Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A sneak preview of the next level of climate activism.
The Most Honest Book About Climate Change Yet
William T. Vollmann’s latest opus is brilliant, but it offers no comfort to its readers.
NATHANIEL RICH
OCTOBER 2018 ISSUEAuthors like to flatter themselves by imagining for their work an “ideal reader,” a cherubic presence endowed with bottomless generosity, the sympathy of a parent, and the wisdom of, well, the authors themselves. In Carbon Ideologies, William T. Vollmann imagines for himself the opposite: a murderously hostile reader who sneers at his arguments, ridicules his feeblemindedness, scorns his pathetic attempts at ingratiation. Vollmann can’t blame this reader, whom he addresses regularly throughout Carbon Ideologies, because she lives in the future, under radically different circumstances—inhabiting a “hotter, more dangerous and biologically diminished planet.” He envisions her turning the pages of his climate-change opus within the darkened recesses of an underground cave in which she has sought shelter from the unendurable heat; the plagues, droughts, and floods; the methane fireballs racing across boiling oceans. Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on insects and recycled urine, and regards with implacable contempt her ancestors, who, as Vollmann tells her, “enjoyed the world we possessed, and deserved the world we left you.”
Carbon Ideologies is a single work published in two parts, No Immediate Dangerand No Good Alternative, the bifurcation due to the insistence of Vollmann’s weary publisher and the limitations of modern bookbinding. Of all the writers working today, Vollmann must be the most free: He writes fiction, essays, monographs, criticism, memoir, and history, usually merging several forms at once, taking on subjects as diverse as Japanese Noh theater, train hopping, and the Nez Perce War, all the while dilating to whatever length suits him. (After 25 books, his career word count now rivals Zane Grey’s.)
…
Nearly every book about climate change that has been written for a general audience contains within it a message of hope, and often a prod toward action. Vollmann declares from the outset that he will not offer any solutions, because he does not believe any are possible: “ Nothing can be done to save [the world as we know it]; therefore, nothing need be done.” This makes Carbon Ideologies, for all its merits and flaws, one of the most honest books yet written on climate change. Vollmann’s undertaking is in the vanguard of the coming second wave of climate literature, books written not to diagnose or solve the problem, but to grapple with its moral consequences.
…
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/
Author William T. Vollmann seems a bit special even for a climate advocate. Back in April this year, Vollmann called for “regulatory hell” to force everyone to accept a greener lifestyle – an insight Vollman apparently reached by bathing his face in gamma rays, and other risky sounding activities.
My first thought after reading The Atlantic review was that I would rather choose the diet of radioactive insects and recycled urine than read Vollmann’s latest opus. But perhaps I am being unfair – after all, I haven’t read the work itself, just The Atlantic reviewer’s impression of the work.
If Vollmann wants to send Anthony a reviewer’s copy, I shall make an effort to read at least the first chapter, and report my impressions.
He says nothing can be done…then why write the freaking book?
Money
Oh well , if there is nothing to be done, I guess we”ll just have to grin and bare it with the current pleasant climate and relatively cheap and abundant energy we have been blessed with.
What is it we are ‘baring’?
What is it we are ‘baring’?
Word Naz*s.
Well, with all that heat, no one will need clothes.
Hopefully, it’s pleasant to look at.
bear breasts are good.
Too bad bikini (or less) weather seems to be over where I live. Oh well, the bears heaven’t gone into hibernation yet. 🙂 🙂
Just don’t get to close to the bears when you are admiring their breasts, gnomish.
He wrote it to sell and make money.
gotta love how the commies are all about money and capitalism when it suits their purposes, and in the same breath demonizing capitalism.
Engels came from an independently wealthy family and was one of the original “limousine liberals”. Whenever Marx got behind in his rent, which was often, Engels would pick up the tab so the family wouldn’t face eviction and Marx could keep writing his anti-capitalist agitprop.
Two books it would seem. Vollman probably needs a good copy editor.
Vol 1 is about 600 pages and Vol 2 is 688. Wotalotatrees
Won’t somebody think about the
childrentrees? /sarcBelieve his two volumes would make a great semester project for a graduate English’ honors class. The assignment? Combine and edit these two oxford tomes down to a minimal number of lucid pages (minimum required to be called a book generally is at least 100 + pages, or somewhere north of 50,000 words.). Students with the lowest number of pages that made sense and followed some sort of documented logic would get the A’s, next range the B’s and so on.
First rule of good writing–never waste a reader’s time.
Have no inclination to waste mine with these doorstops. Can’t imagine what this scribbler took 1200 pages to say that hasn’t been clarified in well-written, referenced, article-length pieces on WUWT. Do understand The Atlantic’s intention and bias for hawking it, however.
You shouldn’t give students an impossible task. In order to get something that “made sense and followed some sort of documented logic” would require them tossing the source material completely and making something up out of whole cloth which would violate the “combine and edit” portion of the assignment.
After cutting the parts that don’t make sense, it would be one blank sheet of paper, no?
Nah, first and only printing should use one or two trees. After they return the unsold copies and recycle should be practically carbon neutral.
Pass the radioactive cockroaches would you?
A few years ago the dude wrote a 5 volume 3000 page treatise on violence titled “Rising Up and Rising Down”.
One suspects an undisciplined mind.
In a way this person is right that nothing can be done because CO2 levels are not the control knob. Stop all Human CO2 emissions now and nobody will notice any difference from natural cycles. After all global warming becomes climate change is blamed on all natural climate change anyway, the sun and oceans.
Only in the authors mind does a temperature rise lead to such shortage of water forced to drink you own urine or cause anything radioactive.
I can’t take becoming radioactive at all even remotely serious, so the only alternative is for a much drier climate.
Does the author care to even show any examples of this happening ever?
The fact being during geological times the driest periods of the Earth by far were at the coldest periods of the ice ages. We know this because the drier the climate, the more dust particles were present in proxies that had once been in the atmosphere.
Gotta say – if THAT’s his picture, based on his expression, he must have bowl full already in front of him.
He’s working on a Nobel Prize in Literature. He needs the cash.
Does the author explain how an increase in CO2 will cause everything to become radioactive?
That one is truly mystifying and bizarre. Last I checked CO2 isn’t radioactive and neither is methane, unless some agency irradiates and transmutes the elements in the molecules for each one.
Thats simple. Financial systems collapse and with them our capacity to safely shut down 400 nuke plants.
RyanS
Only in your own dystopia little world.
I don’t think that bots are affected by radiation though.
Pretty sure someone at each plant would be responsible enough to trigger the SCRAM before leaving to join the food riots…
When I was in the Navy (EM1/SS), we where told that “SCRAM” was an acronym for the “Super Critical Reactor Ax Man”. Enrico Fermi’s early reactor “pile” experiments in Chicago had university football players standing by with an ax to cut the rope on huge bags of graphite beads suspended over the uranium pile.
[Borated water? The beads would have fallen, then bounced off the pile of graphite bricks and rolled away from the reactor. .mod]
Ummm … that would be Super Critical ROD Axe Man …
IC1 (SS)
It was “Safety Control Rod Axe Man” when I went through NPS in the mid 80s but most folks assumed this was a backronym.
I heard it was “Sh*t, cut the rope, ax-man!” S1W 1977.
Do your fingers EVER consult your brain before you type a
screedreply?Judging by his posting history: never
How does that follow? And why do financial systems collapse?
government intervention and central banking.
Unreliable power supplies?
For the same reasons they will collapse if there is no global warming. Over leverage and excessive debt. Its scheduled to hit the US in 16 years.
The last worker to leave the control room can execute a controlled shut down. And, since he probably lives within a reasonable driving distance, will have incentive to do so.
Don’t worry, Homer Simpson should take care of the 400 nuke plants shut down.
Better come down, Ryan. There’s not enough oxygen up there on that pedestal. It’s affecting your thinking.
How exactly does the bankruptcy of a bank cause plant operators to forget how to shut down a nuclear plant?
Okay, assuming each and every one of these power plants go all Hollywood Evil on us, would you like to describe in rational terms just how high you expect these 400 plants to rise planet wide radiation levels compared to the current baseline.
Stop eating bananas and basil nuts!
“… and with them our capacity to safely shut down 400 nuke plants.”
If your vision of the future is dystopian, you can generate all sorts of Hollywood-style fantasies.
What kind of nuke plants? Some people in the world didn’t stall at 1970-era technologies. And why would anyone shut down a power plant in the first place? Because Ehrlich won the argument are we are going to start killing 6 billion people to ‘reduce the population’?
In case anyone has not noticed by now, this planet is radioactive. Standing outside exposes one to continuous bombardment by ionizing radiation from the sun and space. “Purists” need to get over the fact that “radiation” is not dangerous “because it exists”. Get a grip! The poison of the medicine is in the dose.
Walking around the Library of Congress exposes one to 1.5-6 times more radiation than is experience by visiting a nuclear power station.
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Capitol.html
Yea, that’s what I was wondering. Maybe someone with low self-esteem could buy this book, read it, and let us know?
It’s the radioactive form of CO2 don’t ya know. Wait for the movie trilogy with sharks too.
Radiocarbonnado?
The atomic weight of carbon is 12.0107. Approximately one carbon atom in 1 trillion is C-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon. It has a half-life of about 5,700 years. It is formed by bombardment of cosmic radiation. However, given its decay rate, it exists in steady state on our planet. Just about all elements have large numbers of radioactive isotopes.
I’d guess that he’s the only one who knows that it’s not normal carbon in the CO2 that is causing all the problems. It must be man-made “super carbon 241”.
2 to 1 that he says global waring will cause a nuclear war.
You’re just not thinking “logically” Alan. Obviously after the conservatives cause Climate Change TM to go out of control by neglect, we would turn to nuclear power too late to avert disaster, and as nuclear power plants are wont to do, they will all melt down spilling radioactive waste everywhere, including in the boiling oceans. Duh!
Groaaaaannnnn…..
It appears to be a major work of Global Warming science fiction.
nicholas tesdorf
Movie, sequel, then long running TV series to follow.
Then of course he’ll step in with all his money and take the USA’s place funding the Paris accord. Not! He’ll buy a beach front property next to Al Gore.
And there are PLENTY of those about !
Lots of competition for the bottom of the thunder pit, so to speak.
And eligible for the position of door-stop.
My doors would never forgive me.
No just fiction there is zero science in that book.
Maybe it happens because of the alarmism, and urge to do something about nothing that causes the collapse of civilization. Enviro terrorists setting off dirty bombs all over the place to “teach society a lesson” or some such nonsense.
The green blob as created a whole industry out there, not just the windmills and solar panels, but the book business and of course the tourest industry to carry the truly faithfull to the next big conference.
Is it any wonder that they want to continue with thiks myth.
MJE
dystopia future is hardly a new area , and certainly not when its comes to climate .
But he may find there is a rather smaller readership for this work than he thinks , still he can blame that on the ‘right wing media ‘ and so be happy that he has proved his progressive credenitals , which is what really matters .
They have skipped right past retard and gone full potato.
makes me a little afraid to go out in public….they are out there
Careful, Twitter will ban you for that comment… 😉
All the more reason to say it. 😉
Eric, please stop with the dubious portraits. You don’t really capture the man , so how about just a photo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Vollmann
You fail to capture how dumb he really looks.
You sound like my art teacher… 🙂
For Pete’s sake, could you post a spew alert, fella?????
I was in the middle of morning tea! That’s just cruel!!
Post in haste, repent at leisure.
Wasn’t this guy in Lord of the Rings… My Precious?
This guy may be proof that the “science” of phrenology may have had some truth to it. Hard to look at him without laughing.
That is certainly a strong fashion statement. My wife wouldn’t let me be seen in public like that.
‘That is certainly a strong fashion statement. ‘
He’s against it.
It writes?
One can also wash one’s face (and clothes presumably) with urine too. Useful stuff. Don’t knock it til you try it…….
Larry Niven wrote a book once about how everything in the global warming scare was correct, we had taken all the recommended actions, so we started a new ice age.
Fallen Angels, with Jerry Pournelle.
Fallen Angels is a fun book, detailing the universal struggle between rational, hopeful sorts, and people like Vollman, who are so mesmerized by their own dismal pessimism that they truly believe their pathetic hopelessness is a virtue to be shared with all the world.
There is nothing ‘brilliant’ about putrid climate porn! It has less redeeming value than a Freddy Krueger highlight reel. We don’t know what Jim Jones said to his innocent followers that made them drink the poisoned kool aid, but if anyone characterized his words as ‘brilliant’, they would be considered one sick individual.
Kinda wish the president would say we need to fight global warming to bury Canada in a glacier. That would make for entertaining headlines.
No, everything was incorrect, but we still took all the recommended actions, and continued to take them even after the glaciers we crossing the Northern US.
There is a move called “The Colony” that has the plot you outline (of course it turns into a Zombie apocalypse story to make itself more believable).
Degree in comparative literature and couldn’t hack it doing a doctorate in the same. All the qualifications you need to be a climate expert.
Good book, I remember the green character in the story talking about venturing out on the glacier to chase some fugitives – “ice is a crystal, and crystals concentrate the life force. Nevertheless some deaths have occurred…”
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more extreme and more intemperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too long a date
At all times too hot the eye of heaven shines,
with apologies to Mr Waggledagger
Drinking urine and eating radioactive insects ?? I like Mike Mann so much,…he can have mine
I guess there will be a nuclear war for… reasons? Otherwise I can’t figure out how the world becomes radioactive.
Maybe that’s supposed to be his hook? I don’t know. I read that line and was just confused by the bizarreness of it.
“Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on insects and recycled urine …”
Worse yet, those insects were maggots feasting on her own feces.
My question is, “Do we give him the Nobel prize for Literature or for Peace”?
ROFL – he’s sure to get one of those prizes…
Well, thank you for the review. That’s another book I don’t have to add to my shopping list. Not even a desire to read it for free at the library. There is only so much drivel I can stand at one go.
No, I’ll stick to 18th and 19th century cookbooks, in case I have to revert to that way of living, and focus on what a wonderful planet we live on, instead of perusing the angst and navel-gazing of a crank.
Thanks for the warning!
I hope this dope never knocks on my door requesting aid and comfort.
He’ll be safe inside his immense fort made of unsold books. Lol!
Don’t all zombie apocalypses and scary stories end that way?
But of course Vollmann keeps on using fossil fuel, naturally! He is allowed to because he is a believer and is swaying the little people to stop using fossil fuels, by writing persuasive books.
Yep, The Atlantic is desperate to be heard, or noticed actually.
Just turn your back in silence.
oooh groan, cli-fi at its worst from the sound of it.
Im coming across more of this stuff and it irritates me mightily,
all assume the worst scenarios, and so far we look pretty pathetic at non attempts at adapting, which mankinds always done.
We need to make another “The Truman Show”, but a bunker where we would convince (using some fake CO2 induced disaster) Mann et al. to enter. To make it easy, we’ll tell them they have been specially selected to save mankind, egos would take care of the rest. Fake news reports from the ‘outside’ would be played all day showing natural disasters, famine and social chaos, all the while a thermostat would increase simulating runaway GW. Everyone would just sit around saying “I told you so”, “I predicted that” and “boy, it sure is getting hot”.
All you’d need to do is lure them in with pretty girls, and bam, close the vault door.
Vault Tec has a reputation for doing these kinds of experiments without informing the inhabitants.
Until they die from excessive CO2! Their own! I love it!
Perhaps tell him the aliens have arrived “To serve Mann”?
could join hillarys on the remaindered stack at 50c a pop?
😉
I know first impressions don’t necessarily mean a long term possibility, but this Vollmann dude looks like an angry person.
The trend reminds me of the theatrics at the Kavanaugh hearing—”the world will end if we don’t get our way . . .”
It’s like dealing with the flagellants in the 14th century.
Sounds more like a not-so-distant future one might expect if the anti-carbon eco-fascist Progressives were to get their way, and the economies of the world and the comfy benefits thereof that people like the author now enjoy but don’t seem to appriciate were to collapse.
I know. Bad run-on sentence. But I doubt this book is written any better.