The Long Heat | Andreas Malm and Will Carton

 

 

In a blistering follow-up to their best-selling Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton pull no punches. Business as usual, they show, has pushed the planet so deep into the danger zone that all the risks to life on Earth are now exponentially multiplying. And yet it is still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The Long Heat: Politics for When it’s Too Late is a wake-up call to anyone seduced by the hope that the Wild West frontier of “climate management” in the form of carbon removal technologies that promise (but have not yet delivered) viable, scalable solutions to the emergency. Indeed, the final, last-ditch spectre of largely speculative, high-risk geoengineering serves only to distract from the primary unaddressed task of bringing fossil fuel industry to a halt and keeping oil, coal and gas in the ground. Short of a global revolution that forces a new paradigm, Malm and Carton suggest, nothing can stop the death spiral of late-stage capitalism. Which leaves the reader to either throw up their hands on defeat – or say “Bring it on.”