Losing Earth (book review)
human beings may not survive…
Book review:
Losing Earth: A Recent History
by Nathaniel Rich
New York: MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019
206 pages
If you’re thinking that it’s just too much trouble to worry about global climate change and the prospect of a final end to human civilization, do read Losing Earth.
Rich lays it all out, in dispassionate history and an impassioned call for individual and collective action.
The stupefying truth is that nearly everything we know now about global climate change has been known by some sensible and honorable—and some greedy and dishonorable—men and women for the last 50 years.
Here’s the grisly truth: Losing Earth does not suggest any easy fix. There is no easy fix for the apocalyptic acceleration of global climate change, and the massive destruction of our living environment—our planet—that is already happening.
All of us need to try to empower leaders who will take the long view and do the right thing.
We need to “develop a strategy for expanding the limits of what is politically feasible.” The United States and our congress and our president must take the lead in any worldwide action that will be even partly successful.
For everyone, for you and for me, “the first requirement is to speak about the problem honestly: as a struggle for survival. This is the antithesis of the denialist approach. Once the stakes are precisely defined, the moral imperative is inescapable.” Start by telling yourself the truth.
We have to start saying out loud, to each other, that we love our children and our grandchildren with all our hearts, and we want to make it possible for them to live their full lives in some kind of comfort on this planet.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: The House by the Sea
May Sarton’s travels, in her mind…
–
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *