How Western Civilization Ended Circa 2014: Naomi Oreskes And Erik Conway
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The resulting book, The Collapse of Western Civilization, diverges in many respects from other cli-fi works, such as the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson (who clearly influenced Oreskes and Conway, and who blurbed their new book). Collapse is quite short, and hardly a study in character or plot. It has one narrator, and that narrator is a "scholar," approaching the topic analytically. The force of the story, then, comes not so much from dramatic elements, but rather, from its simple conceit: How would a fair-minded thinker, living 400 years from now, evaluate us?
The answer couldn't be more depressing: We got it all wrong. We sacrificed our birthright. We unleashed ravaging heat waves, destabilized ice sheets, shot chemicals into the skies in a failed attempt to fix our mess, then halted that intervention and made everything still worse. (All of these things unfold in the story.)
The consequences were toppled governments, mass migrations, and unimaginable human tragedy from starvation, dehydration, and disease. Finally came the "collapse" itself, not of Western Civilization at first, but of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which in the late 21st century rapidly disintegrated, driving up sea levels some 5 meters. Much of Greenland soon followed. "We were trying to sort of play on this two different senses of 'collapse,'" explained Oreskes on Inquiring Minds. Summarizing the plot of the book, she elaborated as follows: "The West Antarctic Ice Sheet does collapse, causing massive rapid sea level rise, which then puts into effect a kind of chain of events, which ultimately leads to the collapse of political and cultural institutions as well."
This is a worst-case scenario, but it is far from crazy in light of our current trajectory. And we are on this trajectory because we're ignoring the evidence all around us. "A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment," writes Oreskes' and Conway's historian, explaining why our present era will later be called the "Period of the Penumbra."
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http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/07/inquiring-minds-naomi-oreskes-collapse-of-western-civilization
