With my sloppy record keeping I estimate that I have read somewhat over 200 nonfiction books since I retired. That’s a drop in the proverbial ocean of those published since Guttenberg days. I read nonfiction for no other reason than some genetic craving to understand my world better than I do. And ideally then to make choices that better align with my emergent sense of what is called of me as a member of the fraternity of humans and nonhumans alike. It’s an endless process.
Every once in a while, maybe once or sometimes twice a year, I read something that just knocks my socks off. Either the ideas presented, or the splendor of the writing, or the depth of research, and sometimes all of the above, drive me to want to share that experience with others who might resonate with the qualities I found in the work. Such is my experience with a book I had overlooked, but recently decided to borrow from the library. After the first chapter I was enthralled enough to say, I want to own this one, in part to easily share with others.
Before I disclose the book, I want to tell how I came to find it. The search was triggered by a message from David Orr in response to something I had written in one of my mass emails. In his short message David attached a preliminary piece he has written for the publication in a new book. When I read that piece, I was reminded of how David’s work for decades has been of that triple-crown quality. When I first met David in the late 90s, I learned that he wrote a frequent column in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. I would check the library shelves for new issues frequently to see if he had published anything in the new issue. Some of these essays found their way into some of his early works, most of which I read.
In fact, I thought I had read every book he had written but found that I had missed a couple. One that I missed was Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency and The Way Forward (2016, Yale University Press). I’ll confess that I’m just past the halfway mark in this book. But even if I didn’t read another page, I would recommend it. I’ll potentially update this post after I finish it within the next week, for a fear his use of “The Way” in the title might have better been edited to “A Way” forward. He well might prove my suspicion wrong. David’s writing is crisp but with a cadence in which I hear him speaking, as I have many times over the years. The testament to his writing and wordsmith skills is that you can open the book and read any two facing pages and find both the ideas, the writing, and the research blended into a compelling and highly digestible dessert. He has 50 pages of references to back up his 238 pages of text. And many of those reference include further insights. There are so many more books he refers to that I am hungry now to read.
But the content is what is most consuming. Perhaps it’s ironic that I started reading this just a couple of days before the IPCC released its 6th Synthesis Assessment Report less than 48 hours before I am writing this. Read only the Summary for Policymakers(38 pages) or listen to Secretary Guterres statement upon its release and you should be truly terrified for your children and grandchildren. The IPCC is the best example of solid science we have, with representation from scientists around the world and from every major discipline. It is a CONSENSUS report. If anything, it tamps down the threats. The bottom line is a call for 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in less than seven years and then to continue to cut to stave off the potential end of civilization as we know it.
The IPCC report says we need 3-6 times the amount of investment in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions than we are spending currently. And wealthy developed nations who are responsible for the bulk of the emissions need to invest more. But, as we recognize the 20th anniversary of our failed and illegal invasion of Iraq, the same alliance of war hawks is ratcheting up calls for even more military spending, as if we haven’t learned anything during those 20 years. On March 9th, President Biden released his budget proposal for 2023-24 with a whopping $886 billion for defense spending. This number includes funding for the Department of Defense, nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy, and other defense matters. This proposal represents a 9% ($73 billion) increase from President Biden’s FY2023 proposal for defense.
We go through this circus every year, and every year Congress which holds the purse strings, decides its not enough. How much will our bipartisan hawks inflate the threats of the various current evil empire so they can bring home even more bacon for their districts and states to show they are “tough”? Last year they drained our treasury and treasures by an additional $45 billion beyond the budget requested by President Biden and the Pentagon. When it comes to military spending, there is never enough in these eyes. And just so you recognize it, more than half of that spending goes directly to military contractors, not the soldiers and employees of the government. As Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director for the National Priorities Project reports, that translates into military contractors receiving 25 percent of the entire discretionary budget!! Ironic that our legislators don’t see the threats of climate change, pandemics, growing inequality, increasing desperate refugee numbers, etc. through the same lens.
Neither of our liberal senators nor the Lansing area’s Congresswoman will likely vote in favor of Representative Barbara Lee and Rep. Mark Pocan’s “People Over Pentagon Act” that would cut military spending by $100 billion, a figure a recent Congressional Budget Office study deemed would not harm our national security. Veteran military analyst and Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute Bill Hartung recently wrote about the glut and potential savings if Congress would only perform its oversight responsibilities with our money. These are desperately needed funds that the IPCC has said are essential to slow climate change and stave off disaster.
While scientists have been sounding this alarm for decades we have been slow to act. Even the commitments in the Paris Agreement have failed to reverse the release of greenhouse gases. They rose globally again last year. This morning Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute, writes to explain our failure to curb carbon emissions pretty succinctly. It’s an answer that fits well what David was writing about more deeply in Dangerous Years. Now seven years later, as the IPCC report makes clear, the danger is closer and accelerating.
I was hoping to try and summarize David’s book for you, but I feel totally incapable of doing so. It would clearly be a disservice to all to try to reduce it to bullet points as so much good writing, research, and complexity would be lost. Perhaps that’s part of our culture. We can’t bother to sit with anything complex and really dwell on what it might mean. Dangerous Years is one of the wisest books I’ve ever read. If after completing the last third of the book I feel otherwise, I will let you all know. But I feel the urgency for sharing this now. Time is running out for us, in more ways than one. Read the book. Give it to others and contact your elected officials. There is no time to waste.
