Collin Dibbs
"What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature."--Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
I remember some years ago being very underwhelmed by a book by the French journalist Hervé Kempf: How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth. It didn't offer much in the way of a systemic critique of the economics systems that feed the rich. It had little to say about the way the efficiency sought by the rich--maximum profits from minimum investments--was almost always at odds with the kind of efficiency--in material and energy inputs--that's needed to minimize our ravaging of the environment. What it did focus on were more trivial contributions to environmental catastrophe we can lay at the feet of the rich: if Billionaire X buys a 40-foot yacht, Billionaire Y will feel compelled to get a 50-foot yacht as a greater show of wealth. The yacht example was literally in the book (although I might have gotten the sizes wrong), even though I can't imagine that yacht sales are really driving much of our damage to rain forests, the atmosphere, or water resources.
Thankfully, Naomi Klein's new book is so far (100 pages into it) everything Kempf's book wasn't. I'll probably have more to say about it once I'm done.
I remember feeling equally underwhelmed a few times in my reading of French perspectives on racism. The understanding there seemed to be very basic compared to what I'd found from U.S. authors. I'm not here to bash the French for their simple-mindedness, though. After all, I don't know how representative my examples are. And I think it's also safe to say that if U.S. intellectuals have a richer understanding of problems like environmental degradation and racism, it's probably because the U.S. has played such a large role in those problems. Those problems are bigger, closer, and more obvious here (not that France's hands are clean by any means).
Of course, Klein is a Canadian, but her reporting and activism put her in the U.S. quite a bit, and she seems to know as much about U.S. politics as any U.S. journalist. And not just geographically, but politically, too, Canada is a close companion of the U.S., often quietly supporting our economic and military ambitions. The Toronto-based columnist-turned-politician linda_mcquaig captured the nature of that relationship very succinctly in the title of her 2007 book: Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire.
On the subject of books, I can finally list another twenty of my most recent reads.
1. Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture by Hisham Aidi
2. The Real Cost of Fracking: How America's Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food by Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald
3. Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality by Jo Becker
4. Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality by David Boies and Theodore B. Olson
5. Book of Secrets by Lloyd Bradley, Thomas Eaton, Emma Hooley, Patrick Humphries, and Charlotte Williamson
6. Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
7. Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal by Aviva Chomsky
8. The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising by Patrick Cockburn
9. Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
10. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
11. The Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction by Thom Hartmann
12. Black Flower by Young-ha Kim
13. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
14. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security by Todd Miller
15. Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea by Seungsook Moon
16. The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash
17. Trauma Red: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America's Cities by Peter Rhee
18. Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy
19. Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman
20. Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Warming by Amy Seidl
I bought an autographed copy of Rhee's book for my niece and mailed it to her a month or two ago. I wasn't quite certain if it would be the kind of thing she would want to read, but I thought about her a lot when I read it. The Korean heritage, experience in health care, and service in the Navy were all things that I thought she would be able to relate to in Rhee's life. But I thought at the time that she had a very different interest in health care. She had studied acupuncture and other alternative practices, while Rhee is a trauma surgeon. Furthermore, I hadn't heard from her or my sister that she had continued with that work in any way. But, coincidentally enough, I found out through Facebook that she was starting do some sort of EMT work (or whatever the Navy's equivalent is). Now her career trajectory is a little closer to Rhee's, albeit with less prestige and more work on the front end of emegency care. Hopefully she got the book. (I don't know how reliable the postal system is in Florida; maybe I should ask locakitty.) She hasn't acknowledged receipt of it, but she's also really busy right now--and she's the type of person who usually writes a handwritten thank-you note instead of something hastily sent through an electronic medium.
I remember some years ago being very underwhelmed by a book by the French journalist Hervé Kempf: How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth. It didn't offer much in the way of a systemic critique of the economics systems that feed the rich. It had little to say about the way the efficiency sought by the rich--maximum profits from minimum investments--was almost always at odds with the kind of efficiency--in material and energy inputs--that's needed to minimize our ravaging of the environment. What it did focus on were more trivial contributions to environmental catastrophe we can lay at the feet of the rich: if Billionaire X buys a 40-foot yacht, Billionaire Y will feel compelled to get a 50-foot yacht as a greater show of wealth. The yacht example was literally in the book (although I might have gotten the sizes wrong), even though I can't imagine that yacht sales are really driving much of our damage to rain forests, the atmosphere, or water resources.
Thankfully, Naomi Klein's new book is so far (100 pages into it) everything Kempf's book wasn't. I'll probably have more to say about it once I'm done.
I remember feeling equally underwhelmed a few times in my reading of French perspectives on racism. The understanding there seemed to be very basic compared to what I'd found from U.S. authors. I'm not here to bash the French for their simple-mindedness, though. After all, I don't know how representative my examples are. And I think it's also safe to say that if U.S. intellectuals have a richer understanding of problems like environmental degradation and racism, it's probably because the U.S. has played such a large role in those problems. Those problems are bigger, closer, and more obvious here (not that France's hands are clean by any means).
Of course, Klein is a Canadian, but her reporting and activism put her in the U.S. quite a bit, and she seems to know as much about U.S. politics as any U.S. journalist. And not just geographically, but politically, too, Canada is a close companion of the U.S., often quietly supporting our economic and military ambitions. The Toronto-based columnist-turned-politician linda_mcquaig captured the nature of that relationship very succinctly in the title of her 2007 book: Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire.
On the subject of books, I can finally list another twenty of my most recent reads.
1. Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture by Hisham Aidi
2. The Real Cost of Fracking: How America's Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food by Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald
3. Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality by Jo Becker
4. Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality by David Boies and Theodore B. Olson
5. Book of Secrets by Lloyd Bradley, Thomas Eaton, Emma Hooley, Patrick Humphries, and Charlotte Williamson
6. Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
7. Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal by Aviva Chomsky
8. The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising by Patrick Cockburn
9. Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
10. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
11. The Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction by Thom Hartmann
12. Black Flower by Young-ha Kim
13. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
14. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security by Todd Miller
15. Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea by Seungsook Moon
16. The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash
17. Trauma Red: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America's Cities by Peter Rhee
18. Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy
19. Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman
20. Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Warming by Amy Seidl
I bought an autographed copy of Rhee's book for my niece and mailed it to her a month or two ago. I wasn't quite certain if it would be the kind of thing she would want to read, but I thought about her a lot when I read it. The Korean heritage, experience in health care, and service in the Navy were all things that I thought she would be able to relate to in Rhee's life. But I thought at the time that she had a very different interest in health care. She had studied acupuncture and other alternative practices, while Rhee is a trauma surgeon. Furthermore, I hadn't heard from her or my sister that she had continued with that work in any way. But, coincidentally enough, I found out through Facebook that she was starting do some sort of EMT work (or whatever the Navy's equivalent is). Now her career trajectory is a little closer to Rhee's, albeit with less prestige and more work on the front end of emegency care. Hopefully she got the book. (I don't know how reliable the postal system is in Florida; maybe I should ask locakitty.) She hasn't acknowledged receipt of it, but she's also really busy right now--and she's the type of person who usually writes a handwritten thank-you note instead of something hastily sent through an electronic medium.