A review by utopologist
Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization by Roy Scranton

4.0

Excellent read, though I should say it spends much more time on the fact of the dying as opposed to learning how to die. Scranton offers a truly withering assault of statistics and scientific opinions that insist our civilization is dying, and I certainly no longer have any illusions about human civilization surviving the next century. It's not especially cynical; it's matter-of-fact: as a society, we've killed ourselves. Not just corporations, not just governments, but individuals as well. This is mostly true of citizens of the Global North, but the result is the same. Human civilization is untenable. We've ravaged our environment and the world is going to become hot, wet, and crowded. By the last half of the book, I had come to realize that our only hope of applying any brakes to the destruction is not happening. It's just not.

It's too late. Nobody is going to do anything about climate change. It's not going to happen.

Now we as a species have to live with the aftermath, and I absolutely appreciate this book for forcing me to confront the meaning of my own life in light of these facts. This book did not teach me much about how to die, or live, but it did give me a jumping-off point for answering those questions, which is perhaps all I can ask of a book on this subject.