Greta Thunberg’s first book is a collection of transcripts of her infamous speeches: a thin paperback volume small enough to slip into a jacket pocket.
Her second product is quite the opposite: A Threshold of Things, bringing together dozens of contributions from scientists and activists in an attempt to be the most comprehensive overview of climate change ever published in book form, complete with full-color charts, double-page photographs, And enough text weight to ensure it never leaves the house with you.
This article first appeared on latest issue Revival and Ecologists Magazine.
Divided into five distinct parts, the book is made up of short essays from a wide range of voices, from climate science to a history of resistance to some prescriptions for the future.
clean up
Every once in a while, we hear from Thunberg, who writes in her unmistakable speaking voice, linking her usual clear morals and high-pitched rhetoric to each chapter’s theme.
Her contribution is very interesting and shows how much she has grown as a thinker since she first instigated the school climate strike.
In the years since she appeared in public life, Thunberg, who turned 20 in January, has increasingly moved from a simple moral critique of the lack of climate action to a forceful political assessment of the inequality that is rampant in the crisis. brave. .
In the pages of this book, she speaks frequently and firmly of anti-capitalism and colonialism. Now, that’s firmly on her roster.
Yet she has not changed her tendency to speak in general, generalist terms. She also did not clarify the details of her prognosis. On page after page, she gets stuck in a fixation where a lack of education and awareness is a major obstacle to change.
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She argued that if we really knew the gravity of the situation, we would see real progress. This ignores two related realities.
First, concern about the climate crisis and support for climate-friendly policies has been high among many high-emitting groups, and second, what is the established vested interest in the economy that she eloquently describes?
Perhaps because of this slightly naive analysis of barriers to progress, any prescribed plan of action remains conspicuously missing.
Even within the paper itself, the fifth of these five sections, what must we do nowDisappointingly watered down the promise of its title.
Much of its text is still devoted to lengthy descriptions of the dire situation we find ourselves in, and by then we’ve been battered for 400 pages.
snapshot
In all fairness, it is unlikely that any set of proactive proposals would bring together the wide range of voices contained in this book, and it is difficult to think of a single dimension of the climate crisis that has not been examined somewhere on these pages.
The cumulative effect of these articles is one of the major shifts in framing achieved by promoting school strikes: that is, firmly acknowledging that we are in a climate emergency, rather than confronting it.
Environmental activists have long been led to believe that there is still time to correct the threat of climate chaos — and the clock is ticking toward Copenhagen, Paris, 2030, forever — and now, in acknowledging the grief and despair of climate change While we’ve lost, the book at least admits it’s never too late.
These articles strike that balance perfectly, combining an objective overview of climate science with an honest framing of the political crisis.
Calling any book a climate book is a bold thing to do. finally, climate book More or less true to its name, it provides as comprehensive a snapshot of the climate movement as anyone could wish to compile in 2022.
the author
Russell Warfield, communications director at climate change charity Possible, commented Revival and Ecologists. This article first appeared on latest issue Revival and Ecologists Magazine.
