The world has gone to hell. What cartoon character can save the day, someone who really understand the environment? Dr. Alec Holland, who becomes SwamThe world has gone to hell. What cartoon character can save the day, someone who really understand the environment? Dr. Alec Holland, who becomes Swamp Thing, has to face down John Constantine, who made a deal with the Legions of Hell to destroy the world. So this is dystopian horror, with lots of people dying in the epic battle to save the planet. Solid, ok story. Doug Mahnke's visuals give a nod to Stepheb Bissette's work on his and Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing, rough, vibrant, sometimes pulpy, sometimes downright psychedelic.
Oh, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden? Joni Mitchell sang, but it appears possibly too late for that in this environment-turns-to-horror setting, but you know, in comics, anything can happen, so maybe Swampy will actually save the planet. Somebody has to....more
Sophie Blackall’s Things to Look Forward To is not an original concept, i these often hard times, but I appreciate it, for the positivity, the hope, aSophie Blackall’s Things to Look Forward To is not an original concept, i these often hard times, but I appreciate it, for the positivity, the hope, and especially the wonderful illustrations accompanying 52 items that make her look forward to living, accompanied by personal stories. The list includes unsurprising things such as babies, coffee, hot showers, letters, feeding birds, growing food, drawing on eggs, hugs, falling in love. But if you are the least bit cynical about this potential sentimentalizing (as in, Bah, Humbug!), I encourage you to check it out or pass it on to someone depressed you know.
“I have often found myself romanticizing the Before Times, when we could travel the world and hug our friends and shake hands with strangers, but I have come to the conclusion that it’s better to look forward: to gather the things we’ve learned and use our patience and perseverance and courage and empathy to care for each other and to work toward a better future for all people. To look forward to things like long-term environmental protection and racial justice; equal rights and an inclusive society; free health care and equitable education; an end to poverty, hunger, and war. But we can also look forward to everyday things that will buoy our spirits and make us laugh and help us feel alive and that will bring others comfort and hope.”
This is Maria Popova’s superior (duh!) review, so you can see several of the illustrations, and realize that, yes, reading books is what you look forward to, and at the moment, this very book by Sophie Blackall:
I had a hard time catching the tone of this book, but it's short and sorta sweet, though it assumes an asteroid is on its way to obliterate the planetI had a hard time catching the tone of this book, but it's short and sorta sweet, though it assumes an asteroid is on its way to obliterate the planet (or, maybe asks the question: How will you face the inevitable end of life?). Lots of sad/cute lonely animal guys seem to live alone doing their little hobbies by themselves, but the suggestion is that they need (I guess this is kind of a spoiler?) to get together? I mean, there's no plot, just a series of one page cartoons, many of them featuring kinda smarmy memes: I am Young at Heart, I Find Beauty in Ordinary Things, I Will Put Turmeric in Everything, accompanying funny-looking animals.
Positive Thinking Seems Natural to Me. I am Calm. Time is an Illusion. I Will Reassess the Value of My Collectibles. Melancholy ending. Oh, you want to know if everyone dies from the asteroid? So you're a crazy cock-eyed optimist?
My Voice Will be Heard, the bespectacled cockroach barista says, early on, assertively, and you know where he will be, in the end, post-apocalypse: Sittin' Pretty....more
8/19/23: In the light of what scientists now more generally seem to agree about, those ice shelf collapses in Greenland and Antarctica cannot be held 8/19/23: In the light of what scientists now more generally seem to agree about, those ice shelf collapses in Greenland and Antarctica cannot be held off, no matter what we do, affecting billions in coastal regions. And the 2021 record droughts got worse in summer 2022 and 2023 and will get worse, climate scientists agree. Climate denialists will have to move inland just like everyone else that can, but will there be fresh water there? Half the world within decades may? will probably? become refugees. Vote and act in every way against Big Oil and for the planet, or for humans on the planet, though these days I seem to favor trees, birds, bees, the thousands of species we threaten with extinction . . . .
8/9/21: The most recent IPCC report, 3,500 pages, all by the leading climate scientists on the planet (unless you are counting FOX News and Breitbart, and you don't want to forget them because they are the ones most people seem to listen to, the climate change denialists), but you can skim here for executive summaries:
7/22/21 [with 2023 edits]: So, I got well into this book last year and set it aside, in a kind of funk of near-despair, but now, in the middle of more cataclysmic, record-breaking heat waves in the summers of 2021-23, I report to you Lynas's warning in his first edition of this book, which I reviewed here:
This new edition of Six Degrees has another level of doom to it. So no one wants to read books about cancer or climate change, it seems. My fantasy is that everyone reads this book and we actually are able to take on the corporate establishment and their political lackeys and we save the human race on the planet. But I think most people are either too terrified or have their heads in the media-obscured sand. I was happily surprised that the centrist Biden seemed to be exceeding everyone's expectations in taking some leadership on the #1 issue facing the planet right now, though he has also made some concessions, some contradictory moves, too. Water loss/drought, record heat, floods, epic storms, all real and not "weather has always been this way," "it's called summer," not those lies any more.
We actually could reverse course in some ways, still, and are finally, decades after the screaming began, beginning to turn to renewable energy, though there will still be massive loss of life as some of the environment becomes soon unlivable. Yes, they mean it, these climate scientists, it really is happening at the level and pace that we can imagine not existing as a human race 100 years from now. As things seem to be accelerating, too. Some scientists think we have far less than 100 years left, given our current suicidal course. Am I serious? Read this book or The Uninhabitable Earth or Eaarth and tell me this is crap. I dare you....more
"We hold the following to be true: This is our darkest hour."
A short collection of short essays that make it clear that we are very much in the crisis"We hold the following to be true: This is our darkest hour."
A short collection of short essays that make it clear that we are very much in the crisis now where, within the Sixth Mass Extinction, mankind faces its own very possible extinction. These authors have studied mass movements and figure that they only need 3.5% of the population to get active, if they have any hope to save us. "Mass movements" of resistance, as it turns out, rarely involve very many people, most people being sort of oblivious and distracted and not reading or voting or whatever. Lemings? They of course want long term solutions only, not quick fixes; too late for that now.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act"--George Orwell
This group, Extinction Rebellion, invites you to read the little quick book and join mass protests everywhere, to resist, to refuse as it is clear nation-states and corporations are willing to destroy the planet for short term profits:
Extinction Rebellion's website, at the time of the group's inception in the UK, stated the following aims:
1) Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
2) Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.
3) Government must create, and be led by the decisions of, a citizens' assembly on climate and ecological justice.
I think it is far too late to expect significant changes in governmental policy by 2025 (see Trump on leaving the mild, ineffectual Paris Accords, but I also think you do have to speak against the madness, regardless. Keep pushing that boulder up the hill, as Camus would tell you. Do the right thing, be the right person, even if Rome/the world burns....more
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