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Carbon Ideologies #1
No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies
A timely, eye-opening book about climate change and energy generation that focuses on the consequences of nuclear power production, from award-winning author William T. Vollmann
In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age, from poverty to violence to the dark soul of American imperialism as it has played out on the U.S./Mexico border. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come--the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger, the first volume of Carbon Ideologies, by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort. Turning to nuclear power first, Vollmann then recounts multiple visits that he made at significant personal risk over the course of seven years to the contaminated no-go zones and sad ghost towns of Fukushima, Japan, beginning shortly after the tsunami and reactor meltdowns of 2011. Equipped first only with a dosimeter and then with a scintillation counter, he measured radiation and interviewed tsunami victims, nuclear evacuees, anti-nuclear organizers and pro-nuclear utility workers.
Featuring Vollmann's signature wide learning, sardonic wit, and encyclopedic research, No Immediate Danger, whose title co-opts the reassuring mantra of official Japanese energy experts, builds up a powerful, sobering picture of the ongoing nightmare of Fukushima.
In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age, from poverty to violence to the dark soul of American imperialism as it has played out on the U.S./Mexico border. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come--the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger, the first volume of Carbon Ideologies, by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort. Turning to nuclear power first, Vollmann then recounts multiple visits that he made at significant personal risk over the course of seven years to the contaminated no-go zones and sad ghost towns of Fukushima, Japan, beginning shortly after the tsunami and reactor meltdowns of 2011. Equipped first only with a dosimeter and then with a scintillation counter, he measured radiation and interviewed tsunami victims, nuclear evacuees, anti-nuclear organizers and pro-nuclear utility workers.
Featuring Vollmann's signature wide learning, sardonic wit, and encyclopedic research, No Immediate Danger, whose title co-opts the reassuring mantra of official Japanese energy experts, builds up a powerful, sobering picture of the ongoing nightmare of Fukushima.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published April 10, 2018
191 people are currently reading
2286 people want to read
About the author
William T. Vollmann
99 books1,475 followersWilliam Tanner Vollmann is an American author, journalist, and essayist known for his ambitious and often unconventional literary works. Born on July 28, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Vollmann has earned a reputation as one of the most prolific and daring writers of his generation.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
April 8, 2019
"Look at the brightside always and die in a dream!"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anima Poetae, 1804
I'm not sure what the 1/2 life of getting over this book is, but like all of Vollmann's nonfiction, it spins a massive data/narrative web that grows, and grows, and sticks. I absolutely agree with some of the previous reviews that some of Vollmann's data in this book might be flawed, but THAT is part of the point of this book. There is SO much data, so many ways to view risk, and it is so diffuse that making policy decisions or changing behaviors becomes difficult (I actually think that is one of Vollmann's major points).
Vol 1: No Immediate Danger (the first half of Carbon Ideologies) is basically broken into three major commonents:
1. Into and The Primer (1 - 220)
2. Nuclear Ideology (221 - 516)
3. Definitions, Units, Conversions, Tables (517 - 600)
No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies: 2 will focus more on carbon (read coal, natural gas, oil). It will not have the Prime (the carbon pump only needs primed once) or the definitions, units, conversions.
The book feels familiar because I'm half-way through Vollmann's intense and huge, unabridged, seven-volume Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means. These two books (or one book, broken into two by Viking) are built similarly and use the same structure (Poor People)"
"All three volumes use induction to generalize from subjective case studies into analytical categories of the phenomenon under investigation."
I'm not done with Rising Up and Rising Down. Carbon Ideologies is a Vollmann diversion.*
Reviewing this book is a challenge for several reasons. I'm not going to review the facts (because, like we've seen with politics and ideologies, the facts soon stop mattering). Also, I'm more interested in writing about Vollmann's larger approach.
I'm going to (tomorrow, always tomorrow) review first The Primer - Not finished. Not harldy begun, but perhaps, I'll just say this. I think we as humans (and Vollmann shows this over and over again) lie to survive. We lie with data. We lie to each other. We lie to ourselves. We ignore facts. Think of mob wives who are blind to the actions of their mobster husbands. We are all mob wives. We ignore the cost to the future because we are satisfied with our excesses of today. We also lie, not just because we don't want to be confronted with the things that make our life easier, we also lie to survive. Less mobster wife, and more abused wife. If we were confronted by the truth, every day, of how exactly we were f-ing the future with our energy use, our plastic use, our farming, our consumerism, we might not mentally make it. So, we get lost in the data or chose to ignore it. We let those profiting from it bullshit us, again and again. Because to pay attention is to be robbed of the mental fat that we all need to sometimes not go mad. I think it was PKD who said, "It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.". I would adjust that. We avoid going insane in the modern world by going blind.
After that, I'm most certainly next going to review Nuclear Ideology - Begun, but not by much.
So, I won't forget, one of the things I want to include are several examples from this book where Vollmann's prose (especially when he is describing the landscape around Fukushima, or the dialogues of those escorting him around the Red Zones and Yellow Zones) rings like Japanese poetry. Several lines feel like they could have been written by Bashō (松尾 芭蕉).
* It is hard with Vollmann's intensity to do anything quite straight.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anima Poetae, 1804
I'm not sure what the 1/2 life of getting over this book is, but like all of Vollmann's nonfiction, it spins a massive data/narrative web that grows, and grows, and sticks. I absolutely agree with some of the previous reviews that some of Vollmann's data in this book might be flawed, but THAT is part of the point of this book. There is SO much data, so many ways to view risk, and it is so diffuse that making policy decisions or changing behaviors becomes difficult (I actually think that is one of Vollmann's major points).
Vol 1: No Immediate Danger (the first half of Carbon Ideologies) is basically broken into three major commonents:
1. Into and The Primer (1 - 220)
2. Nuclear Ideology (221 - 516)
3. Definitions, Units, Conversions, Tables (517 - 600)
No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies: 2 will focus more on carbon (read coal, natural gas, oil). It will not have the Prime (the carbon pump only needs primed once) or the definitions, units, conversions.
The book feels familiar because I'm half-way through Vollmann's intense and huge, unabridged, seven-volume Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means. These two books (or one book, broken into two by Viking) are built similarly and use the same structure (Poor People)"
"All three volumes use induction to generalize from subjective case studies into analytical categories of the phenomenon under investigation."
I'm not done with Rising Up and Rising Down. Carbon Ideologies is a Vollmann diversion.*
Reviewing this book is a challenge for several reasons. I'm not going to review the facts (because, like we've seen with politics and ideologies, the facts soon stop mattering). Also, I'm more interested in writing about Vollmann's larger approach.
I'm going to (tomorrow, always tomorrow) review first The Primer - Not finished. Not harldy begun, but perhaps, I'll just say this. I think we as humans (and Vollmann shows this over and over again) lie to survive. We lie with data. We lie to each other. We lie to ourselves. We ignore facts. Think of mob wives who are blind to the actions of their mobster husbands. We are all mob wives. We ignore the cost to the future because we are satisfied with our excesses of today. We also lie, not just because we don't want to be confronted with the things that make our life easier, we also lie to survive. Less mobster wife, and more abused wife. If we were confronted by the truth, every day, of how exactly we were f-ing the future with our energy use, our plastic use, our farming, our consumerism, we might not mentally make it. So, we get lost in the data or chose to ignore it. We let those profiting from it bullshit us, again and again. Because to pay attention is to be robbed of the mental fat that we all need to sometimes not go mad. I think it was PKD who said, "It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.". I would adjust that. We avoid going insane in the modern world by going blind.
After that, I'm most certainly next going to review Nuclear Ideology - Begun, but not by much.
So, I won't forget, one of the things I want to include are several examples from this book where Vollmann's prose (especially when he is describing the landscape around Fukushima, or the dialogues of those escorting him around the Red Zones and Yellow Zones) rings like Japanese poetry. Several lines feel like they could have been written by Bashō (松尾 芭蕉).
* It is hard with Vollmann's intensity to do anything quite straight.
Read
May 6, 2018Wherein WTV does a lot of math and science (cf. his Copernicus book). Not as compelling (so far, this is only half a book here) as his two non-fiction behemoths, Imperial and RURD. But what it does do, at a minimum, is showcase how difficult it is for even a well-educated, ferociously curious, moderately well=funded (average) citizen to grasp and gain some level of mastery over these issues without relying upon experts and their say (even picking out your own personal expert can of course be exasperating).
One note too, about how Vollmann cites so often his high school and college textbooks (from the 70's!) ;; that is the level of science knowledge and the degree of up-to-dateness of that same knowledge the average educated voting citizen is working with. If there are shortcomings to this book, I think one ought to take those shortcomings and multiply them by some very large factor to obtain the situation we find ourselves vis-a-vis the capacity for dealing with these issues from the pov of the average engaged voting citizen.
Volume the Second will find us deep in 'Rump country. Should be good.
One note too, about how Vollmann cites so often his high school and college textbooks (from the 70's!) ;; that is the level of science knowledge and the degree of up-to-dateness of that same knowledge the average educated voting citizen is working with. If there are shortcomings to this book, I think one ought to take those shortcomings and multiply them by some very large factor to obtain the situation we find ourselves vis-a-vis the capacity for dealing with these issues from the pov of the average engaged voting citizen.
Volume the Second will find us deep in 'Rump country. Should be good.
April 10, 2018
This incredible, important book is a bracing read like no other.
The book is framed as a long letter, written to future inhabitants of an over-heated Earth. "Carbon Ideologies" seeks to explain to future inhabitants of Earth why we, the people of today, persisted in emitting carbon into the atmosphere in spite of growing evidence that the practice threatens life as we know it. As always, Vollmann is breathtaking in the scope of his reporting. Deep history, scientific analysis and a penetrating look at the history of fossil fuels is coupled with on-the-ground reporting from the Middle East, Japan, Mexico, Bangladesh and the Appalachian mountains.
This first volume focuses largely on nuclear power, and tells the story of Vollmann's extensive travels in Japan in the wake of the 2011 tsunami and meltdown of the Fukushima reactor. This ends up being a profound meditation on how humans confront unimaginable environmental catastrophe. Bureaucracies lie. Citizens try to carry on. Fantastical remedies are proposed, such as surrounding the meltdown area with a wall of ice. The echoes of how we face a warming climate are everywhere.
A note for readers: Vollmann is not like other writers. His work is an act of civil disobedience against the dictates of commercial publishing. Do not expect streamlined narratives and dumbed-down science. There are plenty of energy conversion tables sprinkled through the reportage. But sticking with this book is a deeply rewarding and illuminating experience. No one out there is writing in the way Vollmann writes, and we are lucky to have his work.
The second volume of "Carbon Ideologies," due out in June, is equally amazing. It covers fracking, oil refining, and coal production, in a way that only Vollmann could do it.
Do not miss this beautifully written, literary exploration of the most important issue of our age.
The book is framed as a long letter, written to future inhabitants of an over-heated Earth. "Carbon Ideologies" seeks to explain to future inhabitants of Earth why we, the people of today, persisted in emitting carbon into the atmosphere in spite of growing evidence that the practice threatens life as we know it. As always, Vollmann is breathtaking in the scope of his reporting. Deep history, scientific analysis and a penetrating look at the history of fossil fuels is coupled with on-the-ground reporting from the Middle East, Japan, Mexico, Bangladesh and the Appalachian mountains.
This first volume focuses largely on nuclear power, and tells the story of Vollmann's extensive travels in Japan in the wake of the 2011 tsunami and meltdown of the Fukushima reactor. This ends up being a profound meditation on how humans confront unimaginable environmental catastrophe. Bureaucracies lie. Citizens try to carry on. Fantastical remedies are proposed, such as surrounding the meltdown area with a wall of ice. The echoes of how we face a warming climate are everywhere.
A note for readers: Vollmann is not like other writers. His work is an act of civil disobedience against the dictates of commercial publishing. Do not expect streamlined narratives and dumbed-down science. There are plenty of energy conversion tables sprinkled through the reportage. But sticking with this book is a deeply rewarding and illuminating experience. No one out there is writing in the way Vollmann writes, and we are lucky to have his work.
The second volume of "Carbon Ideologies," due out in June, is equally amazing. It covers fracking, oil refining, and coal production, in a way that only Vollmann could do it.
Do not miss this beautifully written, literary exploration of the most important issue of our age.
August 13, 2018
Everyone is encouraging that I power on through the next volume. There is some haunting journalism here. There's also a great deal of scattered analysis and attendant hand wringing.
My wife bought me both volumes for my birthday and they arrived while I was till on my sojourn at the resort. She read 100 pages and we discussed such yesterday. the helplessness of everyone. People acting in good faith. How Vollmann hectors people, particularly the 25 year old and asks why since she's Japanese she's comfortable nuclear energy given the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is from this position of impotence that the survey of radiation is especially nuanced. It is an invisible phenomenon, much like our strange non-empirical relationship with electricity and petrol.
My wife bought me both volumes for my birthday and they arrived while I was till on my sojourn at the resort. She read 100 pages and we discussed such yesterday. the helplessness of everyone. People acting in good faith. How Vollmann hectors people, particularly the 25 year old and asks why since she's Japanese she's comfortable nuclear energy given the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is from this position of impotence that the survey of radiation is especially nuanced. It is an invisible phenomenon, much like our strange non-empirical relationship with electricity and petrol.
July 26, 2018
"...All too often...generalists who could look at overarching meanings and patterns (and therefore most thoughtfully consider where we are going and why) lacked proficiency in maths and science. Meanwhile, some of the scientists and mathematicians I met were naive, or worse yet, indifferent, concerning our where and why. Carbon Ideologies strives, however unsuccessfully, to bridge the gap...".
This is the first volume of a very admirable attempt by Vollmann to comprehensively understand the issues arising from man made climate change, and in particular the role of fossil fuels, covering scientific principles and social and economic effects.
Five stars for the concept, four stars for the execution - particular in the first chapter with a primer on energy and related issues - but regrettably minus one star for the unnecessarily overlong second half of the book, being a never ending description of Vollmann obsessively wandering over various parts of Fukushima waving his Geiger counter around. By his fifth trip to Tomioka bordering the exclusion zone the only interest left for me was wondering whether or not the area might make a good destination for a bicycle trip - road safety given the light traffic would seem to more than compensate for the increased danger due to slightly elevated radiation levels.
Hopefully Volume II is as good as the first half of Volume I. Much of the wandering around in Fukushima could usefully be skipped.
This is the first volume of a very admirable attempt by Vollmann to comprehensively understand the issues arising from man made climate change, and in particular the role of fossil fuels, covering scientific principles and social and economic effects.
Five stars for the concept, four stars for the execution - particular in the first chapter with a primer on energy and related issues - but regrettably minus one star for the unnecessarily overlong second half of the book, being a never ending description of Vollmann obsessively wandering over various parts of Fukushima waving his Geiger counter around. By his fifth trip to Tomioka bordering the exclusion zone the only interest left for me was wondering whether or not the area might make a good destination for a bicycle trip - road safety given the light traffic would seem to more than compensate for the increased danger due to slightly elevated radiation levels.
Hopefully Volume II is as good as the first half of Volume I. Much of the wandering around in Fukushima could usefully be skipped.
October 1, 2020
Note to the Reader
List of Maps and Illustrations
--Carbon Ideologies Volume I: No Immediate Danger
Definitions, Units and Conversions:
Table 1: Commonly Mentioned Radiocontaminants in Fukushima
Table 2: Other Isotopes of Interest
Radioactivity of Selected Library Interiors, 2014-15
Dosimeter and Frisker Readings at Various Dental X-Ray Settings, 2015
Multiples of Outdoor Background Level at Dentist's Office, 2015
Carbon Dioxide Emissions of Various Fuels When Producing 2013 American Winter Peak Electrical Load Capacity, in multiples of natural gas's
Acknowledgments
(For source notes to both volumes of 'Carbon Ideologies', please see: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/carbonideologies.)
List of Maps and Illustrations
--Carbon Ideologies Volume I: No Immediate Danger
Definitions, Units and Conversions:
Table 1: Commonly Mentioned Radiocontaminants in Fukushima
Table 2: Other Isotopes of Interest
Radioactivity of Selected Library Interiors, 2014-15
Dosimeter and Frisker Readings at Various Dental X-Ray Settings, 2015
Multiples of Outdoor Background Level at Dentist's Office, 2015
Carbon Dioxide Emissions of Various Fuels When Producing 2013 American Winter Peak Electrical Load Capacity, in multiples of natural gas's
Acknowledgments
(For source notes to both volumes of 'Carbon Ideologies', please see: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/carbonideologies.)
May 3, 2024
This a very honest book about a variety of issues that stem from rampant, ever increasing energy needs. In style, this is partly written as a letter to the future inhabitants of a not so a livable world. For the author global warming is a given (for whom is it not by now… ) , for the various obvious reasons but also even more intriguing since lesser known culprits of increased CO2 in our atmosphere are detailed and explained in the first part of the book. The author then moves on to deal with the Fukushima reactor accident and its aftermath which he documents on the spot as he travels through the affected province while taking radiation readings, procuring views from both officials and the average Joe. This second part feels like a noir-style travel log of sorts, the author’s observations and interactions with the people have their charm. After all, it is us the people that bear out the policies and developments in the energy sector, for better and as it looks now for worse.
Why did i introduce this as an honest book? Well, the author shows honestly, here we go again LoL, that there is a dangerous mood out there which is quite candidly conveyed by the eponymous title No Immediate Danger. This mindset that is being rationalized into a conviction prevents us people who are now burdened with the implementation of “do-or-die” revisions of the carbon-intensive consumer capitalism and attendant comfort reduction measures. The author is very straightforward about not excluding himself here, although at times the reader may detect a gossamer breath of sarcasm in otherwise mostly sincere admissions of his own short-comings, short-fallings to a monumental task at hand.
This made me ask an important question. Why supposedly is it so impossible to go back to a more linear, cyclical economy type that could make us live in a more sustainable, and i am going to say it here quite unpolitically, thrifty manner. Is it not merely asking to return to a natural way of living of past centuries where we found it worth our time to repair something broken, when we took good care of the little we had and understood to save in times of plenty so that stores of excess foods and tools then available in times of need could save the proverbial day? There is an old fairy tale, a cautionary tale, from my childhood days whose protagonist is gifted a loaf of bread that regrows every night as long as it is not consumed completely during the day. You can guess what happened. So, is this really going to be us? Our current mode of living and its gospel of everlasting economic growth is simply not sustainable in a world of limited resources. The self-sacrificial act of using paper straws instead of plastic straws just ain’t gonna cut it. This conclusion is rationalism at its best, yet we do not act on it except for glorified and really virtually empty gestures as stated before. Read the book and find out.
Why did i introduce this as an honest book? Well, the author shows honestly, here we go again LoL, that there is a dangerous mood out there which is quite candidly conveyed by the eponymous title No Immediate Danger. This mindset that is being rationalized into a conviction prevents us people who are now burdened with the implementation of “do-or-die” revisions of the carbon-intensive consumer capitalism and attendant comfort reduction measures. The author is very straightforward about not excluding himself here, although at times the reader may detect a gossamer breath of sarcasm in otherwise mostly sincere admissions of his own short-comings, short-fallings to a monumental task at hand.
This made me ask an important question. Why supposedly is it so impossible to go back to a more linear, cyclical economy type that could make us live in a more sustainable, and i am going to say it here quite unpolitically, thrifty manner. Is it not merely asking to return to a natural way of living of past centuries where we found it worth our time to repair something broken, when we took good care of the little we had and understood to save in times of plenty so that stores of excess foods and tools then available in times of need could save the proverbial day? There is an old fairy tale, a cautionary tale, from my childhood days whose protagonist is gifted a loaf of bread that regrows every night as long as it is not consumed completely during the day. You can guess what happened. So, is this really going to be us? Our current mode of living and its gospel of everlasting economic growth is simply not sustainable in a world of limited resources. The self-sacrificial act of using paper straws instead of plastic straws just ain’t gonna cut it. This conclusion is rationalism at its best, yet we do not act on it except for glorified and really virtually empty gestures as stated before. Read the book and find out.
June 7, 2018
I love Vollmann's writing, particularly the novels but also Rising Up and Rising Down, so I was disappointed in this, the first volume of a two volume work on the damage we are doing to our world with our energy production. The first 200 pages here, a "Primer" on the different energy schemes, was excellent, vintage Vollmann. But the rest of this volume, on nuclear, is primarily a 300 page description of Vollmann wandering around the area of the Fukushima disaster evacuation zones alone with occasional side treks to Hanford and such, with Vollman recording every reading he took with a "frisker" scintillation counter.
The vast majority of these hundreds and hundreds of readings are remarkably low and I'm not sure what Volmann's point is with them. They were boring as hell and I can't see they served any purpose. Added to this is that in the area of nuclear energy, Vollman's science is very very poor. He confuses terms and seems to not understand how radioactive decay works in terms of the harm it causes. For example, it seems he confuses the particles ejected from a decay with the radioactive material itself. In the end, he convinces that the Fukushima disaster was very damaging long term and was caused by mankind's hubris with the risks but in the meantime, I could not wait until it was over. I am however looking forward to reading the second volume on carbon based technologies as the Primer convinced me he is on more solid ground in that area.
The vast majority of these hundreds and hundreds of readings are remarkably low and I'm not sure what Volmann's point is with them. They were boring as hell and I can't see they served any purpose. Added to this is that in the area of nuclear energy, Vollman's science is very very poor. He confuses terms and seems to not understand how radioactive decay works in terms of the harm it causes. For example, it seems he confuses the particles ejected from a decay with the radioactive material itself. In the end, he convinces that the Fukushima disaster was very damaging long term and was caused by mankind's hubris with the risks but in the meantime, I could not wait until it was over. I am however looking forward to reading the second volume on carbon based technologies as the Primer convinced me he is on more solid ground in that area.
Read
April 8, 2023There were several times when the monotony of his interviews set my mind adrift, but overall this is a book worthy of our attention. Who else but WTV, at this time in our history of letters, is equipped to take on such a contentious and, more often than not, ambiguous topic: carbon. More specifically, the dangers of converting carbon, from coal, oil, natural gas, etc. This first volume of his two-part Carbon Ideologies is split into three parts: (1) a 200-page primer that covers everything you could want to know about energy consumption and greenhouse emissions; a 300-page journalistic adventure as only WTV could present; and (3) a compendium of definitions, conversions charts, etc., akin to the appendixes found in his Seven Dreams novels. I'm relatively new to WTV, but already I am blown away by his intelligence, curiosity, and work ethic. This guys reads and writes for 16 hours a day, I've heard, and lives devoid of a TV, cell phone, etc. Above all, this book stimulated my own concern and curiosity about environmental issues that I am more inclined to ignore--after all, there is "no immediate danger." Already I have jumped into studying water life cycles, organic gardening, composting, and interviewing local entities involved in our collective carbon footprint in one way or another.
September 4, 2018
But importantly,
Take for instance this review, which I think is an excellent read.
Will Boisvert brings up the embrrassing mistake Vollmann makes on page 48, "Vollmann claims that “in each two days of 2009, the world burned the entire oil output of 1990,” which is wrong by 289 days."
Will then goes on to castigate Vollmann for being a pessimist, because, a) it probably isn't as bad as Vollmann suggests, and b) fear-mongering psychologically does not motivate people to change or do anything.
These are valid and important criticisms (especially that specific math error.)
However, I think that Will sort of gets the primer wrong... at least, that is how I read it.
I am not sure if Vollmann is convinced that the world will turn into the fiery hell-scape that his book imagines (as it is addressed to future residents who toil in a Venus-style death-planet.)
What's more important is that it is easy to imagine it and an actual possibility, given current trends and models and the unpredictability of such a complex system such as Earth's global climate (butterfly wings in place A causes Hurricane in faraway place B (which I know isn't an actual thing, but is a good visual metaphor of chaotic systems)).
The two sides to this argument: things aren't-as-bad-as-they-seem vs. we-seriously-fucked-the-world-over, have been encountered in my readings of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (HIGHLY recommend that read) for the former, and Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari or This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein (both good books) for the latter.
Both sides present good reasons for coming to the conclusions they do... and the reason such smart people can come to wildly differing conclusions is because, guess what, this is a seriously complex topic... Forecasting the future is literally impossible... so books that suggest they know how the future will turn out must be judged with a grain of salt.
Let me get to my point: What Vollmann is doing here, in the primer, is imagining the worst-worst-case scenario possible, and viewing our present time and our past through that lense. People from this imagined future will think: "How did you not see this coming?" or "If it was complex but you thought it was possible the world would turn out this way, why did you take such a big risk with the future?"
That's an incredibly interesting thing to write and think about. What were/are we thinking about all this? This "hyper-object", as it has been termed. As Vollmann puts it, from the perspective of a dead planet in the future, "what was the work for?"
What about that glaring factual error he made with regards to world oil combustion comparisons across 1990 and 2016? How can we trust a man who makes such errors? Shouldn't the whole book be thrown out?
Well, I do hope they fix that error in the future. But for now, I think Vollmann writes about this very issue on page 196: "Have I made errors? No doubt - as have other carbon ideologues... [...] And if you'd rather throw up your hands and leave evaluation to others, why, then, that was just what my neighbours and I liked to do!"
This is a fantastic point about how we, the everyday people who are collectively responsible for this potential (and in very real ways current) disaster, deal with the information for such a hyper-complex topic. Do we sit back, trust experts (which invariably we will have to do at almost every level), and do as we're told (Keep Calm and Carry On)? Do we try and understand so that we can be better informed and thus make more responsible decisions? From the perspective of the apocalyptic future, what exactly did WE do, individually, to try to prevent this? Did we try to understand it ourselves? Vollmann shows us in this primer just how herculean of a task that is. This is a very human representation of what it was like for us, now, to tackle this subject. Do you find the tables and information too much? Dull? Boring? Too complex? Yeah! Vollmann shows us exactly what it's like to try to wrestle this...something most of us have never really dedicated much time to, despite the all too real consequences such an action may have on the future of our planet.
This book is infinitely quotable, and Vollmann's repetitious use of "What was the work for?" (again, from the perspective of a level-nine-circle-of-hell future) I found to be very effective in making me re-analyze what exactly we've done with what we were given: cheap cheap energy (alternatively, I again highly recommend Pinker's Enlightenment Now for a response to this sort of question.)
Here is just one quote I'll leave this review with for now:
"Subtle, tedious and subject to revisions without end, these calculations repulsed us. Who wouln't rather just sell the fuel with the greatest temporary financial return? Why not settle for a carboniferous career? - As for the people in my circles, our lives remained easy. We had new choices every year - and on those sadly numerous occasions when we coult not gratify demand, it was because we ran out of life, or money; not because we lacked fuel; never because some "future's" imperious protector prohibited us from "consuming" it." - p. 202
I think we're standing on the precipice, and the future will either indeed end up where Pinker sort of sees it going, which is that Enlightenment and Humanist values will save the day... or as Vollmann imagines it (although I don't necessarily think he believes it)... to complete and utter disaster.
The question, "What was the work for?" has such a dramatically different effect based on which one we ultimately end up with.
[update: finished the rest of Vol. 1]
The rumours are true: the last 300 pages of this Volume are rather dull. Vollmann wanders and frisks and thinks about radiation. Yes, I actually enjoyed it. It's a preview of how a modern industrial nation comes to grips with such a disaster. I think nuclear energy, one way or another, is going to be used to combat global warming while continuing to feed our need for electricity. This is the eerie reality of what nuclear disaster looks like...
Want to read
November 11, 2023No Scientific Method
Vollmann says in an introductory note to Carbon Ideologies that all three works (Poor People, Rising Up and Rising Down and Carbon Ideologies) “use induction to generalize from subjective case studies into analytical categories of the phenomenon under investigation.”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/w...#!
I didn't find the process of induction from the facts [in Rising Up and Rising Down] to be particularly convincing. I question whether Vollmann really started with a blank sheet of paper and constructed his moral calculus from the facts. I suspect he had a fair idea of what he wanted to say and where he wanted to go, right from the very beginning.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Vollmann says in an introductory note to Carbon Ideologies that all three works (Poor People, Rising Up and Rising Down and Carbon Ideologies) “use induction to generalize from subjective case studies into analytical categories of the phenomenon under investigation.”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/w...#!
I didn't find the process of induction from the facts [in Rising Up and Rising Down] to be particularly convincing. I question whether Vollmann really started with a blank sheet of paper and constructed his moral calculus from the facts. I suspect he had a fair idea of what he wanted to say and where he wanted to go, right from the very beginning.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
May 16, 2018
Fuller review to come—I'll say this 'til then: I think Vollmann failed at writing a book that is essential for this moment in time. It was a herculean task, especially for a person who is not a radiation/nuclear expert, but perhaps that's why someone else should have written it. His monomaniacal focus on measuring areas turns into a repetitious experience that just circles the drain for the last 200+ pages of this book without much expanding upon what's at stake despite a few interjections of pith. I'll be curious to read Vol. 2, but it has a lot of work to make up for. I'm still looking forward to Vol. 2, and to reading some of his fiction.
November 24, 2018
This was a real slog of a read. There is so much information, perhaps too much, given to back up the author’s claims of the futility in trying to ‘fix’ climate change. Perhaps my mistake was in trying to read the “primer,” the first 200 pages or so of the book. I found myself skimming through a great deal of it, and wondering if anyone who wasn’t already practically convinced of his position even bother (the author, himself, writes that a reader may what to do just, that, skipping the primer.)
It’s not that I don’t agree with his assertions; I do. And I did learn some things about nuclear power that, though I knew about, had never put into the context of carbon dioxide emissions.
I did enjoy the way in which he presented his arguments; his biting wit added the little bit of needed levity to such a depressing subject. And depressing it is, especially the interviews with the tsunami victims and nuclear evacuees. Their lives have been forever disrupted. And for many there’s no going back. But even here, the author tended to bog down the reader with information.
I do plan on reading the second volume; I hope there’s a little less of the measurements of released carbon dioxide, and a little more of its consequences.
It’s not that I don’t agree with his assertions; I do. And I did learn some things about nuclear power that, though I knew about, had never put into the context of carbon dioxide emissions.
I did enjoy the way in which he presented his arguments; his biting wit added the little bit of needed levity to such a depressing subject. And depressing it is, especially the interviews with the tsunami victims and nuclear evacuees. Their lives have been forever disrupted. And for many there’s no going back. But even here, the author tended to bog down the reader with information.
I do plan on reading the second volume; I hope there’s a little less of the measurements of released carbon dioxide, and a little more of its consequences.
Read
June 24, 2018A bit of a slog at times, withholding a real write up til I finish volume II.
March 25, 2021
Written as a document to the future explaining our present day Mental Gymnastics to an irradiated, cave dwelling populace, this volume deals largely with the Fukushima reactor meltdown of 2011. Anyone who’s read Vollmann’s journalism knows what to expect: you’re basically getting a textbook-level information dump intermixed with dark humor, travel writing, and Vollmann’s very unique, empathic worldview.
March 1, 2019
A desktop computer in 2010 required up to 660 pounds of coal for its manufacture; a refrigerator can require 1,000 and 1,400 pounds of coal. “In 2013, rice farming caused 50% of Japan’s methane emissions.” Both ends of a cow conjure up “2 liters of methane per minute”. Per capita U.S. annual soft drink consumption in 1990 was 47.5 gallons. An inconvenient truth: “Nuclear power plants need electrical power 24 hours per day, even when the nuclear reactors are shut down, to run equipment that cools the reactor core and spent nuclear fuel.” Of the five biggest energy hogs, Aluminum manufacture is king and uses 94 times more energy to make than concrete. The problem with recycling plastics is that there are so many kinds that separating them is a bitch, compounded by whether each piece has additives or fillers. Check out the Bakken gas flaring – all that gas constantly being flared - “1 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas”. Who is talking about that? That estimates out to more than a billion dollars a year in waste. The LOCA coolant accident at Fukushima was supposed to be a one in 2,000-year possibility. A fuel rod lasts two to five years, you can buy them at montgomeryburns.com. The Voyager 1 space probe has gone for more than 50 years through its three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) mounted on a boom. Each MHW-RTG contains 24 pressed plutonium-238 oxide spheres. If it blew up, the boom would go boom. During WWII, “two of the Manhattan Project’s leading scientists considered poisoning the German food supply with a radioisotope, strontium appeared to offer the highest promise. Perhaps they were hoping to cause bone cancers.”
William writes this book to future generations as though he and we the readers were long dead. He explains to them our present time and what we did and tried to do. William starts off with 206 pages of “primer” (to lay out biological and thermo-dynamical energy difficulties) followed by some terrific diagrams on energy usage, efficiencies, and embodied energy costs and then it’s hundreds of pages of him travelling back many times to the Fukushima area to take dosimeter readings. He asks lots and lots of Japanese locals for their opinions and tells you their stories one after the other. At one point the book perks up when William returns to Japan with …a handheld frisker! That’s the big excitement for the next few hundred pages as he can now take more accurate readings and thrills the reader with many black and white photographs of his frisker pointing at this shrub or that drainpipe.
At times I thought, the real title of this 598-page book should be “Me and My Handheld Frisker.” The Ludlum Model 26-1 that William carried with him costs under $900, so we are basically reading half a book about what a guy with a lot of spare time can do with a $900 tech device. I care take a large property and own a FLIR C3 Thermal Imaging Camera which allows me to see all heat and cold visually in an LCD monitor – should I write half a book about it (with lots of photos) and what it taught me about insulation and heat loss in a climate-stricken world? God, I hope not. William told his publisher he didn’t want to cut out any of this book (this is only the first volume); unless you live near Fukushima, good luck reading small story after small story about local hardships in a complex situation. Thanks to William, at least I now see how complex the post-Fukushima scenario is – but I’d rather read stories about those hurt by bad policies of my country, not bad policies of Japan. Doesn’t make sense to look at our energy mistakes first, before looking at energy mistakes of other countries?
William writes this book to future generations as though he and we the readers were long dead. He explains to them our present time and what we did and tried to do. William starts off with 206 pages of “primer” (to lay out biological and thermo-dynamical energy difficulties) followed by some terrific diagrams on energy usage, efficiencies, and embodied energy costs and then it’s hundreds of pages of him travelling back many times to the Fukushima area to take dosimeter readings. He asks lots and lots of Japanese locals for their opinions and tells you their stories one after the other. At one point the book perks up when William returns to Japan with …a handheld frisker! That’s the big excitement for the next few hundred pages as he can now take more accurate readings and thrills the reader with many black and white photographs of his frisker pointing at this shrub or that drainpipe.
At times I thought, the real title of this 598-page book should be “Me and My Handheld Frisker.” The Ludlum Model 26-1 that William carried with him costs under $900, so we are basically reading half a book about what a guy with a lot of spare time can do with a $900 tech device. I care take a large property and own a FLIR C3 Thermal Imaging Camera which allows me to see all heat and cold visually in an LCD monitor – should I write half a book about it (with lots of photos) and what it taught me about insulation and heat loss in a climate-stricken world? God, I hope not. William told his publisher he didn’t want to cut out any of this book (this is only the first volume); unless you live near Fukushima, good luck reading small story after small story about local hardships in a complex situation. Thanks to William, at least I now see how complex the post-Fukushima scenario is – but I’d rather read stories about those hurt by bad policies of my country, not bad policies of Japan. Doesn’t make sense to look at our energy mistakes first, before looking at energy mistakes of other countries?
January 16, 2019
Vollmann’s comprehensive account of everything humanity has done wrong may be difficult to read and comprehend, but it is vital. Those of the “hot dark future” and we in the present must read it for the same reason: to understand humanity’s present and past actions and — as Vollmann classifies our beliefs, equivocations, lies, truths, and motives — our “ideologies.”
I am not asking each and every person to finish the book, inspecting, reflecting, and absorbing the information from cover to cover. I would only like to suggest that you read until you feel a bit concerned. Then read until you think you might understand. Keep reading until you, like the inhabitants of our hot dark future, cannot see how we could have done what we did — how we can do what we are doing now — and then keep reading until you grasp that sense of urgency and desperation. Keep reading until you want to know what we should have done. Then proceed to volume II.
I am not asking each and every person to finish the book, inspecting, reflecting, and absorbing the information from cover to cover. I would only like to suggest that you read until you feel a bit concerned. Then read until you think you might understand. Keep reading until you, like the inhabitants of our hot dark future, cannot see how we could have done what we did — how we can do what we are doing now — and then keep reading until you grasp that sense of urgency and desperation. Keep reading until you want to know what we should have done. Then proceed to volume II.
November 30, 2021
Equivalent of eating dry granola.
Some books take me a long time to read because I savor them. Some because they’re difficult and challenging. This book took me a long time to read because it’s super long and full of random stories that I wasn’t quite sure connected to the main thesis.
There’s a combination of these really dry statistics and figures about carbon and various greenhouse gases. Then the second half flips over into the author traveling around and essentially reporting on the conditions around power plants, notably Fukushima after its meltdown.
I wanted to like this but it just dragged. For an already long book it felt self-indulgent.
Some books take me a long time to read because I savor them. Some because they’re difficult and challenging. This book took me a long time to read because it’s super long and full of random stories that I wasn’t quite sure connected to the main thesis.
There’s a combination of these really dry statistics and figures about carbon and various greenhouse gases. Then the second half flips over into the author traveling around and essentially reporting on the conditions around power plants, notably Fukushima after its meltdown.
I wanted to like this but it just dragged. For an already long book it felt self-indulgent.
April 20, 2024
I want to give this book 5 stars and 0 stars, and probably a few others in between all at once.
5 stars for taking on a topic so broad and complex and taking the effort to convert all the figures so that they could be compared head to head. 5 stars for highlighting how complex climate change can be to measure and quantify, despite agendas and biases and then gathering all the conflicting data points to compare in reference to each other. 5 stars for an author who is not a technical person to do this amount of technical work to share. 5 stars for challenging readers to do the same to try and understand even a little, to realize the hidden costs of everything we do. For these reasons, I want to recommend everyone read this book, to start discussions and have more almost meta analysis like work done in a way that is accessible to everyone.
0 stars because I did not finish this book. I read the full primer, and a little bit into the rest of the book but was extremely disappointed when it felt like I was reading an entirely new book. I'll take some blame for this, for not understanding what I was getting myself into, but 200+ pages in, I was finally used to the style of the author's presentation of technical work, and thought that that was what the book would continue to be once the nuclear sections started. Unfortunately for my expectations, it turned very non technical, very quickly. Some other reviews on goodreads warned of this as well.
0 stars because for a book about comparisons the comparison "tables" are extremely annoying to compare figures in. I know having the notes for commentary was necessary, interesting, and helpful, but seriously, put the figures into an actual table with rows and columns.
More generally on this point, 0 stars for going through so much work and gathering so many data points, enabling some semblance of objectivity and clarity, and not communicating it clearly. This was probably the most frustrating point, with no real order or organization to the chapters, bad tables that sometimes really had no point or relevance, and general jumping around from topic to topic. Again this was most annoying in the context of all the work that he had done to clarify issues, and the fact that he is someone who should be able to string a story together. It makes me want to ask the book's signature question right back at it: what was all the work for??
Also a smaller note but still worthy of my 0 star anger, the author spent so much time discussing manufacturing methods and through energy inputs that went into creating different objects as well as types of energy production, but then had a brief chapter into solar energy which sounded generally positive in comparison to all other energy production methods listed. He then went on to actively state that he would ignore and not dive into the manufacture of solar cells, which would probably be one of the biggest energy negatives to solar but I would be interested to see his analysis on how that stacks up to other manufacturing, and what that does to his comparisons of fuel types. Add in batteries and other electronics and it would probably get even worse, or maybe not given all the inputs into other energy generation....but I guess we'll never know. I love the idea of solar energy and was excited to hear more about it (positives, negatives, and most of all apples to apples comparisons), especially given how highly it was talked about in an otherwise doom and gloom book, and then it was left behind.
Somewhere in the middle:
I have conflicting feelings about the writing style in this book. At the beginning I was surprised to read such intense sarcasm and bashing on people from a very technical book. I found that at times it felt more like a long rant than any scientific work, and again, maybe it sort of is and my expectations were off. At times the sarcasm mixed with the brutal honesty of how we today enjoy spending energy with no regard for the future made it genuinely confusing to read and understand his point. However, all of this did make it relatable and more readable than a textbook, which is great because i would never pick up and read a textbook. It's nice to hear that someone who is fully convinced that we are destroying the earth has a hard time changing his ways. I'm in the same boat, and acknowledging that reality challenges you to do more, while also making you more sympathetic to those who aren't even convinced that we are headed for disaster. How can they change if we won't? How can they change if in their eyes there is no immediate danger?
I also know that there are mistakes in this book. I saw some discussion reading the reviews here as well as finding an easy one myself pretty early on (-20F does not equal -20C, it's -40 that is the crossing point). For me, in a project this large, this is not a deal breaker. This is a book to start real technical discussion, to pick apart and challenge, to use as a starting point and anyone who is interested to dig deeper into a given topic should use this book for reference but not take it as a gold standard.
After all of this, if anyone actually reads this, and has recommendations for good meta analysis, technical books like the one I wanted this to be, I would love to hear your suggestions
5 stars for taking on a topic so broad and complex and taking the effort to convert all the figures so that they could be compared head to head. 5 stars for highlighting how complex climate change can be to measure and quantify, despite agendas and biases and then gathering all the conflicting data points to compare in reference to each other. 5 stars for an author who is not a technical person to do this amount of technical work to share. 5 stars for challenging readers to do the same to try and understand even a little, to realize the hidden costs of everything we do. For these reasons, I want to recommend everyone read this book, to start discussions and have more almost meta analysis like work done in a way that is accessible to everyone.
0 stars because I did not finish this book. I read the full primer, and a little bit into the rest of the book but was extremely disappointed when it felt like I was reading an entirely new book. I'll take some blame for this, for not understanding what I was getting myself into, but 200+ pages in, I was finally used to the style of the author's presentation of technical work, and thought that that was what the book would continue to be once the nuclear sections started. Unfortunately for my expectations, it turned very non technical, very quickly. Some other reviews on goodreads warned of this as well.
0 stars because for a book about comparisons the comparison "tables" are extremely annoying to compare figures in. I know having the notes for commentary was necessary, interesting, and helpful, but seriously, put the figures into an actual table with rows and columns.
More generally on this point, 0 stars for going through so much work and gathering so many data points, enabling some semblance of objectivity and clarity, and not communicating it clearly. This was probably the most frustrating point, with no real order or organization to the chapters, bad tables that sometimes really had no point or relevance, and general jumping around from topic to topic. Again this was most annoying in the context of all the work that he had done to clarify issues, and the fact that he is someone who should be able to string a story together. It makes me want to ask the book's signature question right back at it: what was all the work for??
Also a smaller note but still worthy of my 0 star anger, the author spent so much time discussing manufacturing methods and through energy inputs that went into creating different objects as well as types of energy production, but then had a brief chapter into solar energy which sounded generally positive in comparison to all other energy production methods listed. He then went on to actively state that he would ignore and not dive into the manufacture of solar cells, which would probably be one of the biggest energy negatives to solar but I would be interested to see his analysis on how that stacks up to other manufacturing, and what that does to his comparisons of fuel types. Add in batteries and other electronics and it would probably get even worse, or maybe not given all the inputs into other energy generation....but I guess we'll never know. I love the idea of solar energy and was excited to hear more about it (positives, negatives, and most of all apples to apples comparisons), especially given how highly it was talked about in an otherwise doom and gloom book, and then it was left behind.
Somewhere in the middle:
I have conflicting feelings about the writing style in this book. At the beginning I was surprised to read such intense sarcasm and bashing on people from a very technical book. I found that at times it felt more like a long rant than any scientific work, and again, maybe it sort of is and my expectations were off. At times the sarcasm mixed with the brutal honesty of how we today enjoy spending energy with no regard for the future made it genuinely confusing to read and understand his point. However, all of this did make it relatable and more readable than a textbook, which is great because i would never pick up and read a textbook. It's nice to hear that someone who is fully convinced that we are destroying the earth has a hard time changing his ways. I'm in the same boat, and acknowledging that reality challenges you to do more, while also making you more sympathetic to those who aren't even convinced that we are headed for disaster. How can they change if we won't? How can they change if in their eyes there is no immediate danger?
I also know that there are mistakes in this book. I saw some discussion reading the reviews here as well as finding an easy one myself pretty early on (-20F does not equal -20C, it's -40 that is the crossing point). For me, in a project this large, this is not a deal breaker. This is a book to start real technical discussion, to pick apart and challenge, to use as a starting point and anyone who is interested to dig deeper into a given topic should use this book for reference but not take it as a gold standard.
After all of this, if anyone actually reads this, and has recommendations for good meta analysis, technical books like the one I wanted this to be, I would love to hear your suggestions
December 26, 2018
Needs a very strong editor. Way too long for the content. Could only skim it.
May 14, 2018
A prospective reviewer cannot engage William Vollmann's NO IMMEDIATE DANGER without laying out the fact that it constitutes but half of a larger work the publication date of the remainder of which lies on the horizon slightly ahead of us (but only June, kids, only June). To be continued, as it were. We can attribute these two volumes to the characteristic inability of Mr. Vollmann, despite promises to his publisher, to reign in his word counts. As always, we should be grateful for the failure of this superhero of output to so do. NO IMMEDIATE DANGER: VOLUME ONE OF CARBON IDEOLOGIES, following an introduction which is very much an introduction to the CARBON IDEOLOGIES project in toto, is itself broken more or less in two: slightly more than two-hundred pages of hard science (relayed in as compelling a manner as it must be possible to relay such things) followed by the kind of bravura reportage from post-Fukushima Japan to which readers of Vollmann's remarkable nonfiction will be more or less accustomed. If Vollmann's CARBON IDEOLOGIES project seeks to consolidate the science and report back from the field, what fundamentally focuses it is a truly ingenious rhetorical gambit: Vollmann is addressing this dense and exhaustive project to the "inhabitants of a hotter, more dangerous and biologically diminished planet" generations from now - a theoretical citizenry who we might well expect to reflexively resent us for our carbon-burning, radiocontaminating ways. This rhetorical gambit works both to invest the work with a kind of stone-cold bottom line but also to sprinkle it with dark humour and mordant irony. The science is pretty vital, naturally. I have always been reluctant to get into arguments with carbon ideologues simply because my knowledge of the actual science of climate change has been negligible at best. While NO IMMEDIATE DANGER is nominally the volume of CARBON IDEOLOGIES dealing with the costs of nuclear power-generation, the science that informs the large opening section(s) of the book is science pertaining to both of the two volumes. Much of this science relates to energy production and expenditure spelled out in British Thermal Units (BTUs). Vollmann encourages readers who are more interested in his literary reportage to skip the opening section(s), but I am sure a great many (like myself) are coming to CARBON IDEOLOGIES at least partially in search of science. Once we get to Japan, however, many of us will be very happy indeed to be in the hands of the Vollmann we know. He is, as ever, our great peripatetic storyteller, going far and wide to report back, possessed of generous, inexhaustible curiosity and a convivial manner. What he finds in Japan are strange and discomfiting breeds both of anxiety and complacency. There is danger, but indeed it hardly seems all that often particularly immediate, at least in part because of not being visible. The worst danger remains theoretical, the cross to bear of the theoretical inhabitants of a dire future to whom the writing is addressed. There is something supremely (and, hell, winningly) American about Vollmann's quasi-folksy erudition. He is very brainy and very self-deprecating guide. He is also probably the most eager radiation tourist of all time. I for one will be digging into volume two with telling haste.
July 29, 2019
Vollmann nonfiction covering global warming, the energy economy (fuels, generation, useage, waste), the modern industrial economy in general, & the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Also asks some philosophical questions around the energy economy; specifically, the morality of externalizing the costs of pollution, and of ignoring the future costs of our economy & way of life.
The part of the book the "No Immediate Danger" title comes from is kind of a travelogue through Fukushima Daiichi's fallout, & including conversations with the people who live with it. Full of data comparing fuels' economy, global warming impacts, & radioactivity measurements in various locales, including Sacramento, Washington DC, & the Fukushima Green, Yellow, & Red Zones.
While No Immediate Danger is full of great information, & asks important questions, it could have been organized better, & the style was odd, to say the least. I think it was good that Vollmann didn't shy away from including himself & his own place in the global economy & the climate crisis, & it was fine his observations of Fukushima & Hanford took the form of 1st person travelogues, I think they could have been done better. Vollmann could have cut out 75% of his self-flagellation over his participation in modern transport, consumerism, & energy usage, & still conveyed the urgency of the climate crisis. The constant apology for his personal consumer choices distracted from the real political reasons we are in the midst of a climate crisis. Additionally, Vollmann presented himself as a sort of bumbling confused "Sitcom Dad" character as he toured the contaminated zones near Fukushima Daiichi, interviewing officials and evacuees. Was his idea that by affecting the perspective of a fool, he would ironically expose the foolishness of official calculations of risk & cost-benefit? Did he think he would give the readers some chuckles? Strangely, he often noted (whether in Sacramento, London, Tokyo, or Fukushima) when he noticed "pretty" or "beautiful" women, & he mentioned that A radiation detector makes a sound like his "sweetest girlfriend's" climax. Again, I have to wonder what Vollmann was attempting. What was the editor thinking? (I joke, books don't have editors anymore.) These odd narrative & language choices were off-putting, and detracted from a book otherwise full of good information & valuable perspectives.
Since No Immediate Danger was full of important info & ideas, I'll probably try to find the companion Volume "No Reasonable Alternative", although I do not relish finding out where next Vollmann will make an amusing gaffe, or where he will tell me he spotted a pretty girl.
The part of the book the "No Immediate Danger" title comes from is kind of a travelogue through Fukushima Daiichi's fallout, & including conversations with the people who live with it. Full of data comparing fuels' economy, global warming impacts, & radioactivity measurements in various locales, including Sacramento, Washington DC, & the Fukushima Green, Yellow, & Red Zones.
While No Immediate Danger is full of great information, & asks important questions, it could have been organized better, & the style was odd, to say the least. I think it was good that Vollmann didn't shy away from including himself & his own place in the global economy & the climate crisis, & it was fine his observations of Fukushima & Hanford took the form of 1st person travelogues, I think they could have been done better. Vollmann could have cut out 75% of his self-flagellation over his participation in modern transport, consumerism, & energy usage, & still conveyed the urgency of the climate crisis. The constant apology for his personal consumer choices distracted from the real political reasons we are in the midst of a climate crisis. Additionally, Vollmann presented himself as a sort of bumbling confused "Sitcom Dad" character as he toured the contaminated zones near Fukushima Daiichi, interviewing officials and evacuees. Was his idea that by affecting the perspective of a fool, he would ironically expose the foolishness of official calculations of risk & cost-benefit? Did he think he would give the readers some chuckles? Strangely, he often noted (whether in Sacramento, London, Tokyo, or Fukushima) when he noticed "pretty" or "beautiful" women, & he mentioned that A radiation detector makes a sound like his "sweetest girlfriend's" climax. Again, I have to wonder what Vollmann was attempting. What was the editor thinking? (I joke, books don't have editors anymore.) These odd narrative & language choices were off-putting, and detracted from a book otherwise full of good information & valuable perspectives.
Since No Immediate Danger was full of important info & ideas, I'll probably try to find the companion Volume "No Reasonable Alternative", although I do not relish finding out where next Vollmann will make an amusing gaffe, or where he will tell me he spotted a pretty girl.
December 22, 2022
What I appreciated most about this book is how palpable it makes the problem of climate change feel while concurrently giving credence to to one's related feelings of utter hopelessness, for the system that created this mess will not release its grip of power sufficiently for any genuine solution to take form. And regarding the potential hopes or follies of humanity's gaze towards nuclear energy as our solution, I found this sentence that Vollmann quotes from Fukushima Daiichi's comprehensive accident management plan to be particularly telling: "The possibility of a severe accident occurring is so small that from an engineering standpoint, it is practically unthinkable."
I found that the last half of the book, which has Vollmann explore the Fukushima Prefecture with frisker in hand constantly measuring radioactivity, certainly would have benefitted from some significant cutting (one can enjoy reading about the nuclear frisker readings of pampas grasses in abandoned regions of Fukushima for only so many dozen pages). Additionally, many of the tables of data felt a little needlessly complex for what was needed.
Altogether, this book ultimately feels like an important exploration of climate change from an expert in curiosity, an expertise that I feel grasps the hopelessness of the matter better than many experts in the climatological field, who often seem unfamiliar with how capitalism's trappings operate and prevent the alterations to policy that they advocate for.
I found that the last half of the book, which has Vollmann explore the Fukushima Prefecture with frisker in hand constantly measuring radioactivity, certainly would have benefitted from some significant cutting (one can enjoy reading about the nuclear frisker readings of pampas grasses in abandoned regions of Fukushima for only so many dozen pages). Additionally, many of the tables of data felt a little needlessly complex for what was needed.
Altogether, this book ultimately feels like an important exploration of climate change from an expert in curiosity, an expertise that I feel grasps the hopelessness of the matter better than many experts in the climatological field, who often seem unfamiliar with how capitalism's trappings operate and prevent the alterations to policy that they advocate for.
August 31, 2023
The first of two door-stopping volumes examining the use, misuse, generation, and environmental impact of power. ‘No Immediate Danger’ opens with a 250-page primer which sets out a lot of scientific data (some of which, frankly, went over my head) and rigorously poses the question, at every stage, “what was the work for?” Without ever preaching or pushing an agenda, Vollmann demonstrates the sheer arrogant wastefulness of the contemporary lifestyle. In the second half of the book, he makes several journeys to Japan (mea culpa’ing himself for the air travel!) to investigate the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Again, he refrains from proselytising, simply observing, reporting journalistically and interviewing everyone he comes across, from devastate homeowners to line-towing petty officials. Despite a welcome tendency to mordant humour in some places, ‘No Immediate Danger’ is a dense text, and heavy-going as a reading experience - something I approached at just a few pages a day over several weeks. Rewarding as all hell, though.
July 19, 2024
No Immediate Danger, and I'm sure Carbon Ideologies as a whole, is definitely interesting. I just think Vollmann handles the book and the subject matter oddly. No Immediate Danger is essentially a single case study used to demonstrate the dangers of Nuclear energy. That single case study is the Fukushima nuclear disaster from 2011. That's okay by itself, but he chooses to evaluate the disaster and its consequences from almost a wholly sociological perspective--the book is almost entirely interviews with Japanese locals. This is an important aspect for developing the human consequences of the disaster, but just imagine basing a book of No Immediate Danger's scope on ignorant masses who have so many disparate ideas or conflicting views on a single case study with a bunch of tests of his dosimeter for good measure. Vollmann even makes a point to mention how his publisher asked him to edit the book and he refused... why? There's so much redundancy.
February 8, 2019
A quite fascinating citizen journalist type of book by William T. Vollmann where he spends time in Japan after the Fukushima disaster and explores the area and interviews locals while toting a dosimeter and a pancake frisker. I downloaded the 100 page notes and those were quite helpful as this was a bit wonky in the nuclear discussion sometimes and audio is not the easiest to keep up with in those cases.
May 25, 2025
Good (while amateur) efforts towards energy/carbon accounting in the introduction section. The second half of the book wasn’t for me - mostly the author bumbling around measuring radiation in culverts and heaps of rubble.
September 8, 2018
To read this book and its companion Volume Two is signing up for a long haul, but for me, it was a long haul worth taking. These books are one man's in-depth examination of the impact of energy on humans, with scientific data, charts and tables, accompanied by personal stories of his own and others' reactions to how energy development and use impacts our environment and our lives. In Volume One in particular I found his tales sometimes ran a bit too long with details, but overall, the stories paint a rich picture of how people understand and misunderstand our relationship to the energy we all rely on to get through the day. I recommend this book to anyone willing to take on over 1000 pages on something we rarely think about as we flip on the light switch but that underlies our entire modern existence on this planet.
August 31, 2019
This will stand as a masterwork in Climate writing. A bit dense and self-flagellating at times, very
worthwhile observation and commentary on what we are doing to ourselves and our descendants.
worthwhile observation and commentary on what we are doing to ourselves and our descendants.
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