Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "reality"

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (Columbia University Press, 2014) Is this just another dystopia, an academic one? If you read this book, please don’t neglect to read the current books outlining the long-term solutions we desperately need: Dietz and O’Neill’s Enough Is Enough, Lester R. Brown’s writings. Or if you like an entertaining fiction, read award-winner The Webs of Varok and the rest of The Archives of Varok series. A double release is coming November 3. http://penscript-publishing.com/news-... Stay tuned.

I’ll read Oreskes and Conway’s book and review it next month. Meanwhile, I am shocked by what it might have missed, as reported in Scientific American August 2014.
I agree with the authors that current “anti-intellectualism” has prevented the West from acting intelligently on “scientific knowledge available at the time.” They list several causes for this, but apparently have neglected several facts—that we are not conserving, not even recognizing our resource limits; that living things, including humans, are already moving north; and that too many are hungry and ill. I hope they include these disturbing situations and focus on the difficult solutions that are clearly stated by other authors. We aren't required to sit back and watch dystopias play out. We know what we have to do. Comments are invited at ScientificAmerican.com/aug2014 and here, of course.