Overview

It might soon be far too hot on this planet. What do we do then? In the era of ""overshoot"", schemes abound for turning down the heat – not now, but a few decades down the road. We’re being told that we can return to liveable temperatures, by means of technologies for removing CO2 from the air or blocking incoming sunlight. If they even exist, such technologies are not safe: they come with immense uncertainties and risks. Worse, like magical promises of future redemption, they might provide reasons for continuing to emit in the present. But do they also hold some potentials? In Overshoot: Climate Politics When It's Too Late, two leading climate scholars subject the plans for saving the planet after it’s been wrecked to critical study. Carbon dioxide removal is already having effects, as an excuse for continuing business-as-usual, while geoengineering promises to bail out humanity if the heat reaches critical levels. Both distract from the one urgent task: to slash emissions now. There can be no further delay. The climate revolution is long overdue, and in the end, no technology can absolve us of its tasks.

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9781804293980

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Reviews

"The world has surrendered to climate breakdown. But that failure does not require us to continue surrendering to the power of fossil capital. In this brilliant and urgent analysis, Malm and Carton show how the failure came about, explore moments when it might have been resisted, explode the myth of ""overshoot"" that sustains business-as-usual, and lay out the challenge that a revolutionary climate politics must take on. -- Timothy Mitchell, author of <i>Carbon Democracy</i> Malm and Carton expose how the harsh reality of the financial and physical infrastructures of fossil fuels, in partnership with unrealistic models reliant on 'negative' emissions, continue to trap us on the highway to hellish warming. -- Julia Steinberger, Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change at the University of Lausanne A brilliant and impassioned book, which explains why greenhouse gas reduction targets are repeatedly missed-and why they will never be met until the demon of fossil capital is laid to rest. -- Nancy Fraser, author of <i>Cannibal Capitalism</i> The world we called unliveable and unforgivable just five years ago is now an imminent reality. There is no better map of that world, which we now must navigate, or our journey to it, through acquiescence and normalization, or the brutal path forward, intolerable but necessary, than this book. Please read it. -- David Wallace-Wells, author of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i> The world is blithely blowing past agreed upon global warming ""limits,"" duped by unprovable assurances that eventually new technologies will be invented to remove the excess carbon from the atmosphere, according to this eye-opening and dire account. Climate scholars Malm (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and Carton delve into the recent history of the climate crisis to explain how this irrationally nonchalant attitude toward ""overshoot"" emerged... In a rousing conclusion, Malm and Carton survey potential economic solutions and come down in favor of a ""mercilessly confrontational"" approach: scrubbing the fossil fuel industry's ""assets"" fully off the books, the same way enslavers were not ""compensated"" in the postbellum South. Readers will be overwhelmed but galvanized. * Publishers Weekly, starred review * As the crisis careens out of control, Carton and Malm have done the world a great service. Their book is required reading to understand how the people who are supposed to be planning for a better future are failing us and failing the planet. -- Christopher Ketcham * The Fern *"

Praise for Fossil Capital * : * Malm forcefully unmasks the assumption that economic growth has inevitably brought us to the brink of a hothouse Earth. Rather, as he shows in a subtle and surprising reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution, it has been the logic of capital (especially the need to valorize immense sunk investments in fossil fuels), not technology or even industrialism per se, that has driven global warming. -- Mike Davis, author of <i>Planet of Slums and Ecology of Fear</i> Fossil Capital is a theoretical masterpiece and a political-economic-ecological manifesto. It looks unblinkingly at the catastrophe that could await human society if we fail to act on the words System Change or Climate Change. It is a book that I will return to again and again-and take notes. -- John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon, author of <i>Marx's Ecology</i> The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject. -- Naomi Klein, author of <i>This Changes Everything</i> and <i>The Shock Doctrine</i> The birth of the fossil economy, avers human ecologist Andreas Malm, arrived when steam eclipsed water power in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Around that, Malm builds a deep, insight-packed history of how society came to be in thrall to the twin engines of combustion and capital. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature * A remarkable book. -- Benjamin Kunkel * London Review of Books * Praise for White Skin, Black Fuel * : * White Skin, Black Fuel is a beautifully written, passionate, richly researched warning about fossil fascism - and its mutant offspring, ecofascism. With acute sensitivity, it traces the surprising connections between racist, nationalist ideology and climate denialism. And it persuasively explains why climate disaster only reinforces denialism on the Right. An essential insight into an emerging threat. -- Richard Seymour Compelling. -- Paul Mason * New Statesman * White Skin, Black Fuel shows how, in the political arena, arguments about economic rationality get woven together with hierarchical structures and the pursuit of domination, portending what it calls fossil fascism. -- Olufemi O. Taiwo * New Yorker * A sustained challenge to the complacent historical framing of our present condition...attempts to set out the ways in which gas-guzzling consumerism, fossil fuel addiction, settler colonialism and structures of racial power are historically entwined. -- Adam Tooze * London Review of Books * Praise for How to Blow Up a Pipeline * : * Advocates powerfully against despair and powerlessness. -- Tatiana Schlossberg * New York Times * One of the most important things written about the climate crisis. -- Wen Stephenson * Los Angeles Review of Books * If a livable world requires an all-over transformation, where and when and how do we start? Perhaps with this book, a provocative manifesto from the pioneering theorist of the climate age. -- David Wallace-Wells, author of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i> Malm has captured the rising fury of climate activists. -- Pilita Clark * Financial Times * An impassioned argument for climate activists to move beyond non-violent protests. Even for those who disapprove of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, it is a useful guide to the noisiest climate activist voices. * Economist * A seductively well-written and well-researched book that argues climate activists should abandon their longstanding commitment to absolute non-violence , and instead escalate their campaign by physically attacking the things that consume our planet , such as fossil fuel infrastructure. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian * Praise for Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency * : * A bracing 224-page polemic written in the wake of Covid-19. Malm elucidates the links between the climate crisis and pandemics. -- George Eaton * New Statesman * Few have connected the climate and capitalism crises with such acid clarity as Malm. -- Thomas Meaney * New Statesman ( Books of the Year ) * Darkly elegant and studded with recondite history. -- Richard Seymour * New Statesman ( Books of the Year ) * Audacious. Malm forces us to face a crucial question: what are the social democratic politics of emergency? -- Adam Tooze * London Review of Books *

The world has surrendered to climate breakdown. But that failure does not require us to continue surrendering to the power of fossil capital. In this brilliant and urgent analysis, Malm and Carton show how the failure came about, explore moments when it might have been resisted, explode the myth of ""overshoot"" that sustains business-as-usual, and lay out the challenge that a revolutionary climate politics must take on. -- Timothy Mitchell, author of <i>Carbon Democracy</i> Malm and Carton expose how the harsh reality of the financial and physical infrastructures of fossil fuels, in partnership with unrealistic models reliant on 'negative' emissions, continue to trap us on the highway to hellish warming. -- Julia Steinberger, Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change at the University of Lausanne A brilliant and impassioned book, which explains why greenhouse gas reduction targets are repeatedly missed-and why they will never be met until the demon of fossil capital is laid to rest. -- Nancy Fraser, author of <i>Cannibal Capitalism</i> The world we called unliveable and unforgivable just five years ago is now an imminent reality. There is no better map of that world, which we now must navigate, or our journey to it, through acquiescence and normalization, or the brutal path forward, intolerable but necessary, than this book. Please read it. -- David Wallace-Wells, author of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i> The world is blithely blowing past agreed upon global warming ""limits,"" duped by unprovable assurances that eventually new technologies will be invented to remove the excess carbon from the atmosphere, according to this eye-opening and dire account. Climate scholars Malm (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and Carton delve into the recent history of the climate crisis to explain how this irrationally nonchalant attitude toward ""overshoot"" emerged... In a rousing conclusion, Malm and Carton survey potential economic solutions and come down in favor of a ""mercilessly confrontational"" approach: scrubbing the fossil fuel industry's ""assets"" fully off the books, the same way enslavers were not ""compensated"" in the postbellum South. Readers will be overwhelmed but galvanized. * Publishers Weekly, starred review * As the crisis careens out of control, Carton and Malm have done the world a great service. Their book is required reading to understand how the people who are supposed to be planning for a better future are failing us and failing the planet. -- Christopher Ketcham * The Fern * A relentless history of climate collapse. Compiling all the dates and names future humans might seek out to understand how their lives were forfeited by past generations, Malm and Carton detail a history of capital, land, and discourse, naming the profiteers and alarmists along the way. It's a history so contemporary to read it written in past tense feels like seeing our own coffins. -- Autumn Wright * Unwinnable *

"Praise for Fossil Capital * : * Malm forcefully unmasks the assumption that economic growth has inevitably brought us to the brink of a hothouse Earth. Rather, as he shows in a subtle and surprising reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution, it has been the logic of capital (especially the need to valorize immense sunk investments in fossil fuels), not technology or even industrialism per se, that has driven global warming. -- Mike Davis, author of <i>Planet of Slums and Ecology of Fear</i> Fossil Capital is a theoretical masterpiece and a political-economic-ecological manifesto. It looks unblinkingly at the catastrophe that could await human society if we fail to act on the words System Change or Climate Change. It is a book that I will return to again and again-and take notes. -- John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon, author of <i>Marx’s Ecology</i> The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject. -- Naomi Klein, author of <i>This Changes Everything</i> and <i>The Shock Doctrine</i> The birth of the fossil economy, avers human ecologist Andreas Malm, arrived when steam eclipsed water power in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Around that, Malm builds a deep, insight-packed history of how society came to be in thrall to the twin engines of combustion and capital. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature * A remarkable book. -- Benjamin Kunkel * London Review of Books * Praise for White Skin, Black Fuel * : * White Skin, Black Fuel is a beautifully written, passionate, richly researched warning about fossil fascism - and its mutant offspring, ecofascism. With acute sensitivity, it traces the surprising connections between racist, nationalist ideology and climate denialism. And it persuasively explains why climate disaster only reinforces denialism on the Right. An essential insight into an emerging threat. -- Richard Seymour Compelling. -- Paul Mason * New Statesman * White Skin, Black Fuel shows how, in the political arena, arguments about economic rationality get woven together with hierarchical structures and the pursuit of domination, portending what it calls fossil fascism. -- Olufemi O. Taiwo * New Yorker * A sustained challenge to the complacent historical framing of our present condition...attempts to set out the ways in which gas-guzzling consumerism, fossil fuel addiction, settler colonialism and structures of racial power are historically entwined. -- Adam Tooze * London Review of Books * Praise for How to Blow Up a Pipeline * : * Advocates powerfully against despair and powerlessness. -- Tatiana Schlossberg * New York Times * One of the most important things written about the climate crisis. -- Wen Stephenson * Los Angeles Review of Books * If a livable world requires an all-over transformation, where and when and how do we start? Perhaps with this book, a provocative manifesto from the pioneering theorist of the climate age. -- David Wallace-Wells, author of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i> Malm has captured the rising fury of climate activists. -- Pilita Clark * Financial Times * An impassioned argument for climate activists to move beyond non-violent protests. Even for those who disapprove of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, it is a useful guide to the noisiest climate activist voices. * Economist * A seductively well-written and well-researched book that argues climate activists should abandon their longstanding ""commitment to absolute non-violence"", and instead ""escalate"" their campaign by ""physically attacking the things that consume our planet"", such as fossil fuel infrastructure. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian * Praise for Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency * : * A bracing 224-page polemic written in the wake of Covid-19. Malm elucidates the links between the climate crisis and pandemics. -- George Eaton * New Statesman * Few have connected the climate and capitalism crises with such acid clarity as Malm. -- Thomas Meaney * New Statesman (""Books of the Year"") * Darkly elegant and studded with recondite history. -- Richard Seymour * New Statesman (""Books of the Year"") * Audacious. Malm forces us to face a crucial question: what are the social democratic politics of emergency? -- Adam Tooze * London Review of Books *"

Author Information

Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of several acclaimed books, most recently, with the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. His book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an international bestseller and has been turned into a feature film.

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