Losing Earth - BookWyrm

Paperback, 256 pages

english language

Published March 5, 2020 by Picador.

ISBN:: 978-1-5290-1584-3

(5 reviews)

By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change – what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed. Nathaniel Rich tells the essential story of why and how, thanks to the actions of politicians and businessmen, that failure came about. It is crucial to an understanding of where we are today.

8 editions

boreana reviewed Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich

Tense middle territory

5 stars

It's a dystopian crime drama set in the eighties with a bleak undertone that's truly enjoyable if you can find that special kind of suspension of disbelief reserved for political moral bankruptcy and civic apathy. Don't expect a happy end.

In general, dealing with current circumstances can become easier, more bearable, less overwhelming, when we know the history of how we got here. Being well informed makes us more resistant to the (self-)gaslighting and might ease the "tense middle territory" between either obsessing about or ignoring the problem.

The short 200 pages are kind of all you need to read, in order to decide where to act. We tried almost everything we try today already in 1979. Highly recommend. Insightful, honest, nuanced.