The Collapse of Western Civilization by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Not exactly a beach read, this one, but at least it’s short enough to finish before rising sea levels wash you away. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s The Collapse of Western Civilization is a tricky one to categorize. Science fiction? Nonfiction? It’s sort of both, a heavily sourced essay written from a future viewpoint to imagine the history of now.

From the viewpoint of Chinese historians in the deep future, the text examines “the Penumbra,” the period of growing anti-intellectualism that supplanted the Enlightenment. This period includes our present, of course, particularly as it relates to climate change and western civilization’s collective inability to effectively respond to it. Inspired by the climate SF of Kim Stanley Robinson, Oreskes and Conway similarly posit that an inherent disconnect between neoliberal ideology and scientific reality is resulting in a massive failure of political will. The result: an overall inability to curb climate change’s worst effects, leading to a devastated future.

Published in 2014, The Collapse of Western Civilization is still a bleak read, even if the past eleven years practically make it look optimistic. Even so, the authorial device — describing our dysfunctional attempts to mobilize against the looming climate threat from a futuristic remove — may inherently soften the subject matter, helping to shape comprehension. The essay is smoothly written and fairly short, so the book fleshes things out with imaginary maps of future coastlines, a detailed glossary of terms, and an interview with the authors. The overall gist of the critique is obvious, of course, but the approach is clever and well documented, providing useful language to analyze the issues and wrap one’s head around the complexity of the world’s biggest problem.