Words&Dirt

“Those on the Pressure Drop would be humans, mostly, it imagined.  Mongrel-Culture; the result of a hundred centuries of species-mixing, serial amendment, augmentation, uploading, downloading, simple autonomous choice-directed breeding and––after all that time––perhaps even some genuine evolution.  The usual bizarre bio-mix of who-knew-how-many planetary-original blood-lines, all tangled inextricably together with those from an equally unfathomable number of others, boosted with genetech, aug., dashes of chimeric and a hint of some machine in there too, depending.

And it didn’t doubt that every single one of them would find it absolutely fascinating to stare into a fire, even if that was one thing they were unlikely ever to encounter on a ship.  The urge would still be there, though; stored inside, waiting.  Shown the stuff, they’d stare, mesmerised.

The entirely standard, human-basic fascination with fire; bog-ordinary flames for them––just an oxygen reaction lasting minutes or hours––while, for it, it was the multi-billion-year-lasting thermonuclear fury of a planet-swallowing star burning off a million tons of matter a second…but still.”

––The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks, pg. 84

“One of the great ironies you describe in CWC is that, ultimately, it is the neoliberal regimes that fail to act in time to avert climate change disasters and it is China, the epitome of the commad-and-control political culture, that can make the huge institutional moves to save its population.  This scenario is pretty breathtaking speculation!  Just how much do you hate the American way of life?  What gives you the intellectual chutzpah to make these kinds of projections?

Erik M. Conway:  What is this ‘American Way of Life’ you speak of so blithely?  Is it the America of one-room schoolhouses on the prairie?  Of small-holders, shopkeepers, and family farms?  That’s what it meant in 1930.  But that ‘American way of life’ is gone, and its departure had nothing to do with us.  Its vanishing had a great deal to do with the growth of industrial capitalism and the drive for efficiencies of scale.  The funny thing about ‘efficiencies of scale’ is that they tend to concentrate wealth––and therefore power––in the hands of a few, and those few can thwart the will of the majority pretty easily.  Theodore Roosevelt called this class of men ‘malefactors of great wealth’ in a 1907 speech in Massachusetts.  There are simply more of them now (and they’ve allowed a handful of women into their club).

The wealthiest businesses the world has ever known are part of the carbon-combustion complex, and they’ve been enormously successful at preventing most of the liberal democracies from doing anything meaningful about climate change.  I don’t see any reason to believe they’ll suddenly throw in the towel and play nice.

Naomi Oreskes:  Our story is a call to protect the American way of life before it’s too late.  Speculative?  Of course, but the book is extremely fact-based.  All the technical projections are based on current science.  Chutzpah?  You have to have chutzpah to write any book.  Or to stand in a classroom and expect students to listen.  Strangely enough, they do, and sometimes they even thank you.  Readers, too.

What do you hope that readers take away from your essay?

EC:  Readers tends to take out of a text whatever it was that they brought in.  At best we can hope to have helped them think more clearly about the climate of the future.

NO:  Hmm…you can’t predict what your readers will take away.  Books are like a message in a bottle.  You hope someone will open it, read it, and get the message.  Whatever that is.”

––The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, pg. 78-9