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natsilene's review against another edition
4.0
Two days ago, the IPCC release the physical science basis of its 3 part latest report. Which stated what this 10 year old panphlet already did, that's it, it'over. The climate niche within which humanity evolved and civilization was born is a relic of the past. In the best case scenario projected by the report, the most radical diminishing of greenhouse gases emissioms that reaches net zero GHG by 2050 and adds to that net negative emissions, which means literally sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere is equivalent to the prediction that were pessimistic decades ago, by the period 2041-2060 the planet will have achieved an average temperature 1.2-2.0 degrees higher than the pre-industrial average, with the most likely number being 1.7 degrees so basivally the exceeding of the "security threshold" of 1.5 degrees set by the Paris Agreement would still be excedeed and woul do so earlier than expected. And this is what would happen strictly speaking about average global temperature under the most radical emission reduction scenario imaginable, which no country on earth is currently implementing.
Some of the worst effects of global warming are already irreversible and even in the best case scenario with anthropogenic GHG emissions completely stopped, the sea level for saying one is gonna will continue to slightly rise for thousand of years as ice caps will continue melting albeit slower than in a "business as usual trajectory". In a "business as usual" trajectory however, where GHG emissions are not drastically cut down the sea level will rise by a terryfing 5 meters by 2150 which will spell doom for almost all of the planet largest metropolises. Sea level rise is however only a piece of the puzzle, the IPCC reports clearly finds that there are no areas of the planet in which climatic condition were not affected in one way or another by industrial era GHG emissions: desertification, frequency and intensity of extreme events such as storms and droughts are gonna increase all over the world in the near term, extreme weather events that would usually be once in a decade events are gonna happen multiple times per decade and parts of the planet in the past untouched by great droughts and floods will come to know them. All of this is certain, the only question is by how much this things are gonna increase and how bad we are willing to let them get. It will mostly be decided by present and future cuts in GHG emissions, scale and quality of conservation efforts and so on.
But now, Desert : Desert is an anarchist pamphlet penned 10 years ago by an anonymous author. While its age can disclose some flaws in the form of data as for example at some point it is said that the mega-cities on the planet, urban conglomeration exceeding ten million inhabitants, is expected to exceed the number of 27 in 2025 was already exceeded by 2021 or the quasi-Malthusian perspective on overpopulation almost implying that the food security issue is more about food production than distribution, it is a very well researched piece that anticipates of 10 years the latest IPCC report and goes on to address what the IPCC, virtually all governments in the world, business actors, corporations on so on do not. The IPCC report in fact, while very clear on the physical science bases is a flawed and deeply ideological move that stubbornly refuses to assign any blame and accountability for global climate disruption. In the syntetic version of the document, the word "human" appears 79 times, while the words "capitalism", "colonialism", and "imperialism" among other socio-political terminology all appear 0 times. In an even more absurd twist "fossil fuel" of just the word "fuel" (!!!) is nowhere to be found. GHG emissions are there and analysis of current patterns and potential future scenarios too but the drivers of change are completely and utterly absent from documentation, the ideological, societal, and political structures that give the fuel to all of these transformations are not addressed nor discussed while changes are treated like neutral and inescapable laws of physics. If anything, it's not precise actors, political and economic acting like the drivers of this global scale crisis but "humans", treated like an hive mind that is not grouped into many conflicting interest groups and structures, with colossal power discrepancies between each other, decisional capabilities, consumption and production habits and so on, neither the historical aspects of not GHG emissions and drivers of asymmetries in GHG emissions are taken into the discussions.
Desert , being an explicitly anarchist piece of work, brings all the socio-historical-political points of discussions, the ones that are utterly absent from any assessment of the reality of global warming within the highest spheres of world politics.
As pessimistic and grim as all of this is, we are not doomed and the abrupt collapse of civilization is no more likely than a spontaneous global revolution leading all of us to utopia, civilization as we know it may be on the brink of collapse but only the one as we know it and the apocalypse is not coming, as for many people around the world, the world already ended a long time ago.
As universal salvation is as unlikely as universal damnation (which means extinction not collapse) are equally as unlikely, an anonymous remnant can only try to dispel any fatalistic illusion while saying: just save what you can.
Some of the worst effects of global warming are already irreversible and even in the best case scenario with anthropogenic GHG emissions completely stopped, the sea level for saying one is gonna will continue to slightly rise for thousand of years as ice caps will continue melting albeit slower than in a "business as usual trajectory". In a "business as usual" trajectory however, where GHG emissions are not drastically cut down the sea level will rise by a terryfing 5 meters by 2150 which will spell doom for almost all of the planet largest metropolises. Sea level rise is however only a piece of the puzzle, the IPCC reports clearly finds that there are no areas of the planet in which climatic condition were not affected in one way or another by industrial era GHG emissions: desertification, frequency and intensity of extreme events such as storms and droughts are gonna increase all over the world in the near term, extreme weather events that would usually be once in a decade events are gonna happen multiple times per decade and parts of the planet in the past untouched by great droughts and floods will come to know them. All of this is certain, the only question is by how much this things are gonna increase and how bad we are willing to let them get. It will mostly be decided by present and future cuts in GHG emissions, scale and quality of conservation efforts and so on.
But now, Desert : Desert is an anarchist pamphlet penned 10 years ago by an anonymous author. While its age can disclose some flaws in the form of data as for example at some point it is said that the mega-cities on the planet, urban conglomeration exceeding ten million inhabitants, is expected to exceed the number of 27 in 2025 was already exceeded by 2021 or the quasi-Malthusian perspective on overpopulation almost implying that the food security issue is more about food production than distribution, it is a very well researched piece that anticipates of 10 years the latest IPCC report and goes on to address what the IPCC, virtually all governments in the world, business actors, corporations on so on do not. The IPCC report in fact, while very clear on the physical science bases is a flawed and deeply ideological move that stubbornly refuses to assign any blame and accountability for global climate disruption. In the syntetic version of the document, the word "human" appears 79 times, while the words "capitalism", "colonialism", and "imperialism" among other socio-political terminology all appear 0 times. In an even more absurd twist "fossil fuel" of just the word "fuel" (!!!) is nowhere to be found. GHG emissions are there and analysis of current patterns and potential future scenarios too but the drivers of change are completely and utterly absent from documentation, the ideological, societal, and political structures that give the fuel to all of these transformations are not addressed nor discussed while changes are treated like neutral and inescapable laws of physics. If anything, it's not precise actors, political and economic acting like the drivers of this global scale crisis but "humans", treated like an hive mind that is not grouped into many conflicting interest groups and structures, with colossal power discrepancies between each other, decisional capabilities, consumption and production habits and so on, neither the historical aspects of not GHG emissions and drivers of asymmetries in GHG emissions are taken into the discussions.
Desert , being an explicitly anarchist piece of work, brings all the socio-historical-political points of discussions, the ones that are utterly absent from any assessment of the reality of global warming within the highest spheres of world politics.
As pessimistic and grim as all of this is, we are not doomed and the abrupt collapse of civilization is no more likely than a spontaneous global revolution leading all of us to utopia, civilization as we know it may be on the brink of collapse but only the one as we know it and the apocalypse is not coming, as for many people around the world, the world already ended a long time ago.
As universal salvation is as unlikely as universal damnation (which means extinction not collapse) are equally as unlikely, an anonymous remnant can only try to dispel any fatalistic illusion while saying: just save what you can.
shri_ace13's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
lofi_insect's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
2.0
cool basic idea but otherwise just mostly questionable takes
nb_leftist's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.25
Made some god points but it was “tainted” by primitivism. I don’t want to even get started on the problems with primitivism.
sleepyredwolf's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
3.75
A well-articulated work that doesn't deserve the controversy it generates, truly. Says a lot of what I've been thinking about already within my own circles, but it's validating to know that others have been thinking about similar things for at least a decade now. I do take issue with the Malthusian undercurrents towards the beginning, and I again find myself not in the target audience of a work directed towards the broader anarchist community (this is coming from what sound like a middle-class, if downwardly mobile perspective), but I think there's still though redeeming the work for it to remain a thought-provoking conversation piece about what work can still be done as we face the reality of permanent (at least in human terms) climate change.
ben_salad's review against another edition
Dated in some ways. Malthusianism that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Still a good introduction to climate nihilism - what to do if we can't "save the world", and an important text in the growth and pivot of the green movement.
caseyreaderson's review against another edition
The planet is on a path toward ecological destruction and the human species will eventually go extinct. This will likely happen sooner than it would have otherwise as a result of the extractive, short-sighted systems we've put in place during our time here. ("Our," in this case, is not simply humans. I can reasonably narrow it down to mostly just power-hungry white dudes throughout history.) Further, any "utopia"—be that of anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, white nationalists, black separatists, whatever—is realistically out of reach on this timeline.
The important thing is to not let this realization create a defeatist outlook where no fight is worth our time. What this means is that the stakes are different. In a way, truly, "the only thing to lose is your chains." Pain is real, suffering is real, and the logic of the systems in place has a way of delegating these things to the least deserving, and keeping this fact out of sight and out of reach. This fact will continue, though it can be fought. It might not look like utopia in your (our, humans') lifetime, but pain and suffering can be curbed during the time of humans on Earth... if you still fight. This fight is worth it.
It seems some research in this book was out of date and a little misguided (namely that plenty of food is *produced* to feed the Earth, and the problem instead lies in getting it to who needs it), but I'm a fan of its underlying ideas.
The important thing is to not let this realization create a defeatist outlook where no fight is worth our time. What this means is that the stakes are different. In a way, truly, "the only thing to lose is your chains." Pain is real, suffering is real, and the logic of the systems in place has a way of delegating these things to the least deserving, and keeping this fact out of sight and out of reach. This fact will continue, though it can be fought. It might not look like utopia in your (our, humans') lifetime, but pain and suffering can be curbed during the time of humans on Earth... if you still fight. This fight is worth it.
It seems some research in this book was out of date and a little misguided (namely that plenty of food is *produced* to feed the Earth, and the problem instead lies in getting it to who needs it), but I'm a fan of its underlying ideas.