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No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

(Carbon Ideologies #1)

William T. Vollmann

3.71 · Rating details · 271 ratings · 58 reviews

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 624 pages

Published April 10th 2018 by Viking

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Apr 07, 2019 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, politics, science, 2019, enviornmentalism, american, economics

"Look at the brightside always and die in a dream!"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anima Poetae, 1804

description

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 ...more

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May 06, 2018 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis added it

Shelves: william-t-vollmann-completioniziert, 2018-gelassen, signed

Wherein 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 exa ...more

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Apr 10, 2018 Christopher Leonard rated it it was amazing

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 l ...more

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Aug 13, 2018 Jonfaith rated it liked it

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 ...more

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Jul 26, 2018 Maru Kun rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: current-affairs, science, w-vollmann-william-t

"...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 issue ...more

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Apr 26, 2018 E. G. rated it really liked it

Shelves: north-america, own, non-fiction, 4-star, vollmann

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 Electric ...more

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Jun 07, 2018 James Spencer rated it it was ok

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 occa ...more

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Apr 06, 2018 Alexander Weber rated it really liked it

I am only just finished the Primer section, so I will update this later.
But importantly, I can say that the primer section on its own is about 4.5/5. I really love this. But I think it will rub some people the wrong way.
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 go ...more

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May 15, 2018 Ian Scuffling rated it it was ok

Shelves: 21st-century, reality-bites, print-aint-dead, read-in-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 pi ...more

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Jun 24, 2018 Ian "Marvin" Graye marked it as to-read

Shelves: vollmann, a-wish-liszt

No Scientific Method

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Nov 24, 2018 Gilda Felt rated it liked it

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 ...more

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May 04, 2018 Chris Via rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, environmentalism

There 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 c ...more

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Nov 30, 2021 Rick Wilson rated it it was ok

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 condition ...more

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Jun 24, 2018 Griffin Alexander added it

Shelves: bill

A bit of a slog at times, withholding a real write up til I finish volume II.

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Mar 21, 2021 Maxwell rated it really liked it

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.

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Mar 01, 2019 Randall Wallace rated it liked it

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 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?
...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Alexandra rated it it was amazing

Shelves: excellent, climate-change, recommended-to-me, climate-nonfic, lazarus-inspo, favorites-recent, policy, good-prose

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 ...more

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May 14, 2018 Jason rated it it was amazing

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 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. ...more

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Jul 29, 2019 Robert rated it liked it

Shelves: from-library

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, & 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. ...more

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Feb 07, 2019 Gavin rated it liked it

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.

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Sep 08, 2018 Elisabeth rated it really liked it

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 pa ...more

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Aug 31, 2019 Grace Tenkay rated it really liked it

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.

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Jun 02, 2018 Christopher Condit rated it liked it

I can't in all honesty recommend this book to anyone, big a Vollmann fan as I am. It is at least twice, if not three times as long as it need be, and that's not accounting for the second volume. Way too many radiation readings. Try as he might, he didn't overcome the basic problem of mismatched units across different measurements.

Still kind of fascinating, and it would be vitally important if there was any action called for, but seems completely hopeless (global warming and fuel use+waste).

Insid ...more

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Mar 29, 2019 Scott Lupo rated it really liked it

Shelves: environmental

A devastating read. The first part of the book (200 pages) is a primer detailing by way of numbers, graphs, and calculations the effects of fossil fuels on the environment. The whole book is written like a letter to future generations with sarcasm and humor. Even the title is snark, taken from the mantra of the Japanese government after their nuclear disaster. After the primer, the rest of the book is about nuclear power, particularly in Japan right after their disaster. Much of this part of the ...more

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Sep 05, 2021 Edward Champion rated it it was amazing

Vollmann's CARBON IDEOLOGIES is very much on the level of RISING UP AND RISING DOWN and IMPERIAL. Vollmann's trademark empathy and exhaustiveness is here in droves. (The charts and terminology can be a bit much.) And the ultimate takeaway here is that we are very much fucked and we are complicit in this. One of the main drives of this project is that Vollmann is writing to some unknown reader in the future about the way "we once lived." And it's an effective literary method at allowing us to fee ...more

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Dec 26, 2018 Fred Rose rated it did not like it

Shelves: global-issues

Needs a very strong editor. Way too long for the content. Could only skim it.

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Nov 14, 2018 Barnabé Monnot rated it really liked it

There is a lot going on in this book, and it is my first William T. Vollmann novel as well as a partial read since I have not yet started Volume 2. I have also read much critics ("some of the maths are wrong, the anti-nuclear position is dangerous, who cares about alpha and beta waves anyway?") and to be quite honest, I tend to agree with most of them.

All of which does not explain why I actually enjoyed the book, or why I am reviewing it now—the answer to the latter may simply be that I enjoyed There is a lot going on in this book, and it is my first William T. Vollmann novel as well as a partial read since I have not yet started Volume 2. I have also read much critics ("some of the maths are wrong, the anti-nuclear position is dangerous, who cares about alpha and beta waves anyway?") and to be quite honest, I tend to agree with most of them.

All of which does not explain why I actually enjoyed the book, or why I am reviewing it now—the answer to the latter may simply be that I enjoyed it for reasons I cannot quite pin down, and hope that through writing I will. Not being super knowledgeable on the topic, but still interested enough to go through the long introductory section on units and comparisons, I liked the book almost purely as a literary achievement rather than a scientific one. Which is not to say that I believe the text would be better off removing every trace of numbers and data to make it more compelling: they actually tell a story of their own.

To the criticism that the author seems to indulge in the methodical copy of every inane measurement he hazards to take, I would answer that it is a narrative part of what sets the book in motion: what can we know? who knows what? how do we even begin to measure the size of the foreboding catastrophe?

Victor Hugo too was criticised for his long, winding, digressive descriptions that mattered little to the plot. But they were necessery to build an aesthetic of almost atmospheric narrative, where the world of the novel bleeds far beyond its pages, unencompassable and yet vividly relevant to the story at hand. And if the climate change revolution is not one of the people and uprisings, it is one of the hard numbers, the ones that tell part of the story but not all, the thresholds that some—the "authorities", widely mocked throughout the section on Japan—define to separate "danger" from "harmful rumors", the ones concerned citizens can try to approximate and understand for themselves, foiled at every corner by the precision of their instruments, the experimental method of collection (check the drains? the gutters? the herbs? the water? the food?) The result is a global confusion: what does it mean that the radioactivity at Dostoievsky's grave is greater than that at the orchid garden of Singapore? What should my response be? The authorities'? What is at stake?

So the world of the numbers maps a new reality of the changing space after the nuclear catastrophe. A bush is no longer just a bush: it is a bush emitting at a rate of .48 micros an hour. In line with this inquiry, Vollmann spends time describing the new objects of the "quotidian", symptoms of the catastrophe: the red and white fences banning access to the red zones, the black bags sitting silently at every corner. How the contamination has redrawn the map is a point orthogonal to the question of whether we should have more or less nuclear in our energy mix. As one critical review has noted, perhaps more people have died from unnecessary relocation than would have if they had simply stayed in the contaminated area. This may be true, but would we expect any serious government to do less than necessary to provide the illusion of safety and control after such a dramatic event?

If all this can be a new reality, it is a frightening one described with minutiae by Vollmann, in what I found to be the most compelling segments of the book. Part of why I found them compelling is the tension between what should be the cold rational approach that the author clearly is intent on following and the sometimes knee-jerk reactions of both the general population of Fukushima and their authorities. If this new world must be understood from the numbers alone, and if the 250 pages of introduction to the science raise more questions than they answer, where are we left to stand?

I can agree with some reviews that the sarcasm can get tiring. Though it is sometimes deadpan hilarious, the author wondering whether the agent stationed at the fence closing the red zone will ultimately get cancer for the n-th time gets repetitive. But for the impressionistic description of a world upturned by a major catastrophe (and a warm-up for what is to come, perhaps) and the new normal it brings about, I recommend the book. ...more

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Aug 11, 2019 Elke rated it really liked it

I listened to this book and it’s companion volume on Audible. I’m glad I did. They provide a comprehensive look at why we use the sources of energy we use and why we are so lackadaisical about the effects our energy creation and usage have on our environment, global ecosystem, and the lives of those living now and those to come. Along with many numbers collected mostly from government sources — which may cause you to fall asleep in the bus, miss your stop, and be awakened by the bus driver — it ...more

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Oct 01, 2018 Heidi Thorsen rated it liked it

This was an easier read than it appears to be. I did go ahead and read the “extra” parts the author encourages you to skip if you don’t have time. I finished this volume in the 3 weeks allotted by my library (just barely!) so I had the time.

I’m not alarmed by global warming, I presume everything will work itself out if the earth gets hotter or not. I am not as alarmed by a drastic reduction in human population as my husband thinks I ought to be, I see it as part of the natural progression of lif ...more

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Apr 04, 2019 Lee Barry rated it liked it

Shelves: science, _partial

Quite a large book and a bit boring in parts, but thorough in its approach on the effects of the use of fossil fuels on climate systems.

The chapter, “When the Wind Blows From the South” about the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami is particularly compelling and poignant. This would be the scenario if an earthquake and tsunami struck the Pacific Northwest. I'm not sure how this fits in with the main theme but is an absorbing read, reminding me a bit of John McFee.

Interesting excerpts:

"From a biology ...more

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About William T. Vollmann

William T. Vollmann

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William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist. He lives in Sacramento, California with his wife and daughter.