Not Too Late

I recently read the book Not Too Late by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua. It’s a book about the climate crisis, with a focus on providing some level of incentive to sufferers of climate despair. I have really enjoyed Rebecca Solnit’s other work, so I thought I’d give this book a try.
It’s a collection of essays and stories from different writers, about work on climate change in this post-pandemic time period (~2022-2023). The sections don’t seem to be organised in any particular order, but they do give a very nice flow from introducing the topic through taking next steps.

Rebecca Solnit’s opening essay is about the place we stand in today with respect to climate change. She notes that most people think climate change action is less popular than it actually is. That we feel alone and helpless as individuals, when we actually have immense power to move forward.

The most inspiring stories, to me, were those about organizing and negotiating. I loved the discussion of the Pacific Climate Warriors — young people in low-lying island nations who are demanding for awareness and action. Their slogan is We’re not drowning; we are fighting, which feels like a great slogan for all of us. We are not burning; we are fighting.

The other story that caught my attention was “How the Ants Moved the Elephants”, about negotiations at the Paris COP to insist on setting 1.5C as a goal. It covers the detailed pressure that vulnerable nations’ representatives put on other countries to step forward and treat 1.5 serious. It clearly showed the power of being right, being implacable, and refusing to be forgotten.

The book ends with speculative fiction about people who’ve survived the Transition, and what their post-emergency lives are like. Looking backwards to 1973, looking forward to 2073, all from our vantage point in 2023. I loved this part. If you are alive now and you don’t know what to do with your life, making art and music and telling stories about the Transition is one of the most important things we need on this planet at this moment. So, y’know, do that.

Some of the essays didn’t work for me, but I think that’s because I wasn’t the target audience. The cadence of Farhana Sultana’s “Decolonizing Climate Coloniality” didn’t resonate for me, for example. But most come through very well.

I have a lot to say about climate despair, but I might save it for another blog post. The main takeaway from this book, for me, was that there’s not a clear win-lose future for us. If we don’t keep temperature rise under 1.5C, that’s not the end of the ball game. There is a big difference in terms of misery for the natural world and human beings between 1.6C and 1.7C, between 2.3C and 2.4C. The work we do to lower emissions and capture carbon will always matter, and will always help. We should not give up even if we think we’re going to “lose”.

I listened to the book on Audible. The quality is good, but it was harder to follow the overarching structure. I had a lot of things I wanted to follow up on or take notes about, which Audible isn’t great for. But the readers are clear and professional and the production value is great.

This is definitely not a “50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth”. It doesn’t have a lot of practical, concrete advice on how to organise or how to adapt. But it does have an inspirational orientation, and probably would help those who feel that there’s not a point in trying.