Reviews and Comments

I'm not sure if this quite qualifies as a biography as so much is left out. In particular, Bookchin's marriages and children feature only fleetingly. It does, however, provide a terrific account of his political and intellectual development, the creation of the ISE, his involvement with the German Greens, and his many, many books and other writings. Exciting to see the role of autodidacticism in his life, plus funny (and revealing) to see an account of Sanders as mayor of Burlington. Once Biehl actually becomes part of his life, the book takes on a different (and, for me, a rather less comfortable) tone, and the latter years of his life seem to consist of a descent into isolation and recriminations. Definitely worth a read if you want an overview of Bookchin's work and development, and some coverage of radical politics more generally in the US. I finished the book with a list of 'future reading' that's two sides of A4, and that's not including his own books!

So I ordered this from the library as part of a good faith attempt to understand the argument for a carbon tax, but I'm afraid I just can't finish it. The first half or so of the book outlines four possible ways of reducing emissions (carbon taxes, government regulation (which the author calls 'command-and-control'), cap-and-trade, and government subsidies -- we'll just skate over the problem with picking these, plus making them as strawman as possible) and then provides ten arguments in support of carbon taxes, which basically seems to consist of demonstrating the superiority of carbon taxes over whichever of the other three is the weakest. I actually only made it four arguments in before I had to give up in frustration. I then jumped forward to the arguments against carbon taxes. This felt so wishy-washy that it felt like there was no serious attempt to engage. In particular, the author critiqued a CCPA study that pointed out that the BC carbon tax was regressive, but with the weakest arguments I've seen in a long time. It really felt like the book just started from a 'market forces good, government intervention bad' and then expanded that without any attempt at serious study or analysis. I have the CUP book on 'Climate Capitalism' out of the library too, but at this point I'll probably just take them both back -- I don't really have the energy to engage with this kind of attempt at an argument.

Not the first time I've come across this kind of framing of the climate emergency, but the detail of Canada's economy during the war did feel a bit excessive at times. If you can get past that, though, the author's really good on a Green New Deal style of response to the climate emergency, with good coverage of Indigenous resistance to pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure and a keen awareness of how climate change mitigation and adaptation can't just be an elite-driven project. Also helps that he has direct experience of the BC carbon tax and the inequities therein (particularly welcome given I recently slogged through Michael Mann's panegyric to carbon pricing). If I'm honest, I don't know how appealing the book would be outside the country -- apart from lengthy exposition of the war effort, there's also lots of detail on the workings of government that wouldn't necessarily translate -- but for Canadian residents it's well worth a read.

Worth reading for the summary of the problems we face and the jumping-off points into further literature. Also appreciated the author's framing of the economic problems in terms of 'oligarchy' as a superset of capitalism. The book rather lost its way for me, though, in the last two chapters which attempt to head towards a solution. The last chapter, in particular, spends a puzzling amount of time on Derrick Jensen and DGR, segues into a terse list of desirable features of a better society and then offers what feels like a rather hand-waving way to get there. Perhaps most disappointing, though, is the way the solutions are presented as if they aren't linked with anyone else's work. Does this owe something to Bookchin, or some of the recent ecosocialist writers? Who knows? Apparently it's inspired by Gramsci's Prison Notebooks which, I don't know, might be possible but doesn't feel quite right. Still worth reading for the earlier parts of the book, but the latter part was ultimately unsatisfying.

To be honest, there were multiple times in reading this book that I seriously considered DNFing it and now, having finished, I'm rather regretting not having done so. There's some potentially useful stuff in here, and the last chapter almost redeemed the rest of the book, before descending into the same failings. Ultimately, though, it's just not a very pleasant book to read.

Far too much of it feels like the same kind of snark that works so well on Twitter, but in a ~350 page book that becomes pretty wearying. There's also the problem that the author is a pretty central character in the story, and so we get lots of mentions of disputes he's been involved in, in which he is always in the right. "The New Climate War" seems to come down to Mann and those who think like him, against pretty much everyone else.

While it's good to see the deniers having their tricks pointed out, and Mann does reasonably well at pointing out that excessively doomy predictions (e.g., Scranton, Wallace-Wells) aren't justified, he also very much takes aim at anything to the left of carbon pricing. Naomi Klein, AOC, Bernie, the GND, it's all apparently misguided. The problem with that (apart from the fact that I don't believe it :) ) is that Mann never really puts up a convincing argument for what carbon pricing will do, and why it won't exacerbate inequity. That last point is simply waved away, and the positive effects of carbon pricing simply seems to come down to "providing incentives", without explaining what that would lead to.

In conclusion, it's really hard to recommend this book. Even if you're not as sensitive to the tone as me, I think there are just much better books on the topic.

My eldest has already teased me about how excited I am by a book on the intersection of neoliberalism and neoconservatism but this really is worth it. Describes the unholy alliance between neoliberals and the social conservatives as they both aimed to base society around the institution of the family -- social conservatives for obvious reasons, but neoliberals because, for all their talk of the autonomous individual, they had realized that the family could form an important 'social insurance' role. Tied back to the Elizabethan Poor Laws, this was essentially the idea that the state shouldn't pay to support people if there was any way their family (husband/wife, children, or parents) could support them. This is obviously an attractive approach when you're trying to reduce social spending and cut taxes... Cooper uses this lens to cover a wide range of topics, including Clinton's welfare 'reforms', AIDS in the 80s, gay marriage, student loans, the housing crash of 2008, and so much more. The only downside from my point of view is that the details of these topics cover almost solely the US context, though apart from her last chapter on evangelical Christianity, most of it is applicable to other countries (e.g., the UK under Thatcher and then New Labour). Very highly recommended.