes a lexicon of historical and scientific terms that enriches the narrative and an interview with the authors.
  
  
  
  
  We asked for signs
  the signs were sent:
  the birth betrayed
  the marriage spent
  Yeah the widowhood
  of every government --
  signs for all to see.
• 
  Hákon Gunnarsson

  The Collapse of Western Civilization is a big title, but is really tells you what the story is about. The story is told by a unnamed Chinese historian that is writing about the collapse in 2393, some 300 years after it occurred. It’s an science fiction novel told in an essay form.
  
  The problem is that it is more of an essay than a novel. The plot that takes 60 pages in this book really would have been enough material for an epic trilogy. Because it spans such a long time, includes so many dramatic events, and takes place pretty much all over the globe, it really feels it would have needed a longer form to become effective fiction.
  
  That being said, this is an interesting essay by the authors of Merchants of Doubt. The science that the fiction is based on is sound, so the timeline it presents is believable. In many ways it’s an interesting read, but not as effective story as it could have been.
• 
  Cwiegard

  so intensely disturbing. It is almost like an "in joke" where you just roll your eyes. But then you think- how many million Americans would refuse to look at this little book because they would view it as ridiculous alarmism? Half of Florida under water, get real, that's just nonsense. But in the real world, it is probably too late to prevent the sea from rising enough to reclaim half of Florida. why? Because of the people who think it's a joke. Because of the people who would love to do something about global warming, short of changing our economic and financial system just enough to harness market forces.
  Orestes and Conway are quite correct. there is a massive "market failure" under way today. That failure, which reminds us to some extent of the subprime mortgage disaster of 2008, has to do with the unwillingness of the so called "free market" system to put a realistic price on something(in this case, carbon emissions). Some of us still think global warming is a hoax. Others among us realize that it is a deadly danger, but experience the anguish of having our warnings laughed at.
  
  this tiny book will make you you think, if you are willing to think. For more detail on the ways in which our "free market" idealism is emasculating our effort to fight climate change,try "This changes everything" by Naomi Klein. BUT from my perspective, those of us who urge that capitalism must be ended before we can address climate change effectively are simply wrong- because there are just not enough voters willing to make changes that big. Capitalism must be TWEAKED- by ending the absurd practice of giving polluters (all of us) free access to the sky as a free-of-charge dumping ground. Go ahead and pollute, if you can afford the rising costs imposed on you by a carbon fee and dividend regimen. But most likely you will use your brain and switch over to cheaper renewable energy.
• 
  Lauren

  It is 2393 - the 300th anniversary of The Great Collapse of 2093. Our unnamed presenter, a historian in the Second People's Republic of China, retraces the steps that led to the Collapse, The Penumbra Period (1988-2093), and the intervening years since that fateful time. Pointing to the clear warnings and obvious "effects of the anthropogenic interference in the climate system", many still discount or flat out denied what was happening.
  
  --
  
  This speculative essay, written by two historians of science, poses this future scenario as the ultimate cautionary tale. There are maps of the current world of 2393, where cities are now underwater, the second Black Plague has occurred, economic markets have failed, boundaries and borders are erased, and populations have migrated inland, away from the coasts.
  
  In light of the recent US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement (and the subsequent state and corporate leadership to continue/exceed the outlines of the agreement), this is a timely read. Then again, it's been a timely read for my entire life...
  
  Oreskes and Conway could have made this much more than a short essay, there is plenty to go on, but the framing device of future historian looking back was quite effective.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Steve Greenleaf

  This book by two historians of science examines our world through the lens of dystopian fiction. For anyone looking for plot and character, go elsewhere. (I think that they’d recommend the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, whom they acknowledge in the book.) This is a “history” book written by historians looking back from the year 2393 while working in the "Second (Neocommunist) People’s Republic of China". But if you want to learn about what we currently know, what we’re currently doing (or not doing), and how our choices extrapolate into the future, then this is a worthwhile book. Anyone who’s read this blog or followed my Tweets knows that climate change and our collective indifference to it and the future that it holds for us is a major concern of mine. I used to say that this concern would be the problem that my daughters and their generation would have to face. Of course, events have proven this expectation false—it’s here now, staring us in the face, as these two authors make abundantly clear.
  
  Because the authors are both historians of science, they enjoy street cred with both the science community and the larger community, or at least me. (I won’t give my “all knowledge is a matter of history” talk here, but if you need a quick refresher, see below*.) In a previous book, Merchants of Doubt: Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), these two authors detailed the use of scientists to peddle doubts for the purpose of delaying action on issues of public health from tobacco use to global climate change. They understand not only the science involved in these issues but also the social context in which that science is practiced. Indeed, the whole point of this exercise is the examine how we in the early 21st century have convinced ourselves that we can ignore these issues and blithely continue down our current path toward disaster. They cite a great deal of relevant science, and they extrapolate from our current knowledge about what may happen to this Earth of ours given our current choices. But their observations about canons of knowledge and ideologies are the more unique and insightful aspects of their project.
  
  Following are some of the more interesting points taken from the book with my commentary following.
  
  "The physical scientists studying these steadily increasing disasters did not help quell this denial, and instead became entangled in arcane arguments about the “attribution” of singular events [floods, fires, storms, droughts & other weather-related events]. Oreskes, Naomi; Conway, Erik M. (2014-06-24). The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future (p. 7). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition."
  
  Although they don’t come out and say it (Oreskes is a Harvard professor), the scientific community often lives in an ivory tower. Science is a social enterprise, a human enterprise par excellence, and to ignore this all too human aspect of science is a terrible mistake. To whom much is given (to wit, money for research grants), much is expected. While arguments over standards and protocols are important, they don’t override the greater concerns of society as a whole.
  
  "[M]ost countries still used the archaic concept of a gross domestic product, a measure of consumption, rather than the Bhutanian concept of gross domestic happiness to evaluate well-being in a state. p. 8
  
  It’s good to realize that the word about the utter inadequacy of GNP as a measure of well-being is growing in popularity. But we should move beyond our snapshot in time (as the authors later suggest) and beyond the immediate human world in measuring performance and well-being.
  
  Though leaders of the scientific community protested, scientists yielded to the demands, thus helping set the stage for further pressure on scientists from both governments and the industrial enterprises that governments subsidized and protected. Then legislation was passed (particularly in the United States) that placed limits on what scientists could study and how they could study it, beginning with the notorious House Bill 819, better known as the “Sea Level Rise Denial Bill,” passed in 2012 by the government of what was then the U.S. state of North Carolina . . . . pp. 11-12
  
  This is a really frightening realization, one that makes Tennessee’s outlawing of the teaching of evolution (as displayed in the Scopes trial) seem trivial. Really, in 21st century America this could happen? This is Orwellian—or more bluntly, Stalinist. (Orwell, of course, decried such lies; Stalin and his cohort used the airbrush on history and reality with abandon.)
  
  It is difficult to understand why humans did not respond appropriately in the early Penumbral Period, when preventive measures were still possible. Many have sought an answer in the general phenomenon of human adaptive optimism, which later proved crucial for survivors. p. 13
  
  We humans believe that we can always prevail in the last reel. Maybe, but reality isn't a Hollywood movie, and we test the limits at our peril. One thing that the authors don’t do in this “history” is to explore fully all of the likely social, political, and economic disasters that will likely befall humanity if our environment comes crashing down around us. The Four Horsemen of war, famine, pestilence, and death will ride freely throughout the world. To think that we can “innovate” our way out of such a situation amounts to fantasy, mere wishful thinking.
  
  Even more elusive to scholars is why scientists, whose job it was to understand the threat and warn their societies—and who thought that they did understand the threat and that they were warning their societies—failed to appreciate the full magnitude of climate change. To shed light on this question, some scholars have pointed to the epistemic structure of Western science, particularly in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was organized both intellectually and institutionally around “disciplines” in which specialists developed a high level of expertise in a small area of inquiry…. While reductionism proved powerful in many domains, particularly quantum physics and medical diagnostics, it impeded investigations of complex systems. Reductionism also made it difficult for scientists to articulate the threat posed by climatic change, since many experts did not actually know very much about aspects of the problem beyond their expertise. pp. 13-14
  
  Again, an important criticism of what is typical of academia: learning more and more about less and less. We can’t afford this now. Specialization and narrow focus can be a tool in some situations, but like many useful tools, it proves useful only for particular occasions.
  
  Other scientists promoted the ideas of systems science, complexity science, and, most pertinent to our purposes here, earth systems science, but these so-called holistic approaches still focused almost entirely on natural systems, omitting from consideration the social components. Yet in many cases, the social components were the dominant system drivers. It was often said, for example, that climate change was caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Scientists understood that those greenhouse gases were accumulating because of the activities of human beings—deforestation and fossil fuel combustion—yet they rarely said that the cause was people, and their patterns of conspicuous consumption. pp. 15-16
  
  This is a good point about systems and complexity theories. They are better (i.e., more useful in this context) than reductionist theories, but some do divorce humanity from Nature. We are at once a part of Nature and apart from Nature. We now need to appreciate just how much a part of Nature we are.
  
  Other scholars have looked to the roots of Western natural science in religious institutions. Just as religious orders of prior centuries had demonstrated moral rigor through extreme practices of asceticism in dress, lodging, behavior, and food—in essence, practices of physical self-denial—so, too, did physical scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries attempt to demonstrate their intellectual rigor through practices of intellectual self-denial. These practices led scientists to demand an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind, even those involving imminent threats. In an almost childlike attempt to demarcate their practices from those of older explanatory traditions, scientists felt it necessary to prove to themselves and the world how strict they were in their intellectual standards. Thus, they placed the burden of proof on novel claims—even empirical claims about phenomena that their theories predicted. This included claims about changes in the climate. p. 16
  
  This is a fascinating insight: scientists as the new ascetics. This helps me understand someone like the late Seth Roberts, who was (in essence) a human climate-change denier. I argued (in comments on his blog) that the judgment was a practical one requiring action, not one that should be governed by abstract principles of skepticism. My thinking came from my knowledge and experience with the common law tradition of making judgments about practical matters of liability. He never made clear (to me anyway) the nature of his skepticism in the face of so much contrary proof.
  
  Much of the argument surrounded the concept of statistical significance. Given what we now know about the dominance of nonlinear systems and the distribution of stochastic processes, the then-dominant notion of a 95 percent confidence limit is hard to fathom. Yet overwhelming evidence suggests that twentieth-century scientists believed that a claim could be accepted only if, by the standards of Fisherian statistics, the possibility that an observed event could have happened by chance was less than 1 in 20.. . . . We have come to understand the 95 percent confidence limit as a social convention rooted in scientists’ desire to demonstrate their disciplinary severity. p. 17
  
  I’m so glad to read this. I’m untrained in statistics (one of my many shortcomings), but it always seemed to me that the whole enterprise could be quite arbitrary. This is what they say: you have to do better than 1/20 to have “statistical significance”. That’s probably an extremely useful heuristic, but as a “law”, it’s junk. And as a guide for action? Maybe, but maybe not. The appropriateness of any standard depends upon what’s at stake, other sources of confirmation or disproof, and the time scale in which we must judge. In other words, a common law type of judgment: the likelihood of harm, the magnitude of possible harm, and the cost of alternatives serve as benchmarks for decision-making.
  
  Western scientists built an intellectual culture based on the premise that it was worse to fool oneself into believing in something that did not exist than not to believe in something that did. p. 17
  
  Again, which is the worst mistake depends on the practical outcome of the actions taken as a result of the belief or unbelief. The likely practical consequence of a mistake, not the cause of the possible mistake, should guide action.
  
  To the historian studying this tragic period of human history, the most astounding fact is that the victims knew what was happening and why. Indeed, they chronicled it in detail precisely because they knew that fossil fuel combustion was to blame. Historical analysis also shows that Western civilization had the technological know-how and capability to effect an orderly transition to renewable energy, yet the available technologies were not implemented in time. p. 35
  
  Exactly: how can we be so dumb? (And by dumb, I mean in action, not simply as a means of name-calling.) This is a social-political problem, a problem of persuasion and decision-making of the highest importance.
  
  The thesis of this analysis is that Western civilization became trapped in the grip of two inhibiting ideologies: positivism and market fundamentalism. p. 35
  Yes!
  
  [T]he overall philosophy is more accurately known as Baconianism. This philosophy held that through experience, observation, and experiment, one could gather reliable knowledge about the natural world, and that this knowledge would empower its holder. Experience justified the first part of the philosophy (we have recounted how twentieth-century scientists anticipated the consequences of climate change), but the second part—that this knowledge would translate into power—proved less accurate. p. 36
  
  This suggests an extreme naiveté in the scientific community and those who support them.
  
  A key attribute of the period was that power did not reside in the hands of those who understood the climate system, but rather in political, economic, and social institutions that had a strong interest in maintaining the use of fossil fuels. Historians have labeled this system the carbon-combustion complex: a network of powerful industries comprising fossil fuel producers, industries that served energy companies (such as drilling and oil field service companies and large construction firms), manufacturers whose products relied on inexpensive energy (especially automobiles and aviation, but also aluminum and other forms of smelting and mineral processing), financial institutions that serviced their capital demands, and advertising, public relations, and marketing firms who promoted their products. pp. 36-37
  
  While I’m skeptical of conspiracy theories in general, I do believe that the mindset of the "carbon-combustion complex" (in part held as an intentional choice and in part as a matter of false consciousness or akrasia). In any event, this mindset trumps rational judgment because it's based upon tangible special interests, and it's repeated frequently and widely disseminated. If the propaganda of communist governments had proven anywhere nearly as effective as the promotion of the "carbon-combustion complex" and market fundamentalist ideology, those regimes would probably still be around today.
  
  [A] large part of Western society was rejecting that knowledge in favor of an empirically inadequate yet powerful ideological system. Even at the time, some recognized this system as a quasi-religious faith, hence the label market fundamentalism. Market fundamentalism—and its various strands and interpretations known as free-market fundamentalism, neoliberalism, laissez-faire economics, and laissez-faire capitalism—was a two-pronged ideological system. pp. 37-38).
  
  The first prong held that societal needs were served most efficiently in a free market economic system. Guided by the “invisible hand” of the marketplace, individuals would freely respond to each other’s needs, establishing a net balance between solutions (“supply”) and needs (“demand”). The second prong of the philosophy maintained that free markets were not merely a good or even the best manner of satisfying material wants: they were the only manner of doing so that did not threaten personal freedom. p. 38
  
  Another example of good ideas gone bad. A market economy is better than other forms, but it isn't perfect, and as we humans tend to do, we overreached and made the market absolute.
  
  The ultimate paradox was that neoliberalism, meant to ensure individual freedom above all, led eventually to a situation that necessitated large-scale government intervention. p. 48
  
  This forecast is probably correct. How ironic!
  
  Period of the Penumbra The shadow of anti-intellectualism that fell over the once-Enlightened techno-scientific nations of the Western world during the second half of the twentieth century, preventing them from acting on the scientific knowledge available at the time and condemning their successors to the inundation and desertification of the late twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. pp. 59-60
  
  This leads me back to an insight that I’ve had since I started thinking about this world: human power—via technology—has outrun human wisdom. We've set loose a genie that we can’t control. We humans are the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and none but Nature (the Master Wizard, if you will) can restore order. And it will be messy.
  
  [Naomi Oreskes being interviewed] The nation in which our historian is writing is the Second PRC, because we imagine that after a period of liberalization and democratization, autocratic forces become resurgent in China, justified by the imperative of dealing with the climate crisis. EC [author Erik Conway]: Chinese civilization has been around a lot longer than Western civilization has and it’s survived a great many traumas. While I’m not sure the current government of China is likely to hold up well—the internal tensions are pretty glaring—it’s hard to imagine a future in which there’s no longer a place called China. And as Naomi explains, authoritarian states may well find it easier to make the changes necessary to survive rapid climate change. With a few exceptions, the so-called liberal democracies are failing to address climate change. p. 70
  
  The authors suggest that China will “go renewable” sooner than the West and will adapt more effectively than the Western nations. Maybe. Currently, China is hell-bent on further economic development, and we can see the effect every day in the air quality. [N.B. As I write these words I'm living in China.] The central government currently has the power to make drastic changes, but how drastic and under what conditions would create a major stress test. The assumption of anything less than a Hobbesian state of nature (or the rise of a Leviathan led by someone as bloodthirsty as a Stalin or a Hitler) seems overly optimistic to me if things deteriorate with the speed and to the extent that the authors suggest that it might.
  
  This was a one-sitting read. It goes along with William (Patrick) Ophuls and Thomas Homer-Dixon on my (electronic) shelf about the challenge of global climate change. I hope that we can prove their “history” false.
  
  P.S. The NYT article interview tipped me off to Oreskes and her work, and her TED talk on the practice of science.
  
  * In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future.
  John Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 53-54.
  
• 
  Antonomasia

  A verbal docudrama; science fiction as polemic by scientists (or historians of science). This is the length you might expect for a Kindle Single or long short story; about 20% of it comprises footnotes. Its narrator is a Chinese historian of 400 years hence.
  
  I found it most interesting of all on philosophy of science rather than on essentially familiar environmental material.
  
  It’s weird that I have fewer than ten ‘environment’ books on GR: other major interests of mine as a kid & teenager have endured in reading and shelving patterns. This one hasn’t quite gone the way of the dinosaur obsession, as I still read articles from time to time (which is what this ebook really is) – just seldom whole books.
  
  For pretty much the whole time my age has been in double figures, I’ve assumed that within the next one or two hundred years there will be global climate / environmental disaster and associated unrest, chaos and displacement, so this is preaching to the converted. I think in other possible futures when engaged with particular topics, but the default / screensaver is rather like this.
  
  An enduring quibble I have with semi-academic futurology is that no-one ever seems to combine it all. Where are the articles about a world containing nanobots and genetic engineering developments and language change/death and an increasingly policed internet and rumbling political and religious change AND climate problems and wars. (Another of the many things I might try writing if only I had the energy? Would be bloody depressing to be immersed in though.) Oreskes & Conway synthesise a little, combining recent western liberal dystopian idea ‘China will take over everything and human rights will get worse’ with the slightly older one ‘environmental catastrophe’. There isn’t much on near-future technologies except for an episode in which injecting stuff into the atmosphere ultimately makes things worse. It’s way too long ago to unearth references, but I’ve certainly read articles that made me agree with that projection and think, ‘well, duh’.
  
  Although I’m in agreement with the gist of this piece of writing, that brings me to the first of a series of problems with the detail.
  
  
  Problems
  
  -There are not enough references to research backing up projections of why X will happen and at the time it does in their scenario. A lot of the endnotes refer to what the ‘future historian’ narrator says people now thought in cultural terms. Certain ideas feel overly dramatic such as populations of entire continents wiped out with no explanation as to exactly why - and there for shock value rather than based on calculated projections.
  
  -I wanted to know if there were any references for the Chinese policies mentioned at various points – whether they are 100% fictional or based on recent pronouncements. My current impression of China is that it is concerned with matching the USA as an economic power and would be reluctant to impede that drive in any way.
  [A while after reading the book and writing this paragraph, I saw
  this report about air pollution having pushed China into action.]
  
  -It is lazy doing a re-run of the European fourteenth century by having a neo Black Death riding on the heels of famine, flood etc. AFAIK (and I’m interested in references if you know otherwise) Yersinia pestis doesn’t mutate into highly lethal forms as readily as, say, influenza. In its current form it simply isn’t as infectious as the medieval and early modern strain which appears to have been something of a metaphorical fluke. Of course infectious disease would be a big player in the scenario Oreskes & Conway describe, but I think the projection of Yersinia specifically as wiping out nearly half the global population is a cliché that really good speculative fiction writers would avoid.
  
  - Taking Collapse of Western Civilization as a piece of literary SF, there’s insufficient verisimilitude to match the conceit that it was written by a future Chinese historian.
  There’s a great deal of concentration on what Americans specifically were doing and saying which makes it feel obvious that an American is behind the text. Of course America is a leader, which too many other Western countries follow for better or IMO often worse, but it still looks disproportionate.
  The maps and their captions aren’t 100% convincing: they still seem like something made now with a particular intent, rather than just like our current maps of areas of land that have been washed away.
  
  -Whilst the narrator criticises the compartmentalised nature of current science, the authors do it themselves by concentrating on a few specific topics. Arguably it’s difficult to write as if outside one’s own culture, but it is to an extent possible in this particular area. (Perhaps this work is just too short to do more? The Q&A at the end hints at a desire to write an SF novel - this might be a tester.) I’ve long been a fan of interdisciplinary history which brings in evidence of past climate, among other things, from a variety of disciplines, and authors such as Jared Diamond are excellent popular examples of how it can all be put together.
  
  -In a worldwide disaster scenario, physical strength would become more important than it is in a predominantly office-work culture, so it seems too good to be true that the narrator’s future [albeit stabilised] society would be entirely non sexist - especially if cultures that are currently more sexist than the contemporary West were in the ascendant. I’m open to explanation though, and this is another instance where better referencing may have helped. As it is, this element seems more like a response to current controversies about representation in SFF rather than the scientific projection which, in this particular text, it ought to be.
  
  -Population is mentioned as a major part of the problem, but in contrast to carbon, fossil fuels and emissions, almost nothing is said directly about it except that the West considered Chinese population controls immoral - no detail on which aspects. Given the tone of the book to criticise many currently accepted practices which are illogical in an environmental context, it was surprising that it made no remarks about things like the provision of assisted conception services, or all the court time spent on seriously ill people who want to die.
  I think population is one of the most difficult topics to talk about (in the way of the old-fashioned proverb about religion and politics), because there might be some very sweet person listening who has lots of children, or has had IVF etc. So much so that I stalled at writing this paragraph for a month after posting all the above. but it's the job of books like this one not to pull punches, in a way that often can't happen in face to face social group conversations.
  
  
  Good points
  
  -It was useful to see reiterated in one place things like: the fact that carbon emissions have greatly increased this century in many highly developed countries who expected to have cut down, had they followed earlier plans; that fracking is a problem because it produces more fossil fuels to be burnt, not only because of local pollution around the sites; the ostrich “bridge to renewables” idea; Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol. My gut feeling when reading was always that the authors were placing events a bit too soon. On the other hand, that gut feeling was formed from what was said 20+ years ago.
  
  -Contemporary capitalism goes further than many of its favoured theorists. This isn't the only thing I've read this year saying that Hayek thought pollution was one of the acceptable reasons to curb free economic activity.
  
  - Makes the rather depressing point that conservation of endangered species is mostly futile in the medium to long term. It's one of those things, though, where there's an essential and entirely understandable hope in just trying. Though I agree that perhaps time, attention and resources are spent on this which may be more productive elsewhere.
  
  - The idea I found saddest to confront – whereas the general catastrophe idea is one I’ve long accepted – was the logical progression that governments everywhere may well become more authoritarian in order to manage the consequences of climate change such as large population displacements and major changes to ways of life and production. I tended to imagine an aftermath wilder and less governed, which I don’t find sinister in the same way - even if, much as I’d like to be, I could never be Sarah Connor, and would participate about as much as the wife from The Road. Really though, they're right. If there were still billions of people about, there would be some kind of infrastructure, not mere isolated bands.
  The narrator talks of the way some are, 3-400 years after the collapse described, considering going back to a democratic system (what ‘back’ is this in China?) but that there are many misgivings about it. There is an essential irony mentioned time and again that liberal states, via their neglect of environmental issues, brought about the very types of rule they wanted to avoid. (Which seems an idealised view of present governments, but anyway.) At times the narrator hints that democracy in general was the problem, but more often it’s implied that it was because governments were in the pockets of big business, and hamstrung by the universality of the system – if large companies decide to leave your country because of statutory changes, they can always go somewhere else.
  
  - It's actually on philosophy of science that this book turned out to be most interesting and valuable. There were two major, iconoclastic points.
  -> The current scientific standard of proof is too high, which means that too little, too late, is being done about environmental problems.
  -> The culture around type 1 (false positive, believing something which turns out not to be true) and type 2 errors (false negative, disbelieving something which turns out to be true) is unhelpful. It's considered so much better and more respectable to make a type 2 error.
  This gives me that 'whoosh' of sudden perspective on a world of things which I experienced when I first learned about Kuhn. There are so many purely idea-based arguments on the internet in which this is a factor, and there's an essential snobbery around the idea of believing something for which there isn't incontrovertible evidence. I think I try not to make this criticism out loud myself, but I have countless times navigated away from something I've started reading because "they sound like a bit of a crank" as if I don't want to get led down a path to ideas which will sound too off-the-wall to others, not get my hands dirty, not get infected. I dislike the over-used jargonisation of the word 'silenced', but there are most definitely instances where this biased standard leads to people silencing themselves.
  -> Of course, depending on which area of science you're thinking about, this might sound like an amazing or a dreadful idea. As well as regarding the environment, in the context of conservative old doctors who don't listen to a patient's experience and misdiagnose or dismiss them, it's very useful. But not many people would now want to get on an aeroplane or road bridge designed according to lower standards of proof.
  
  
  ---------------
  
  - This book could be overwhelmingly depressing to those who didn't already consider this a possible or probable future - or it could prompt a 'fuck it' hedonistic reaction - most of us can't do anything significant so let's enjoy things while they last. (I understand that Naomi Klein's new book takes a somewhat more optimistic view and hopes to prompt a direct action movement. I put it down partly to my age and the times I've lived in - someone who knew the movements of the 60s and 70s, which did make a difference, might see it differently - but I've always thought of such things as rather futile. As if to confirm my point, the only two demos I ever went on were about student tuition fees and the Iraq war. Though considering the environment in the context of personal decisions is a reflex I've always had, learned from childhood.)
  
  - In the day or two after finishing this book, a background idea having been pushed to the front of my mind, so many things acquired an overwhelming and poignant sweetness. Especially watching sporting events: that people could even travel from all over the world to these things, the landscapes they take place in which will change (I was watching a triathlon in the Scottish Highlands on The Adventure Show when the sense of this overwhelmed me, and I'm now enjoying all the skiing on Eurosport. Too much of it on wasteful artificial snow :(. )
  
  - I became aware in the days and weeks after reading, how the idea of the environment coming first and people being a problem to it is a foundation for some of my opinions. I have a deep sense about it that's perhaps quasi-religious. And though I'd half-realised for a while, it became clear to me that the reasons I will never shake what many would call my internalised ablism are to a significant, but not total, extent, environmental (given the specific nature of certain problems and resource needs, as well as being unable to manage in the lifestyle and conditions I would consider right). There's only been one person whose presence ever made me not feel it for a while - which was strange and amazing. Interestingly he was an emotionally-driven (and in the way I'd see it short-termist) humanist (human-first-ist?) in favour of getting rid of things that were a problem to humans even if it unbalanced ecosystems, although never mammals.
  
  - I also came to see that I have compartmentalised sets of values and opinions which developed at different times, some of which aren't terribly integrated. The ideas dating from my teenage years, of environment first (with the systems taking priority over, e.g. animals) would be called / are harsher, and they live in a completely separate compartment to the empathic stuff which developed most strongly later [that big psychology shelf] and which switch on most brightly when I am talking to or considering an individual. They occasionally meet in internal political debates I have with myself, e.g. How to change cultural expectations about having children and make a lot more people think that it's not necessarily a great thing to do, whilst also discouraging xenophobia and racism and hostility to large families, on benefits or otherwise. Or how to make sure only people who really need them have private vehicles - yet without ever making people medicalise and justify themselves if they don't want to. Impossible.
  
  -Whilst among books in general, Collapse of Western Civilisation is relatively expensive for its length (being the same price as, say a 400 page crime novel, though rather less than much literary fiction) – in the context of recently released books from university presses it measures up pretty well. A full length book would be £15-35. And for me at least it was very worthwhile for the philosophy of science material and the amount it gave me to think about.
• 
  Larry Blue

  TCOWC is a difficult book to describe and harder to figure out. My final analysis is that it is an extended political pamphlet using some of the tropes of Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) but not getting bogged down with those irritating requirements to have characters or plots, or even a story. Just an endless exposition.
  
  The conceit is that this is a report, by a faceless scholar in 2393, about the accelerated collapse of Earth's climate and the rolling disasters it precipitates in the late 21st century. The descriptions of "collapse" are sparse and vague. A quarter of the body of the pamphlet is devoted to a screed against 'Market Fundamentalism' and 'Positivism'. There is an extended reiteration of the authors previous book "Merchants of Doubt" and its somewhat questionable conclusions. There is also seemingly random praise of Paul Ehrlich and the 'Precautionary Principle'. About 20% of the book itself, a slim 104 pages, is an interview with the authors.
  
  The structure of the essay makes it hard to tell if it is the fictional scholar, in the future, assuming the rightness of authoritarian government and "Neo-Marxism" or the authors. Is the future scholar an unreliable narrator? Or should we take her word ex cathedra? Oh wait, they don't flesh out the character from the future so I can't make that judgement. It seems using a thin veil of fiction as a structure, they undermined their arguments.
  
  Perhaps I'm being somewhat harsh about this novella/screed/pamphlet/essay. I received it as a gift and from the title and blurb, assumed it was a little piece of Cli-Fi disaster porn. That is was, at best, an overly-long essay on climate change, scientific philosophy and political philosophy was very irritating. It does get a second star just for getting me thinking - not about climate change, but rather about writing structure and authorial choices and authorial fraud. I hope the authors take their earnings and spend them on a nice vacation on a warm beach.
• 
  Jose Moa

  Well with the pretext of a history work made by a human in China in a near future this book denounces the criminal irresponsability of politicians ,the fossil fuels corporations,part of scientific comunity,the furious neoliberalism that has destroyed the hardly conquered rights of workers and the compulsive consumist way of life of we the occidentals, in prevent the near future most destructive earth event in the last 250 million years when a runaway greenhouse effect,Sagan effect, known as the end permian event whiped the 95% of living species
  
  If the forecast of the authors is true ,and sure is so because are well and wisely informed,the mean temperatura of earth will rise till 11 centigrades degrees,the oceans acidic ,anoxic and dead,most of planet inhabitable ,the continents partially drowned,the insects the new kings of creation,the tropical illnes as malaria yelow fever and cholera reaching the poles and the starving living humans crowding near the poles the only habitable zone
  
  There are two subjects the authors no explicitally expose,the population growth that according some stimations would reache 11 billion people,to day is near 7.5, and so near doubling the problems,except the next hell shutdown the growth, and the meat conection, for made a kilogram of meat are necessary many kilogams of grass and cereals and for this much more cultivated lands and so destroying forests and rainforests making yet worse the situation,the biofuels have similar problems,and we the occidentals are meat adicct.
  
  Personally i am very pessimist witht this matter ,we the people have a lot of inertia in change our living habits and only a intense canpaign of information and some sacrifice could alíviate the coming hard times,if not our grandchildren will curse us an the solution will come very very hard way.
  
  
  
• 
  Holly

  What an ingenious way of presenting the stark truths of climate change denial. The authors are historians of science and have framed this as speculative fiction: this pretends to be a dry retrospective survey from the year 2393 of the late years of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century - what future historians will call the Penumbral Age - and how and why the citizens of the Western nations denied climate change and refused to make the needed changes to avert or ameliorate it. A part of me appreciated the dry, mordant satire in this post-historical exercise, but it made a grim and crucial read on the day after Trump got elected. (#notmypresident)
  
  Other good things about this little book are that all the cited sources are real, and for its short length it's quite dense with concepts. The chapter explaining the history of neoliberalism and its link to climate denial is excellent: the ironies that the anti-intervention and anti-regulation neoliberal free-market ideology that caused and abetted the collapse itself makes authoritarian regimes and centralized government intervention necessary in the end.
  
  
• 
  Richard Reese

  Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway are science historians, and they are hopping mad at folks who deny that humans are the primary cause of climate change. Their outrage inspired them to write The Collapse of Western Civilization, which has been selling furiously in its first month on the market. It’s a 112-page science fiction rant.
  
  The story is a discourse on the Penumbral Age (1988-2093), written in 2393 by a Chinese historian. The Penumbral Age was a time of paralyzing anti-intellectualism, when humankind failed to take action on an emerging climate catastrophe, which ended up sinking western civilization. In presenting this story, the authors are rubbing the denialists’ noses in the steaming mess they created, similar to the process of housebreaking a crappy puppy.
  
  By 1988, scientists could clearly see the approach of a huge storm, and they dutifully reported their findings. They believed that once the public was informed, they would rationally do what needed to be done. But the public shrugged, and the scientists were too dignified to run out into the streets, jump up and down, and scream warnings. Also, the scientists were too conservative — temperatures ended up rising far more than they had predicted.
  
  Early in the twenty-first century, many more people could see the storm, but still nothing was done. A dark villain moved to center stage — the carbon-combustion complex, a disgusting mob of slimy creeps who made a lot of money in activities dependent on burning fossil fuel. They created think tanks that hurled excrement and insults at the annoying climate scientists. Screw-brained economists hissed that government should take a long nap and let the invisible hand of the market magically make the bad stuff go away. (My favorite line is, “The invisible hand never picks up the check.”)
  
  And so, in a heavy fog of mixed messages, everyone resumed staring at their cell phones, and the world went to heck. There were terrible storms and droughts. The ice caps melted, and this opened the floodgates to the Great Collapse (2073 to 2093), when sea levels were eight meters higher (26 ft.). Twenty percent of humankind was forced to move to higher ground during the Great Migration, about 1.5 billion people. Thus, 100 percent of humankind would have been 7.5 billion — in 2073 — an amazingly high number!
  
  I just let the cat out of the bag. This book is a gusher of intoxicating hope and optimism. While the Great Collapse blindsided the hopelessly rotten governments of the west, China did OK. The wise leaders of the Second People’s Republic of China maintained a strong central government, free of corruption. When sea levels rose, they quickly built new cities inland, in safe locations. When leaders have integrity, miracles happen.
  
  And it gets better. In 2090, a female scientist in Japan created a GMO fungus that gobbled up the greenhouse gas doo-doo, the storm passed, and the survivors lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, by that time, there was a total dieoff in Africa and Australia. Luckily, the northern folks, who contributed heavily to the disaster, survived (minus the polar bears).
  
  The authors note that it’s now too late to halt climate change; it’s time for damage control. The whole thing could have been prevented if only we had rapidly shifted to non-carbon-based energy sources. Really? No expert with both oars in the water believes that renewable energy could ever replace more than a small portion of the energy we currently produce from non-renewable fuels. If we phased out the extraction of fossil energy, our way of life would go belly up. The status quo is a dead end, and rational change provides few benefits when it’s a hundred years too late.
  
  Solar panels and wind turbines are not made of pixie dust, rainbows, and good vibes. They are produced by high-impact industrial processes. They require the consumption of non-renewable resources. They generate energy that is used to temporarily keep an extremely unsustainable society on life support. Hydropower dams are ecological train wrecks. The authors lament that carbon-free nuclear energy became unhip because of a few wee boo-boos.
  
  The book gives high praise to the precautionary principle, which is old-fashioned common sense with a spiffy title. If you see an emerging problem, nip it in the bud. If a new technology is not perceived to be 100 percent safe by a consensus of scientists, forget about it until its safety can be proven beyond all doubt. Duh! Common sense says that humankind made a huge mistake by ignoring the warnings of scientists in 1988.
  
  The precautionary principle would also have blocked the development of nuclear technology. It was spectacularly stupid to build 440 nuclear reactors before the wizards had a plan for storing the wastes, which remain highly toxic for more than 100,000 years. By 2073, all of these reactors will be far beyond their designed life expectancy. Decommissioning can take decades, and it can cost more than the original construction. If the 440 reactors are not decommissioned before the grid shuts down, each will do a lively impersonation of Fukushima, and spew deadly radiation forever. Or maybe they will be disastrously decommissioned by war, earthquakes, terrorists, or economic meltdown.
  
  Imagine a graph that spans 4,000 years, from A.D. 1 to 4000. The trend line is fairly flat, except for a brief 200-year period in the middle, which looks like a tall spike, as narrow and sharp as an icicle. As I write in 2014, we’re very close to the tip of this icicle. This spike is the petroleum bubble, and its trend line is nearly the same as the bubbles of food production, human population, and resource extraction. What’s important to grasp here is that the way of life we consider normal is an extreme deviation in the 200,000-year human journey. It’s a temporary abnormality, and it can never again be repeated.
  
  Oil production is quite close to peak. The huge deposits are past peak. Today we are extracting oil from lean, challenging deposits, and the output is expensive. Costs will rise, production will decline, and economies will stumble until Game Over, which seems likely well before 2050. Industrial agriculture has an expiration date. (See The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb.)
  
  Unfortunately, after the peak, our carbon problems are not going to fade away in a hundred years. The book imagines that the global temperature in 2060, fanned by positive feedback loops, will be 11° C warmer than in 1988. It’s hard to imagine agriculture surviving such a huge transition, consequently a population of 7.5 billion in 2073 seems impossible. While the authors wring their hands about rising sea level, Brian Fagan (in The Great Warming) warns that the far greater threat of warming is megadroughts, like one in California that began in A.D. 1250 and lasted 100 years.
  
  The bottom line here is that, even if our enormous carbon emissions were perfectly harmless, we have created such a cornucopia of perplexing predicaments that the coming years are certain to be exciting and memorable. By definition, an unsustainable way of life can only be temporary. It’s fun to dream, but I have a hunch that reality may not fully cooperate with the story’s imaginary hope and optimism. Reality bats last.
  
• 
  Steve

  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... 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... Michael Klare's All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change,
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and, for more literary readers, Elizabeth Rush's Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore,
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ... 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).
• 
  Miles

  This is definitely the best resource I’ve encountered for a crash course in the root causes of climate change and the potential negative outcomes if the global community continues to ignore the problem. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have condensed years of research into a tiny book––all the better to penetrate the noosphere of a world demanding easily-digested reading options.
  
  Presented as a fictional academic paper from the perspective of a Chinese historian three hundred years in the future, this text is packed with useful insights, the most intriguing of which are a handful of big-picture assessments of the recent historical trends that have contributed to runaway carbon emissions and the intractability of governments in addressing the problem with the seriousness it deserves. The book’s tone is historically detached, chiding, playful, and ultimately chilling as our fictional narrator blithely scrutinizes the reader’s confused present and bleak future. Oreskes and Conway paint a hellish picture of 21st century Western life that would be alarmist if the real risk were not so imminent, so thoroughly empirically supported, and so extreme in magnitude.
  
  One of the intellectual highlights here is Oreskes and Conway’s critique of reductionism/specialization in the practice of science, which they claim as the primary contributor to the scientific community’s sluggish attempts to popularize and push for government action to address what ought to be extraordinarily disturbing data. Reductionism, they posit, “impeded investigations of complex systems” and “also made it difficult for scientists to articulate the threat posed by climate change, since many experts did not actually know very much about aspects of the problem beyond their expertise” (14). This trend meant that there was little inquiry into “systems science, complexity science, and…earth systems science” (15). This seems a fair and accurate complaint, and yet the authors say nothing about how an appropriately holistic science would function in practice. To support a scientific apparatus capable not only of investigating specialized fields (which no doubt would still be necessary), but also of identifying and articulating robust patterns between disciplines in order to fashion a better picture of the ecological landscape, would require far more public and private investment than scientific endeavors currently enjoy, at least in the United States. Just another reason why public funding for science is so important.
  
  The other, more destructive component of the climate problem is the western addiction to neoliberalism, or what Oreskes and Conway refer to as “market fundamentalism.” This ideology is all too familiar to anyone who has watched with dismay as the economic obsession with market autonomy has eroded the public sphere over the last several decades, sidelining infrastructure, worker’s rights, and sensible pollution prevention in favor of the consolidation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Oreskes and Conway cleverly point out that individual freedom, the cornerstone concept of the neoliberal worldview, will be drastically imperiled in a world where we do nothing to prevent climate change: “Neoliberalism, meant to ensure freedom above all, led eventually to a situation that necessitated large-scale government intervention” (48). The authors warn that if we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to pursue short term profits that wreck the environment, disasters will become the norm, and governments will increasingly be forced to intervene in order to retain whatever semblance of peace can be salvaged from the chaos. Without swift government action to implement proper regulations and actively bolster a transition to a green, sustainable economy, it’s not absurd to suggest that future Westerners may very well experience martial law on a mass scale.
  
  Most disquieting is Oreskes and Conway’s suggestion that the failure of Western civilization to respond adequately to this crisis might be construed as evidence for the impotency of the democratic way of life, even to the point of discrediting democracy as a desirable form of political organization for future generations: “By blocking anticipatory action, neoliberals did more than expose the tragic flaws in their own system: they fostered expansion of the forms of governance they most abhorred” (52). The authors imagine that autocratic China, while suffering serious losses of its own, would muster more efficient and large-scale responses compared to Western nations, thus obviating climate change’s worst consequences and retaining the basic structure of Chinese civilization. Indeed, China’s recent environmental woes have already caused the government to enact green reforms, which they can institute by fiat rather than having to push them through a body of elected representatives. Conversely, many democratic nations still struggle to wrest the legislative power of elected officials from corporate influence and systemic political gridlock. Confronting climate change, then, may mean more than just trying to avoid disaster or preserve biological flourishing––it might mean proving to the world that letting people have a say in how their government is run is a fundamentally efficacious idea that’s here to stay, and not some whimsical, ill-fated experiment that occurred as we blindly rushed from one feudal era to the next.
  
  With the holiday season fast approaching, this is an excellent gift for people who don’t understand the climate problem’s urgency or who want to learn about it but aren’t sure how to get started. For more in-depth looks at the political, economic, and technological requirements for a just transition to a better future, I recommend Naomi Klein’s
  This Changes Everything and Jeremy Rifkin’s
  The Zero Marginal Cost Society.
  
  This review was originally published on my blog,
  words&dirt.
• 
  Harris

  “The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future” is a short, quickly digested, thought provoking, worrying, but ultimately hopeful piece of creative fiction. I found it particularly, and frighteningly, topical reading during a 52 degree December night in Minnesota, as drought and now flooding beset California and we are gearing up for another
  even warmer year in 2015.
  
  Written as an introduction to the Penumbral Age (1988-2093) by scholars in the Second People’s Republic of China, circa 2393, it reads like something that could be assigned to first year students in a low level world history course, an easily understandable summary of the elements that resulted in the collapse of world population a few centuries previously (including a particularly amusing glossary of “archaic terms” like “environment,” “positivism,” and “capitalism.”)
  
  While dropping a few hints of future societies aside from China, including the United States of North America and the Nordo-Scandinavian Union and the horrific extinction of human society from the continents of Australia and Africa, much of it explores how our current political, scientific, and social cultures are preventing us from preventing what we know is happening in front of our eyes. During the Penumbral Age, we can look forward to much turmoil and strife as nations collapse once the climate begins to spiral out of control thanks to the melting of permafrost and belated attempts to combat it with atmospheric emissions and genetically engineered lichen; Food shortages, desertification, flooding, and plagues rendered many places uninhabitable, sending mass migrations of “eustatic” refugees to higher ground; it’s too late for Amsterdam, Bangladesh, and Florida. Still, there is also much hope to be had; according to this future, humanity has survived with much of the technological and cultural knowledge of the past intact and are able to look back and discuss the mistakes of the past.
  
  The book ends with some very interesting and thoughtful comments by the authors on their use of science fiction to comment on the current responses and ideas of climate change. Will this year, as the article linked earlier in this review suggests, become a turning point that will, in some way, nudge us away from the future presented here?
• 
  Maria Gilbert

  You can read this book in an hour. It is short but clearly had a lot of research put into it. I am on the waiting list for the Uninhabitable Earth, and from the original article that book was published based off of, it seems that this is a shorter, less scientific version of that. I think it is intended to reveal to people how bad climate change is projected to get, but to me, I have done a lot of research on the topic and I feel if anything it is optimistic. Because (spoiler alert, but this is not a book that can really be spoiled) in the end a scientist discovers a fungus that can soak up crazy amounts of atmospheric carbon and humanity survives, though on a less pleasant Earth and will many casualties. I really hope that someone comes up with such an elegant solution for removing carbon from the atmosphere, but we are not currently headed in the direction of such a solution being funded as the fossil fuel companies want to keep selling their product and making their products, and many other companies, are learning how to profit off of the effects of climate change so they have an incentive to lobby the politicians against regulating carbon emissions and other pollutants. If this book comes true, I will be relieved actually. Because in this book they actually start trying to solve the problem.
• 
  Candiss

  Pre-read thoughts: Speculative fiction? Speculative non-fiction? Speculative theory? Oh, how I love cross-genre works! And if I might learn something along the way, well, someone had best fetch the smelling salts, due to imminent swoon.
  
  Written by scientists, this is a hypothetical dispatch from a scholar some 300+ years in the future, detailing how certain catastrophic events (of climate, economics, etc.) played out between our time and his. It is based on actual published scientific data but is presented in a speculative form, because the scientist authors felt it might have more impact on the general public's thinking if presented this way. (I've read that they consider themselves fans of Dune and Kim Stanley Robinson, so this probably influenced their proclivities, as well.) All I know is that I am intrigued to the point of bursting, and I can't believe my local library has a copy.
  
  More thoughts will follow once I've read the thing.
• 
  Pavol Hardos

  Netreba sa nechať odradiť názvom, toto je veľmi pekná a dôležitá esej. Formou je to *akože* vysvetlenie historika z 24. storočia, čo viedlo k neschopnosti západnej civilizácie včas riešiť globálne zmeny klímy. Vysoko pertinentné, nečakajte žiadne detailné scifi, osudy ľudstva sú len naznačené, autorov viac zaujíma - skrze fiktívny scifi odstup - vysvetliť dôvody pre ktoré vedci nedokázali lepšie odkomunikovať fakt klimatických zmien a ich riešenia, ako aj "politicko-ekonomický" komplex faktorov, ktoré privodili neochotu politicky čokoľvek riešiť (resp. až motivovanú nedôveru k základným vedeckým poznatkom).
  
  Ak vám (ako mne) ide na nervy, keď sa krátka časopisecká esej vydá knižne a náááátiáááhne sa kreatívnou grafikou a sádzaním textu, uberte jednu hviezdičku.
• 
  Lucas

  This book had an interesting premise: it's a history book written 400 years in the future by a Chinese historian detailing the collapse of western civilization precipitated by global warming. The book is partly historical (everything before 2014 is real and actually happened), and the speculations are intended to be based on modern science. The author was very critical of overly cautious modern scientific epistemology, which doesn't factor cost benefit analyses and risk into its policy recommendations. I'm not convinced that excessive caution is the main reason why recommendations for solving global warming are being ignored. I think the main reason the recommendations are being ignored is political, not scientific. Indeed, departing from otherwise accepted standards of statistical rigor would allow climate change "skeptics" to sow more FUD, and would only deliver a slightly more apocalyptic vision of what's coming.
  
  It's also extremely critical of free market fundamentalism and economics more generally. Yet many economists have put forward good policy recommendations about how to begin addressing climate change most cost-effectively (ending fossil fuel subsidies, a hefty carbon tax, and increased investment in basic research on energy). Indeed, a carbon tax has
  nearly
  universal support among surveys of economists.
  
  What we've ended up with is a confusing morass of subsidies and regulations from tax credits for electric automobiles to massive subsidies for ethanol biofuels. We didn't end up with that weird assortment of bad regulations because of poor academic research in either climate science, economics or energy, but instead from a crappy political structure full of powerful vested interests, and an abysmal set of international incentives. To chock this up to a destructive epistemology and a rhetorically convincing yet destructive ideology (ie neoconservatism) is to deny reality.
  
  Overall, the book was frightening, entertaining and informative, though not entirely satisifying as a narrative. It can be pretty preachy, and ends with a Deus ex machina ending that's pretty out of left field. Uncharacteristically, it's also not based on modern understanding of science. I wish it had explored geoengineering in more detail (I find it hard to believe there would only be two attempts using two methods). In particular, ocean fertilization wasn't mentioned at all, despite having been the only geoengineering technique to have been actually tried on a moderate scale.
• 
  David

  A great concept--fictionally posing as historians in the year 2393 looking back at the 2010s and the non-response to climate change. Overall theme: What were they thinking? There are extensive references to real-life publications backing up the historians' descriptions of what we knew, when we knew it, and what we didn't do about it.
  
  That said, I was hoping for something more gripping--an actual novel with characters and their struggles in a future climate-wrecked world. Margaret Atwood they're not, though.
  
  Also, I'm still not convinced of the explanation that they give of the motivations of the climate action resisters. (Do you like that description better than "climate deniers" with its shades of holocaust?) As in Merchants of Doubt, they attribute it to "free market fundamentalism." They oversimplify it almost down to "any government interference in the Holy Free Market gets us on a slippery slope to totalitarian communism." Cue Dr. Strangelove's paranoid fantasies of his "preciousss bodily fluidsss" being sapped away. Personally, I think there's a lot more pure economic self-interest (read:greed) in it than they Oreskes and Conway allow for, among other things.
  
  All that said, why 4 stars? Call it a "per-page" rating if you like. This is an elegantly small book that you can read in an hour or two.
• 
  Sotiris Karaiskos

  Αφού διάβασα ένα βιβλίο για το τι πρέπει να γίνει για να αποφύγουμε μία καταστροφική κλιματική αλλαγή είπα να διαβάσω και κάτι για το τι θα γίνει αν δεν κάνουμε τίποτα. Από την οπτική γωνία του ιστορικού του μέλλοντος στο μακρινό έτος 2393 παρακολουθούμε το χρονικό της κατάρρευσης του δυτικού πολιτισμού υπό το βάρος καταστροφών κλιματικών φαινομένων που οι κυβερνώντες ήξεραν ότι έρχονται αλλά προτίμησαν να μην κάνουν τίποτα ουσιαστικό φοβούμενοι μην επηρεαστούν οι οικονομίες των χωρών τους. Φυσικά αυτός ο ιστορικός αδυνατεί να κατανοήσει πώς οι άνθρωποι της εποχής μας μπορέσαν να φερθούν τόσο ανόητα.
• 
  Dennis

  Well, that was interesting! Naomi Oreskes combines scientific facts and fiction to envision a world in the 24th century. From this future perspective, Oreskes, who is a historian of science at Harvard, is able to take an outside view on Western society to show how it has failed to prevent human-induced climate change which consequently resulted in the demise of Western civilization as the dominating power on the world stage.
  Oreskes uses a multitude of scientific, political, and historical facts to show how the Anthropocene started, and how we, in the 21st century, bafflingly fail to prevent the harm we are causing to ourselves.
• 
  Kaitlin

  This book is very informative when it comes to climate change and how it effecting the whole world badly unless we start fixing the problem right away.
• 
  Leif

  Less a book than an essay; less fiction than a recitation of contemporary environmentalism from the backwards look of a spectral future historian. There is very little of the imagination here and much of scientific anger and angst. I would think this is best read as a primer in climate change as a macro-phenomenon than an attempt to think through the social, cultural, and human effects of climate change, let alone some kind of speculative fiction which it is patently not.
• 
  Andy

  Cool piece of speculative future worldbuilding from a pair of historians of science. Interesting application of the SF method of political critique.
• 
  Ann

  The Collapse of Western Civilization is an amazing combination of science fiction/futurist writing and social/scientific/political/economic critique. Oreskes is in her element with crisp writing and a thought provoking perspective from a future Earth looking back at the chaos we are living through now. A book that cannot be put down. Oreskes includes philosophical and social insights with a historical point of view which makes sense of the path we currently tread and where this path is currently tending. The big take-away is what we choose to do with these insights and perspective: are we only part of a bigger machine...or can we have an impact and change the course of history, change the fate of the Earth and ourselves? Highly recommended.
• 
  John Lauro

  Out of all the things I’ve had to read for school: not bad. But like is it that convincing: no