Nonfiction Books

"We have options, ones that would greatly decrease the chances of ever confronting those impossible choices, choices that indeed deserve to be described as genocidal. To fail to exercise those options—which is exactly what we are collectively doing—knowing full well that eventually the failure could force government to rationalize ‘risking’ turning whole nations, even subcontinents, into sacrifice zones, is a decision our children may judge as humanity’s single most immoral act. p.284"

"This sense of moral clarity, after so many decades of chummy green partnerships, is the real shock for the extractive industries. p.336"

"In order for multinational corporations to protect their freedom to pollute the atmosphere, peasants, farmers, and Indigenous people are losing their freedom to live and sustain themselves in peace. p. 222"

"In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely. p.285"

"Richard Branson ...dangled the prospect of a miracle technological fix for carbon pollution just over the horizon in order to buy time to continue escalating emissions, free of meddlesome regulation. p. 249"

"The good news, and it is significant, is that large and growing social movements in all of these countries are pushing back against the idea that extraction-and-redistribution is the only route out of poverty and economic crisis. p.182"

"Space is opening up for a growing influence of Indigenous thought on new generations of activists … [so that] progressive movements are being exposed to worldviews based on relationships of reciprocity and interconnection with the natural world that are the antithesis of extractivism. p.182"

"But most of all, regular, noncelebrity people were called upon to exercise their consumer power—not by shopping less but by discovering new and exciting ways to consume more."

"The failure of this polite strategy is beyond debate. p. 200"

"… the deeper message carried by the ecological crisis—that humanity has to go a whole lot easier on the living systems that sustain us, acting regeneratively rather than extractively—is a profound challenge to large parts of the left as well as the right… self-described socialist states devoured resources with as much enthusiasm as their capitalist counterparts, and spewed waste just as recklessly. p. 178"

"But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may sell see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out. p. 178"

"Simple principles governed this golden age of environmental legislation [1960s and 1970s]: ban or severely limit the offending activity or substance and where possible, get the polluter to pay for the cleanup. p. 203"

"If guilt set in, well, we could click on the handy carbon calculators on any one of dozens of green sites and purchase an offset, and our sins would instantly be erased."

"[The environmental movement] tried to prove that saving the planet could be a great new business opportunity."

"Extractivism is also directly connected to the notion of sacrifice zones—places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and therefore can be poisoned, drained, or otherwise destroyed… p. 169"

"… just one of the reasons climate change is so deeply frightening. Because to confront this crisis truthfully is to confront ourselves—to reckon, as our ancestors did, with our vulnerability to the elements that make up both the planet and our bodies. … we should not underestimate the depth of the civilizational challenge that this relationship represents. … facing these truths about climate change ‘means recognizing that the power relation between humans and the earth is the reverse of the one we have assumed for three centuries. p. 175"

"… Indeed the roots of the climate crisis date back to core civilizational myths on which post-Enlightenment Western culture is founded—myths about humanity’s duty to dominate a natural world that is believed to be at once limitless and entirely controllable. This is not a problem that can be blamed on the political right or on the United States; these are powerful cultural narratives that transcend geography and ideological divides. p. 159"

"In addition to not doing much to actually lower emissions, these various approaches also served to reinforce the very ‘extrinsic’ values that we now know are the greatest psychological barriers to climate action—from the worship of wealth and fame for their own sakes to the idea that change is something that is handed down from above by our betters, rather than something we demand for ourselves."

"To understand how we got to this place of profound disconnection from our surroundings and one another, and to think about how we might build a politics based on reconnection, we will need to go back a good deal further than 1988. …"

"The strongest challenges to this worldview have always come from outside its logic, in those historical junctures when the extractive project clashes directly with a different, older way of relating to the earth—and that older way fights back. p. 177"

"Far from using climate change as a tool to alter the American way of life, many of the large environmental organizations spend their days doing everything in their power to furiously protect that way of life, at the direct expense of demanding the levels of change required by science. p. 210"

"… the alternative to such a project is not the status quo extended indefinitely. It is climate-change-fueled disaster capitalism—profiteering disguised as emission reduction, privatized hyper-militarized borders, and, quite possibly, high-risk geoengineering when things spiral out of control. p. 154"

"Free market ideology may still bind the imaginations of our elites, but for most of the general public, it has been drained of its powers to persuade. The disastrous track record of the past three decades of neoliberal policy is simply too apparent. p. 154"

"… for a great many people, climate action is their best hope for a better present, and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer. p. 156"

"… the climate moment [the urgent need for bold action] offers an overarching narrative in which everything from the fight for good jobs to justice for migrants to reparations for historical wrongs like slavery and colonialism can all become part of the grand project of building a nontoxic, shockproof economy before it’s too late."

"But before that can happen, it’s clear that a core battle of ideas must be fought about the right of citizens to democratically determine what kind of economy they need. Policies that simply try to harness the power of the market—by minimally taxing or capping carbon and then getting out of the way—won’t be enough. p. 125"

"… attempts to fix glaring and fundamental flaws in the system have failed because large corporations wield far too much political power—a power exerted through corporate campaign contributions, many of them secret; through almost unfettered access to regulators via their lobbyists; through the notorious revolving door between business and government; as well as through the ‘free speech’ rights these corporations have been granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. p. 151"

"The kind of counter-power that has a chance of changing society on anything close to the scale required is still missing.… most leftists and liberals are still averting their eyes, having yet to grasp that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism since William Blake’s ‘dark Satanic Mills’ blackened England’s skies …. And yet when demonstrators are protesting the various failures of this system [throughout the world], climate change is too often little more than a footnote when it could be the coup de grâce." p. 156-57"

"… the only thing politicians fear more than losing donations is losing elections. And this is where the power of climate change—and its potential for building the largest possible political tent—comes into play. … a rallying cry could bring together all of the various constituencies that would benefit from reducing corporate power over politics—from health care workers to parents worried about their children’s safety at school. p. 152"

"With many of the biggest pools of untapped carbon on lands controlled by some of the poorest people on the planet, and with emissions rising most rapidly in what were, until recently, some of the poorest parts of the world, there is simply no credible way forward that does not involve redressing the real roots of poverty. p.418"

"If that kind of coherent and sweeping vision had emerged in the United States in that moment of flux as the Obama presidency began, right-wing attempts to paint climate action as an economy killer would have fallen flat. It would have been clear to all that climate action is, in fact, a massive job creator, as well as a community rebuilder, and a source of hope in moments when hope is a scarce commodity indeed. But all of this would have required a government that was unafraid of bold long-term economic planning, as well as social movements that were able to move masses of people to demand the realization of that kind of vision. p. 124"

"Imagine … a powerful social movement—a robust coalition of trade unions, immigrants, students, environmentalists, and everyone else whose dreams were getting crushed by the crashing economic model … p. 121"

"Progressives [must show] that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed."

"… the refusal of so many environmentalists to consider responses to the climate crisis that would upend the economic status quo forces them to place their hopes in solutions—whether miracle products, or carbon markets, or ‘bridge fuels’—that are either so weak or so high-risk that entrusting them with our collective safety constitutes what can only be described as magical thing. p. 210-211"

"Indeed a growing number of communications specialists now argue that because the ‘solutions’ to climate change proposed by many green groups in this period [2000s] were so borderline frivolous, many people concluded that the groups must have been exaggerating the scale of the problem... wouldn’t the environmental movement be asking the public to do more than switch brands of cleaning liquid, occasionally walk to work, and send money? Wouldn’t they be trying to shut down the fossil fuel companies? p. 213"

"As many are coming to realize, the fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization is not a luxury today’s transformative movements can afford. p. 158"

"There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation. p. 252"

"… The problem is the inflated role that consumption has come to play in our particular era."

"I always tell people that the most important thing they can do is join groups of other people taking action. And that action depends on where they can have the most influence. If they’re university students, that may mean divestment. If they live somewhere in the path of a pipeline, it may mean stopping that pipeline. If they’re a brilliant economist, it may mean working with colleagues on policy approaches that movements can champion."

"What’s important is to break out of the mindset that climate change can be tackled by invidual [sic] action. Those actions are important when they model change, but they do not substitute for organizing."

"Climate change demands that we consume less, but being consumers is all we know. Climate change is not a problem that can be solved simply by changing what we buy—a hybrid instead of an SUV, some carbon offsets when we get on a plane. At its core, it is a crisis born of overconsumption by the comparatively wealthy, which means the world’s most manic consumers are going to have to consume less."

"This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. p. 36-37"

"There will obviously need to be substantial transfers of resources and technology to help battle poverty using low carbon tools. … a Marshall Plan for the Earth. … [a] sort of wealth redistribution … P.40"

"… the real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm (deregulated capitalism combined with public austerity), the stories on which Western cultures are found (that we stand apart from nature and can outsmart its limits), as well as many of the activities that form our identities and define our communities (shopping, living virtually, shopping some more). They also spell extinction for the richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known—the oil and gas industry..."

"Indeed the three policy pillars of the neoliberal age—privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending—are each incompatible with many of the actions we must take to bring our emissions to safe levels."

"… the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders. It means there is a whole lot of stuff that we have been told is inevitable that simply cannot stand. And it means that a whole lot of stuff we have been told is impossible has to start happening right away." p. 28"

"The Yale researchers [of Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project] explain that people with strong ‘egalitarian’ and ‘communitarian’ worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. ...Those with strong ‘hierarchical’ and ‘individualistic’ worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.… they are protecting powerful political and economic interests…"

"… the tight correlation between ‘worldview’ and acceptance of climate science [is attributed] to ‘cultural cognition,’ the process by which all of us … filter new information in ways that will protect our ‘preferred vision of the good society.’ If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion."

"Maybe within a few years, some of the ideas highlighted in these pages that sound impossibly radical today—like a basic income for all, or a rewriting of trade law, or real recognition of the rights of Indigenous people to protect huge parts of the world from polluting extraction—will start to seem reasonable, even essential."

"… wealthy countries need to start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by something like 8 to 10 percent a year—and they need to start right now. p. 87"