Reviews - This Can't Be Happening

56 reviews for:

This Can't Be Happening

George Monbiot

4.19 AVERAGE

jindiebooks's review

5.0

challenging informative inspiring fast-paced

meg_tb's review

4.0

informative reflective medium-paced

apar's review

4.0

This Can’t Be Happening is a collection of short essays and speeches by Monbiot between 2016-2020. They’re all centred on (as with most of his work) climate change, and what we can potentially do about it.

George Monbiot is an angry man, one who quite often puts off the people he rails against because he does his railing passionately and to great effect. But, what choice does he have? We’re past the time of complacency or passive optimism. To be aware of the state of the world is “to take on a burden of grief that is almost unbearable.”

In the foreword, he writes

”The moral compass needed to guide us through this crisis has had to be constructed almost from scratch. We need to understand that we can inflict great harm on others, without harbouring any such intent. We need to connect our humdrum activities on one side of the world (generally in the rich nations) to catastrophic effects on the lives of people on the other side (generally in the poorer nations). We need to see that the way we live can destroy the life chances of those who are not yet born.”

Monbiot is not, against all odds, pessimistic in this collection. Angry and desperate, even sad, but he holds on to some hope for change (which is more than I can say for myself). He recognises that it is possible to change the system, that people from Greta Thunberg and movements like Extinction Rebellion can make a difference. This collection also touches (briefly) on examining perspectives, economic systems, political philosophies and polices that might help us fix the mess we’re in.

But I wonder if this book is lacking a story that Monbiot says is so essential to changing the narrative.

”We are creatures of narrative, and a string of facts and figures, however important facts and figures are, has no power to displace a persuasive story. The only thing that can replace a story is a story. You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one.”

Perhaps the collection needs a little bit more of a story to hold it together, perhaps a clearer thread between cause and effect? While Monbiot is not pessimistic and he accepts that he doesn’t have all the answers, he has expanded on stories and solutions in other works that would have fit this collection. It felt a bit…thin, a bit rushed.

All in all though, the three books I’ve read of the Green Ideas series via NetGalley have all been interesting, compelling and from different perspectives/ world views. I will definitely been reading more (if not all) from this collection.