The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth
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- ISBN13: 9780307396099
- Condition: New
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Product Description
For the past twelve thousand years, Planet’s stable climate has allowed human civilization to flourish. But this long compassionate summer is an anomaly in the Planet’s history and one that is rapidly coming to a close. The radical conduct experiment of our modern manufacturing civilization is now disrupting our planet’s very metabolism; our future hinges in large part on how Planet responds. Climate change is already impact down, arresting harder and quicker than expected. The greatest danger is not extreme yet discrete weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina or the calamitous wildfires that now plague California, but profound and systemic disruptions on a global scale. Contrary to the enveloping belief that climate change will be a gradual escalator ride into balmier temperatures, the Planet’s climate system has a history of radical shifts–dramatic shocks that could lead to the collapse of social and economic systems.
The question is no longer simply how can we stop climate change, but how can we as a civilization survive it.
The guiding values of modern culture have become dangerously obsolete in this new era. Yet as renowned environmental journalist Dianne Dumanoski shows, small has been done to avert the crisis or to prepare human societies for a time of growing instability. In a work of astonishing scope, Dumanoski deftly weaves history, science, and culture to show how the fundamental doctrines of modern society have impeded our ability to respond to this crisis and have fostered an economic globalization that is only increasing our vulnerability at this critical time. She exposes the fallacy of banking on a last-minute technological fix as well as the perilous trap of believing that humans can make it in the quest to control scenery. Only by restructuring our global civilization based on the principles that have allowed Planet’s life and our ancestors to survive catastrophe——diversity, redundancy, a degree of self-capability, social solidarity, and an aversion to excessive integration——can we restore the flexibility needed to weather the trials yet to be.
In this powerful and prescient book, Dumanoski moves beyond now-ubiquitous environmental buzzwords about green industries and clean energy to provide a new cultural map through this treacherous passage. Though the message is grave, it is not lacking hope. Lucid, eloquent, and urgent, The End of the Long Summer deserves a place alongside transformative works such as Silent Spring and The Fate of the Planet.
From the Hardcover edition.
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This feels kind of like the Jews staying in Europe as the Nazis came to power. Hoping that terrible futures will somehow be avoided is not permanently a excellent strategy. By the time you realize the worst is inevitable, it is too late to prepare.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
I loved another reviewer’s comment about his “infatuation with huge thoughts”. Indeed, on careful reading, the thoughts in ‘Long Summer’ are larger than most of us are able, at first, to contend with. In the next to last chapter Dumanoski says, at one point, “There is no hope for accommodation on the current path”. Reflect of it! That one sentence sums up her well-argued case and presents all of us with a very huge thought. After reading (and rereading) the book, I am convinced that her statement is cold, hard fact – not conjecture!
At first, I thought that this is just one more book about peak oil and global warming. Not so! The title, The End of the Long Summer, does not prepare the reader for such an in-depth and very readable treatment of the dilemma that is surely facing humankind. Agreed a choice between despair and fake hope, this book pushes me in the direction of despair; but only because the bulk of humanity seems not yet ready, or willing, to consider Dumanoski’s ‘huge thought’.
Urge your most thoughtful friends to read this book. They’ll be grateful to you.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a book for adults. Unlike others, Dianne Dumanoski doesn’t waste time on the mundane – reminding us to recycle and to ride our bike to work. Rather than dwell on the obvious truths of our environmental nightmare she leads the reader into a discussion much larger than that. Like a preacher, pleading to her congregation, she challenges us to face up to the inevitable and to reflect not just of our future as a civilization, but the future of our planet, with or lacking us. She moves the conversation to another level, bypassing the debate about climate change and somehow manages to sound both realistic and optimistic about the outcome.
It’s impossible to read this book and not want to share the experience. Dumanoski has taken the most serious of topics and has made it accessible to all. Forget Al Gore and his wallcharts – this book isn’t about facts and facts; it’s about thoughts, our world and its future.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I consider two or three parts of this book to be the most vital I’ve read to date on global warming, which is my main theme these days. These include passages on why we seem to have a shortage of foresight, as with the ozone hole, which will still be a problem 50 years from now, and whether humans are inherently destined to ruin themselves.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
THE END OF THE LONG SUMMER: WHY WE MUST REMAKE OUR CIVILIZATION TO SURVIVE ON A VOLATILE EARTH offers a passionate, powerful argument that the current state of the planet is past the tipping point. It tells our focus should be on how to avoid the worst – and how to handle environmental change that is now inevitable. History, science and culture blend in a powerful survey essential for any library with books on environmental change and human survival.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5