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Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays
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Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist, an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on 'sustainability' rather than the defence of wild places for their own sake and as
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Paperback, 284 pages
Published
August 1st 2017
by Graywolf Press
(first published March 16th 2017)
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Saudade (from the Portuguese): The feeling of intense longing for a person or place you love but is now lost. A Haunting desire for what is gone.
5 ★
Paul Kingsnorth was born in the same year I was first learning the word ecology and has a long history of writing and working on behalf of the environment. He no longer believes that humanity can stop what has been unleashed and writes essays in an attempt to work out what he thinks of it all, what to do next, and maintain his sanity while doing it. ...more
5 ★
Paul Kingsnorth was born in the same year I was first learning the word ecology and has a long history of writing and working on behalf of the environment. He no longer believes that humanity can stop what has been unleashed and writes essays in an attempt to work out what he thinks of it all, what to do next, and maintain his sanity while doing it. ...more
Occasionally I read a book so thought-provoking that it makes me want to write a book. Never has this feeling been stronger than when I was reading Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist’. Just about every essay in the book inspired a potentially essay-length series of responses. In the interests of space, I won’t even attempt to cram them all into this review. Instead, it’s worth considering why I found the book so compelling. Kingsnorth’s writing style is extremely rea
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The author wouldn't approve of the way I’ve been reading this: online, mostly on a smartphone, and without paying. (Most of the essays are legitimately online - I haven't pirated it.)
The first couple of times I tried to read Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, I had the same problem I often have with essay collections: it made me want to write another one in response, and the note-taking was exhausting. This time I started it in the same frame of mind in which I sometimes read lots of ...more
The first couple of times I tried to read Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, I had the same problem I often have with essay collections: it made me want to write another one in response, and the note-taking was exhausting. This time I started it in the same frame of mind in which I sometimes read lots of ...more
I couldn't find much of the promised "ultimately hopeful"but there was heaping portions no- punches- pulled honesty. If we've already passed the point of no return for climate change, unrestrained commercialism/capitalism and looking into the maw of the Earth's sixth extinction, what's a reasonable person to do? Very thought provoking and I look forward to discussion in my book club.
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Don't let this be the first book on environmentalism you read, or even one of the first. Read the others first, read all one books on technology too, sign some petitions, buy eggs from a neighbour, grow vegetables, and then when you despair read this. It's not that it's hopeful, it's just honest.
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Paul Kingsnorth was a passionate environmentalist, taking the time to be involved in activities and protests against the creep of corporate and governmental interests that threatened the climate and places with ill thought out developments. His view started to change as the business world embraced green ideals, and those opposing them watered down their vociferous defence of our wild places and cosied up to sustainability instead. He saw it as a betrayal of the movement as they chose to ignore t
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Really important work. The essays are a little uneven, but they chronicle a fairly long span of development in the author's style and thinking. Ultimately, though, the message is a crucial one: being anti-capitalist isn't even radical enough when it comes to navigating and/or ameliorating the runaway climate crisis. We also have to somehow shed the myth (which, as he puts it, is all the more dangerous for not being regarded as a myth--by leftists either; I can confirm this having run with enough
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This is a book which squarely faces what we are actually doing ie ecocide . I have, in the past, been frustrated with books that describe climate change but then try and finish on a note of optimism. Lets face it, we are already beyond the point where we can stop massive changes. Climate change in Australia has been so politicised that our government has been bought by the coal lobby. They are good at pretending to do something but in reality they are maintaining the status quo. For example they
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This is an important book. I discovered Paul Kingsnorth's work via a blog post by a writer who had attended one of his retreats. Kingsnorth is the co-founder of Dark Mountain, and an intelligent, clear-eyed, persuasive writer. He's wonderful at exposing and questioning commonly-held myths (for example, that technology will save us), and, among other things, has a great self-deprecating sense of humor: he tells tales on himself (especially his younger self) and never sets himself above the very h
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Honest, poignant, thought-provoking, insightful, emotional, and articulate. I loved every essay and was able to connect on visceral level, which for me is difficult as I tend to favor the rational, unemotional side of things. To read the authentic and honest account of our environmental predicament from an environmentalist viewpoint should stir something inside everybody. And yet...it doesn't. And that is the reality. The truth is that the 'machine' cannot be stopped, nothing can really be done
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Overall, a thought-provoking read. Kingsnorth has given me some things to ponder: my limited relationship with nature, my value system, and how I view the current environmental/sustainable movement. He writes well; his poetic style plays well with appreciation of nature.
Often in this collection of essays, I’ve felt that Kingsnorth is naive and uncertain when it comes to what he wants. Some essays are excellent, moving, and well argued. Others seem like they’ve been written by a misanthropic env ...more
Often in this collection of essays, I’ve felt that Kingsnorth is naive and uncertain when it comes to what he wants. Some essays are excellent, moving, and well argued. Others seem like they’ve been written by a misanthropic env ...more
Without a shadow of doubt, one of the most important and timely books I have ever read. Kingsnorth has a clarity of thinking, and a readiness to question his own deeply held views which cuts right through here. His backstory matters, this is someone who has done the hard yards, and has come to understand the scale of the challenges we face and our lack of ability to do anything about them. That the current environmental movement is no longer fit for purpose is a crystal clear conclusion which he
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This was exactly what I needed exactly when I read it. Although it took me longer than other books, it was only because I could sit on chapters for weeks at a time mulling over the questions, thoughts, and ideas. This will sit on my shelf for a long time.
This book was like an arrow right into my heart, in that it expresses everything that I've known but couldn't or didn't know how to admit.
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"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”--Buckminster Fuller
There is an ancient Chinese tradition that when things in the city get too ugly and politics too chaotic, the wise philosopher takes to the hills! To withdraw can be an act of resistance.
I love the author and his dark mountain project.
I read these essays alongside Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects and his Dark Ecology—though I think the essays ...more
There is an ancient Chinese tradition that when things in the city get too ugly and politics too chaotic, the wise philosopher takes to the hills! To withdraw can be an act of resistance.
I love the author and his dark mountain project.
I read these essays alongside Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects and his Dark Ecology—though I think the essays ...more
If you know me--please read this book, so you can understand where I'm coming from.
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This is a collection of essays, mostly also published over the last 10 years in magazines and newspapers, in which Paul Kingsnorth critiques assumptions at the heart of 21st century environmentalism ( it still treats the planet as a commodity, with "resources" to be exploited, it assumes "progress" or more technology will solve many of our problems, it thinks of humans as separate from nature). Although it's tempting to say he has given up on environmentalism, and the title of this book encourag
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I can tell this is one of those books I will reread many times and in which I will look for guidance in the coming years. Already since I began it 9 months ago I have purchased used copies to spread to friends and colleagues, and I will continue to deeply recommend this to everyone I know, especially those who, like me, are often unmoored in the sea of climate crisis despair, yet have committed our lives to naval life.
This book will forever have a place on my shelves, no matter how far I roam.
This book will forever have a place on my shelves, no matter how far I roam.
Every so often, I stumble across a book that evokes the kind of response that makes me want to write myself. This was one of those books. Kingsnorth’s essays are honest, lucid, and self-aware. His writing here challenges many of my previously held assumptions about humanity and how we interact with non-human life in a way that is forcing me to reckon with the human condition in a new light. While I found myself wanting to debate many points along the way, it was a relief to hear someone poignant
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Kingsnorth is pacey, impatient, and shallow where he feels himself thinking most deeply; he is also, and more generously, thoughtful and persistent, especially where he neither has an axe to grind or the pressure to perform. Especially valuable, if slightly uneven, is his quarrel with environmentalism, which has transformed from the loving occupation of ecological-minded activists to a societal end with a complex web of politics, policies, and histories attached. Blaming both the neoliberals and
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What an impressive set of essays. Think of it as a 21st-century Emerson. They were written over the course of several years, many in the early 2010s, and some or most are reprints of things he's written either through dark mountain or published in the Guardian.
His plea for humanity to rethink its ways, to reconvene, rebuild communion with nature, and to question the untrammeled stomp towards "Progress" is a gut-check for everyone regardless of their political affiliation. He critiques "sustainab ...more
His plea for humanity to rethink its ways, to reconvene, rebuild communion with nature, and to question the untrammeled stomp towards "Progress" is a gut-check for everyone regardless of their political affiliation. He critiques "sustainab ...more
Still pondering what I think about this. A lot of it sounds like it coming from a place of privilege but I guess that's also the audience of this book. Some of this book made me feel guilty for the way I live and made me question some of my beliefs which is a good sign. But I also don't think I completely agree with his viewpoint of retreating away, maybe it because I'm young? I get that humans are just one tiny facet of nature and then end of our ability to live on earth is just like the end of
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The essays in this book come from a mix of sources, the backbone drawn from the Dark Mountain books. Several of the essays are astonishing, clear, thoughtful and life changing. This is a writer who is on a journey, who is changing his responses to the challenges faced by our world. While I often feel the same doubts that Kingsnorth identifies here, I’m heartened by his response and because of this I realise that I can, as an individual, choose how I live my life. This is a book that I will read
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I don't entirely share Kingsnorth's worldview, but I do think he's right that our talk about "sustainability" is often misguided in the sense that it still assumes that the Earth and all its creatures/forces only exist to support humans, and have no inherent value in themselves. His radicalism is bracing.
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4.5 stars.
Kingsnorth articulates so much of what I have been thinking and feeling over the past years. I applaud him for the clarity of his vision and his willingness to carry on in spite of everything.
Kingsnorth articulates so much of what I have been thinking and feeling over the past years. I applaud him for the clarity of his vision and his willingness to carry on in spite of everything.
what absolute noobs gave this book less than 5 stars
I probably agree with Paul Kingsnorth more than 99% of other writers. Despite the anti-environmental sounding title, he actually is still very environmentally minded. He's one of the few writers willing to explicitly label economic growth, dependence on (and addiction to) high-tech gadgets and even civilization itself as problems. For that alone I can't give this a bad review. However, I can't give this a good review either. Some of his views are just so defeatist that it makes the book kind of
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Still reading this. Note to Paul: we are the last maddened and rag-draped dancers of a godawful murdertechnocracy. Our art is not that good, nor is art as a force redemptive or puissant in itself; it is a great presumption on our part to think that "uncivilised" works (read here, pretentious gobbledekook somewhere between millenarianist hand-wringing and second-rate nature writing with a great deal of commodification and idealisation of the primitive or primal) with their attendant train of capi
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the essays here mostly follow the track of the same thesis: we cannot and should not rely on technology to save us from environmental catastrophe because technology is what has caused environmental catastrophe. kingsnorth asks us to rethink the 'sustainability' argument, because that argument is defined by human "need" and human "need" is perpetually redefining itself to include things that we didn't "need" before. therefore environmental action should be focused on decentering humans and return
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This collection of essays explores environmentalism's roots and problems in an engrossing read that skirts the edges of nihilism with a grim but somewhat hopeful outlook towards a future. Not a brighter one necessarily, as Kingsnorth embraces the irreparable damage humans have caused to the planet and its inhabitants, but one that gives something to work towards. And he promises it will indeed be work, but work that is worth the process to find a way to uncivilize ourselves and rebuild our narra
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Paul Kingsnorth is an English writer and thinker. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He lives in the west of Ireland.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borne ...more
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borne ...more
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“We are the first generations to grow up surrounded by evidence that our attempt to separate ourselves from ‘nature’ has been a grim failure, proof not of our genius but our hubris.”
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“Increasingly, though, for those penned into cities with no view of the stars and no taste of clean air and nothing but grass between the cracks in the pavement to nourish their sense of the wild, this is no freedom at all. We have made ourselves caged animals, and all the gadgets in the world cannot compensate for what we have lost. Humans”
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