PRI's Living On Earth is a great source of thoughtful news about the environment. The quote used for the title of this post comes from a Steve Curwood interview with Naomi Oreskes about the book she and Eric Conway have recently published: The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future.
The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and—finally—the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar 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—failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization.
More below the
Orange Omnilepticon.
The book by Oreskes and Conway is an extrapolation from where we are today, and where the consequences of Global Warming and our failure to meet the challenge could take us. It's available in both print and electronic formats, and it's generating some attention - but more would be a good thing. The Living On Earth interview gives an overview of it and some of the elements behind it. (Transcript and Audio at the link.) Here's a few excerpts from Steve Curwood's and Naomi Oreskes discussion.
CURWOOD: So why does a historian write fiction?
ORESKES: Well, Erik and I were struggling with some way to convey something important that we felt we had come to understand: people really weren't getting why climate change really mattered, and lots of people had the impression that climate change was something that was just about polar bears. So we wanted to write something that would convey why this is not just an issue about polar bears; this is an issue about us, about our way of life, and also about our institutions—about our economic and political and democratic institutions.
This is a bit that is probably going to make wing nut heads explode, if it hasn't already.
CURWOOD: So the one civilization that comes out comparatively well in your novel is China. Of course China, in some respects, is the oldest civilization on the planet, they've been continuously operating for the last 5,000 or so years, but why did you pick China?
ORESKES: Well, there were two reasons. The first is the one you suggested: that China is the oldest continuously existing civilization on Earth. So just from a simple logical, practical point of view, it seemed most plausible that China would continue, even if other civilizations did not. But we also wanted to bring out this ironic point that if things really start to go bad, it's going to be the authoritarian countries that are more in a position to take control of the economy and relocate people, deal with food shortages and food riots. So we wanted to bring out that point: that if you really care about democracy, you want to be doing everything your power to stop climate change because disruptive climate change will not be friendly to liberal democracies.
And if the above doesn't do it, this observation by Oreskes certainly will.
...We've known about the reality of climate change for a long time now, and we've been watching the effects of climate change for at least 10, 15 years now. To think that the market on its own will somehow miraculously solve this problem is in my opinion just wishful thinking, and so we're trying to bring attention to the fact that while there are many good things about market-based economies, we face a really significant problem that's not going to be solved by the free market on its own. It hasn't been solved by today and there's no evidence to suggest that it will be solved. And so thinking about that wishful thinking, that kind of magical thinking is really, really crucial to understanding how to break the logjam and figure out what we really need to do about this issue.
Read/Listen to the entire interview, and
pick up a copy of the book or download it while you're at it. And if you're really in a climate action evangelical mood, get several copies and donate them to your local schools and libraries. Maybe they'll throw out those copies of Atlas Shrugged the free market fundamentalists are spreading everywhere.
If you're not hearing Living On Earth on a local radio station, bookmark their web site. You can find transcripts and audio files of their weekly shows. (You can also donate.)