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Bush Derangement Syndrome 2010-08-28

Reviewer: M. Staggs

I expected a scientific treatise of the evidence for global warming as a hypothesis. What I found was 200 plus pages of Bush bashing and Obama worship.

Yes, the paradigm of endless growth can no longer be sustained in a world of limited and rapidly dwindling resourses. But devolving into mindless bleating about whose fault it is solves nothing. Neither does blind hero worship.

Example: "In the election of 2008, the majority of Americans decided that the country could not run indefinitely on debt, mendacity and incompetence." Perhaps the author was actually refering to the election of 2010? Such is the danger of placing your hope in a Prince and not a process.

A much more complete work would be Confronting Collapse by Ruppert or for climate specific info, The Weather Makers by Flannery. Both offer more logic and less vitriol.

Leadership Emergency 2010-03-15

Reviewer: Sacramento Book Review

Orr provides an eye-opening case for the selfish role our governments play. We now have matured enough at citizens to realize the great havoc we raise on a planet doomed by our indulgences and failure to heed ecological warnings. We must assume responsibility of our planets maintenance, not for our political pride or correctness, but for our very existence.

In chapter eight, titled What Is to Be Done?, Orr calls upon leaders to lead the world into balance with nature to curtail a catastrophe from global warming. He outlines the political manifestation of the problem and proposes five challenges. Each involves the willingness of leaders to refrain from selfish pride and acknowledge that a problem exists. The lives jeopardized by climate change and rising sea levels are not hundreds of thousands--as in the Indonesian tsunami that killed 230,000--but rather in the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who reside in low-lying cities. Still, many policy makers sit on the sidelines and pretend our environmental issues will simply disappear.

I praise people like David Orr, who are brave enough to lay it all out in clear English: wake up, people! We are out of time. //Down to the Wire// is a book everyone must read.

Reviewed by D. Wayne Dworsky

After the Race 2010-03-06

Reviewer: Steven Marx

David Orr is one of my gurus, but the first time I read this book I was disappointed by its repetitiousness, vagueness, lack of sequential structure or sustained, fully supported and defended claims, and its preaching to the choir, who have already heard most of this many times. The central points were hardly controversial or new for us, but still unacceptable to the great majority of citizens who are looking more than ever at short term rescues or pleasures. For that reason the urgency and insistence of the tone seemed irritating and disrespectful of the audience. Compared to his last book, Design on the Edge, which contained a fascinating autobiographical narrative and a detailed account of the remarkable history of the building he was responsible for planning, designing and financing at Oberlin College, this book felt vague, uninspired, and sentimental. What does it mean after all to insist that what we should do is "deepen our humanity." (202)

I also found it sadly dated. Though filled with topical references to the impending Obama adminstration, the events of the fifteen months since his inauguration made many of the proposals about transforming governance and launching a revolution in Washington seem painfully overoptimistic. Nevertheless I decided to give it another try, either to be able to articulate specifically what I found wrong with the book or to give it a more sympathetic and engaged reading.

First, I confirmed what I suspected about the book's process of composition. Most of the material here was previously published in the form of essays that Orr writes for the journal Conservation Biology and others. Many of these can be found at the website, [...]. That accounted for and in a way justified the sense that each chapter recovered much of the same territory and started from scratch rather than building on what preceded. Viewed from this perspective, each chapter had the coherence and scope of his remarkable speeches, such as the one I heard at the organizing conference for Focus the Nation in Las Vegas <[...]>And even when general points were repeated, Orr seemed in each essay to summon up different examples and sources.

A second reading also revealed an overall structure of chapters that moved forward from beginning to middle and end despite the backtracking. Preface and Introduction both state the predicament and his solutions. We are facing what has been called a long emergency or a bottleneck, a worldwide period of crisis brought on by the environmental degradation and climate change that misguided human impacts have produced over the last 200 years. The way out will be long and arduous, and only possible with strong, transformative leadership, primarily in the presidency but also at all levels of government and society. Leaders have three leading tasks: move the citizenry out of a state of denial to a recognition of the dangers, develop energy policies that reverse our dependence on carbon and promote renewables, and foster a deepening of public morality emphasizing fairness, compassion, nonviolence and a sense of purpose and reverence for nature grounded in appreciation and gratitude.

These three mandates are reaffirmed throughout the book.
The three chapters of section I, Politics and Governance, assert that Government is the only agency strong enough to effectively address the emergency but that government needs to be transformed. Chapter 1, Governance, asserts that the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change and its associated catastrophes can be faced by reversing the trend toward unregulated corporate power, trivialized and ineffective journalism, excessive consumerism and rule by lobbyists. This can be done by redistribution of wealth and privilege, publicly funded elections, smartening land use and agricultural policy, promoting universal access to communication media and promotion of small community autonomy. But first government itself must be transformed from its present corrupt and dysfunctional state to a just, effective and elevating one. This will have to be accomplished through a mechanism like a new Constitutional Convention and the establishment of a new consensus.

Chapter 2 is a meditation on democracy, the form of government most likely to succeed despite its faults, the failures of its alternatives, like natural capitalism, and unregulated free-market capitalism, and the proposal of a legal, constitutional framework for instituting the kinds of social transformation needed to address climate change based on the new idea of the legal standing of future generations.

Chapter 3, Leadership in the Long Emergency, compares today's crisis with those faced by Lincoln and Roosevelt, and concludes that Obama can learn leadership lessons from both his great predecessors, which include the necessity of understanding and framing those crises both as legal-constitutional issues requiring preservation of law and tradition and as moral issues requiring deep personal insight and unshaken commitment. Orr repeats the laundry list of reforms mentioned earlier that Obama needs to accomplish. Chapter 4, Leadership, defines true leadership, like that of those predecessors, as the capacity to energize and give direction to the populace.

Part II, Connections, is transitional in the overall structure of the book, but provides a sample of some of Orr's strongest qualities as a writer, manifested when he lets a more imaginative, associative principle guide his design. Chapter 5, The Carbon Connection, juxtaposes two powerful narrative descriptions: nature's devastation of humans in New Orleans by Katrina, presumably caused by climate change, and humans' devastation of nature in Coal Companies' mountaintop removal, causing climate change. This is connected to Chapter 6, The Spirit of Connection, which explores spiritual and religious perspectives on Climate Change, differentiating the apocalyptic fundamentalism that both affirms and brings it on with the subjective experiences of wonder, reverence and gratitude for the gift of life that provide meaning and hope for those struggling to protect it.

Part III, Farther Horizons, contains three chapters overlapping earlier chapters and one another in content. Chapter 7, Milennial Hope, lists factors blocking us from taking the steps necessary to confront and deal with the coming crisis and solutions, psychological, political, and spiritual, concluding with a story of Gandhian non-violence displayed by Amish toward a mass murderer who shot a number of their children. Chapter 8, Hope at the End of our Tether, expands the emphasis on anti-militarism, Gandhian Satyagraha and other Gandhian principles like anti-materialism--shift from wealth to happiness--social justice, and localism.

The final chapter, The Upshot: What is to be Done? echoes both Aldo Leopold and Lenin, verbally in the titles of two of their well known works, and thematically in calling for the creation of a community that includes natural beings and systems and in calling for a total revolution to be initiated by a vanguard of leaders, giving direction and energy to an awakened populace. The first section covering the same ground as the preceding chapters, this chapter and section ends with a powerful vision of a desireable outcome from the long emergency only ten years in the future, located in his home town of Oberlin Ohio, where the very specific programs he has set in motion as an activist and educator have run their course. The vision is startlingly similar to the kinds of programs and visions activists at Cal Poly and in San Luis Obispo County have dedicated themselves. More than anything in this book, these few pages (212-215) provide some of the grounds for hope that present conditions don't encourage in regard to most of the books larger recommendations.

"Postscript: A Disclosure" is vintage Orr. It's a recollection of the extraordinarily hot summer of 1980 when he and his brother worked like slaves on a farm in Arkansas, as the temperature reached 111 degrees and stayed there. It was then that he became interested in climate change. He says he felt it viscerally, the memory recorded in his body. That's why it's presented as a disclosure. But the impact of that memory, I'm afraid is unlikely to be felt until the rest of us consistently experience such nasty conditions, and by then it's likely to be too late.

Taking issue:

"leadership"--is Obama like Lincoln and Roosevelt, sticking to the moral vision, keeping legal and constitutional integrity at the fore, reaching the people?

Seemed so at inauguration, but less so now, largely because of loss of confidence resultant from bailouts and compromises, failure to seize the opportunity with courage--e.g. Copenhagen

The long emergency--less perceivable now than in 2006, when much of this was written and when Katrina and An Inconvenient Truth and IPCC and oil spike converged to shake people up.

Non-violence, Satyagraha--true, and a manifestation of deeper humanity, but desperation is less likely to bring it to the fore, especially when the rulers and perpetrators are becoming more brazen

Coupling peace, justice and sustainability has advantages but also makes any progress seem hopeless, because it will leave so much undone.

Whining and pontificating 2010-02-20

Reviewer: Flat_Tire

I've been reading a lot of books on climate change, trying to nail down what is known about it and how to deal with it. This is by far the most tedious and pretentious. The part that deals with the subject can't add up to 5%; the rest is grumping about the many things the author doesn't like. The part that does relate is no different from what former VP Gore said more clearly. This author, like Mr. Gore, snivels at real solutions. Here's what he says is the solution:

"So, what does a carbon neutral society and increasingly sustainable society look like? My list consists of communities with:

Front porches
Public parks
Local businesses
Windmills and solar collectors
Living machines to process waste water
Local farms and better food
More and better woodlots and forests
Summer jobs for kids doing useful things
Local employment
More bike trails
Summer baseball leagues
Community theaters
Better poetry
Neighborhood book discussion groups
Leagues in which no one bowls alone
Better schools
Vibrant and robust downtowns with sidewalk cafes
Great pubs serving microbrews
Fewer freeways, shopping malls, sprawl, and television
More kids playing outdoors
No more wars for oil or access to other peoples' resources."

What about food for 7 billion people and more? Sanitation, housing, and education in impoverished countries? Supplying clean drinking water to a billion people who don't have it? Opportunities for young people who don't have them? Safe urban environments arranged to keep rural and forest lands open and natural?

A book on climate change should be more than the self-indulgent musings of an environmental-studies professor.

If there was only one book on climate change, would I pick this one? 2010-01-31

Reviewer: Robert Schmidt

If there were only one book on climate change, would I pick this one?

No. But not because there is anything wrong with its content. I don't have any complaints about the material, except to say Orr hasn't written this book for Joe and Jane Public. Trust me. This is not a book for those who enjoy American Idol's preliminary screenings!

David Orr says climate change is coming. This is not news, since every (and I mean EVERY) professional scientific organization, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to the American Geophysical Union (AGU), agrees that the climate is out of wack, and getting weirder. There are many popular books that say this as well.

Orr's book is more of a... complaint? Work on the issue faster and harder? Take it more seriously? Blame Bush and the industries in bed with the petro-companies?

His writing style, and this book, is not for the Outdoor Life crowd. It is more for the Atlantic Monthly crowd. And since it, in many places, is critical of that same crowd, what is Orr expecting? "The 'American way of life' is thought to be sacrosanct. In the face of a global emergency, brought on in no small way by the profligate American way of life, few are willing to say otherwise. So we are told to buy hybrid cars, but not asked to walk, bike, or make fewer trips, even at the end of the ear of cheap oil. we are asked to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs, but not to turn off our electronic stuff or avoid buying it in the first place. We are admonished to buy green, but seldom asked to buy less or repair what we already have or just do without. We are encouraged to build LEED-rated buildings that are used for maybe ten hours a day for five days a week, but we are not asked to repair existing buildings or told that we cannot build our way out of the mess we've made. We are not told that the consumer way of life will have to be rethought and redesigned to exist within the limits of natural systems. And so we continue to walk north on that southbound train" (p. 186-187).

"We are now engaged in a global conversation about the issues of human longevity on Earth, but no national leader has yet done what Lincoln did for slavery and placed the issue of sustainability in its larger moral context. It is still commonly regarded, here and elsewhere, as one of many issues on a long and growing list, not as the linchpin that connects all of the other issues" (p. 88).

This depends on who you talk to, of course. If you are talking to the Deer Hunting with Jesus crowd, or the Dittohead crowd, there's no conversation even on a local level. In the US, global warming is not considered an issue by the millions of poor (although it will certainly affect the poor), and seemingly only a fund-raising opportunity for the right-wing political pundits (who milk this cow very successfully). Prius owners may think they speak for the trees, but for the tens of millions on government assistance, or in need of assistance, they are simply considered owners of an elite car. By the way, I don't own a Prius, but I did buy a used Civic Hybrid, as well as an ultra-low emission conventional gas car. I normally bike, bus, or carpool to work (except car-free Fridays... no cars).

What else does Orr claim?

"There is no simple remedy for public apathy, carelessness, ignorance, or meanness, but there is a steep price to be paid if such qualities become the national character. ...Whether or not we have reached the level of farce or tragedy, it is clear that the press is no longer the alert watchman it once may have been and that it no longer plays the role the founders thought necessary for a healthy democracy" (p. 61). The New York Times and the Washington Post don't play this role? This seems to be an indictment of the broader issue of "dumbing down" the news. Thank you, FOX Broadcasting!

"It is clear by now that we have seriously underestimated the magnitude and speed of the human destruction of nature, but we seem powerless to stop it" (p. 122). Agreed. Why? "We tend... to see things that are large and fast but not those that are small and slow. It is harder for us to see and to properly fear long-term trends, such as soil erosion over centuries or the nearly invisible disappearance of species. ... We know, too, that we are prone to deny uncomfortable realities at both the personal level and the societal level" (p. 163).

"A great deal now depends on what we do to develop the stamina, vision, and institutional resources necessary to carry the best of civilization through to the other side" (p. 160). And who defines "the best of civilization"?

"What do I propose? Simply this: that those who purport to lead us, and all of us who are concerned about climate change, environmental quality, and equity, treat the public as intelligent adults who are capable of understanding the truth and acting creatively and courageously in the face of necessity - much as a doctor talking to a patient with a potentially terminal disease" (p. 189).


So, if I can sum up Orr's message, it is these sixteen words: "We need to do something about climate change. Now. All of us. Leaders and leadership welcome."

I expect to be dinged for, of all things, not giving Orr's book five stars. So it goes. However, it's worth the paper it is printed on (and the carbon it took to produce) IF some readers don't use it as another justification why, with their Prius, they can commute to their work 40 miles away everyday (and 40 miles back) and think they are doing what it takes to solve the climate crisis, IF local, state, and national leaders find their backbones, or IF every reader, every day, does SOMETHING to support a sustainable world. I believe Orr would pass this test. I think I do. But there are millions of people who listen to talk show hosts every day repeating the mantra that the climate change crowd is unAmerican. Somehow, I don't think Orr's book has an answer to that. And I wish it did.