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The Collapse Of Western Civilization: A View From The Future (2014)

by Naomi Oreskes(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

023116954X (ISBN13: 9780231169547)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Columbia University Press

review 1: This is a very short read. The premise of it is a little silly, that of a historian looking back on the 21st century and why we did not do anything about impending climate change. She thinks scientists are not vocal enough about the issue. This is probably true, but the climate deniers' side is so well-funded that it's hard to out shout. Also, there are many scientists out there beating the drums as loud as they can. See books by Michael Mann and Richard Somerville for example. There's some element of science fiction in this book, but it's poorly thought out and obviously slapped on as an afterthought. If she wanted to write a book about how the scientific community is too meek, she should have done that. Dressing this opinion up in a cloak of science fiction is strange.He... morer previous book, Merchants of Doubt was much better.
review 2: 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$4.992. 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 - essay3. 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. less

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