Author: Andres Kabel

Andreas Malm lectures in human ecology and is a climate activist, with a few books under his belt. “How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire” is his eloquent polemic in favor of taking the step from nonviolent direct action, as practised by me and other Extinction Rebellion members, to some forms of violence. This is a hugely important topic, or at least it is for those keening to bring humanity into line with emissions halts. Malm’s carefully unfurled argument points out that NVDA, and all the other forms of peaceful protest, have barely shifted human behavior. His argument is that the arguments in favor of nonviolence are not only unsupported by history but are inadequate in the face of the damage being done to the world and our future generations. He is occasionally savage about XR, though, to be fair, he also extols some of its activities. He shies away from violence to other people but argues for a “radical flank” alongside the mass nonviolent movement, a flank that, for example, blows up the pipelines of the book’s title. Malm writes well and How to Blow Up a Pipeline makes for sobering reading. If you’re wondering what on earth to do about global warming, this book might provide fodder for thinking, regardless of which way your mind and heart go. As a lifelong pacifist, nonviolence sits comfortably on my shoulders, but I’m pleased to have read a bracing, up-to-the-minute critique.

Michael Mann is a role model for top-flight scientists who also engage with policies and politics. Co-inventor of the vivid “hockey stick” demonstrating, years ago, the climate crisis’s signature on our planet, he went through a trial by fire when fossil-fuel-funded outlaws drummed up fake allegations against him, leading to years of battles. He has written a few expository books on climate change, now with “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet,” he addresses our primary initial challenge on the mitigation front: how to force a hundred-plus huge companies to leave coal, gas, and oil in the ground, in a genuine war against propaganda that has, he claims, grown more sophisticated since the straight-out denial days. Writing with his usual clarity, zest, and bursts of humor, Mann clearly lays out the newer inactivist strategies of downplaying, deflecting, delaying and doom-declaring, all designed to minimize the actual global changes required. I’ve noticed all these strategies in deployment, and can also see clearly a foul strategy Mann enunciates, namely to shift responsibility for action away from companies and countries onto individuals. Both individual and systemic efforts are essential, he reminds us. The New Climate War is cogently laid out and essential reading for those desperate to preserve what we can for our grandchildren. I feel his attack on doomerism is both relevant and a tad too divisive, for all of us will inevitably oscillate between energetic action and necessary pessimism, but this is a minor point. Overall, The New Climate War is likely to be 2021’s most influential book about our climate emergency.

In “Milk Blood Heat: Stories,” Dantiel Moniz offers eleven fervid, acutely observed tales set in the hot, strange world of Florida. Quotidian and shocking events share the platform, relationships morph and fester, hearts explore and break. In the title story, two teenage girls mess with notions of death until tragedy strikes. “Feast” puts us in the mind of a woman recently miscarried, unable to let go, at odds with her husband, a strongly imagined situation that brings back decades-old memories to me. The man at the heart of “The Loss of Heaven” heaves with conflicting emotions at the dying of his wife, until his world shifts. The grotesque “Exotics” short-short is predictable but sweetly penned. I doubt I can ever appreciate short stories as much as novels, but reading cohesive, evocative tales such as in Milk Blood Heat is surely beneficial.

After thoroughly enjoying the intricate plotting and atmospheric characterization of The Puppet Show, the award-winning first outing of brilliant, bull-in-a-china-shop detective Washington Poe, I rushed to read “Black Summer.” If anything, Black Summer is even more devilish than the debut, in the sense that crime fiction fans find delicious. And delicious is the correct adjective to use, for the book is set around the world of Michelin star restaurants. Poe caught and jailed a charismatic. psychopathic chef for the murder of the man’s daughter, but now a dazed young woman lurches into a police station and DNA proves she is the daughter. Brimming with shades of Hannibal Lecter’s brilliance, the novel kicks off swiftly and never slows down. Aided by Tilly Bradshaw, the ultimate awkward nerd introduced in The Puppet Show, Poe needs to unravel the chef’s plan even as he himself becomes a suspect. The author’s characters come wonderfully alive, especially in the dialogue, and the Cumbrian setting is vivid. Another superbly plotted one-nighter.

Architecture is one of those professions that fascinate but confuse me. I love cities and can haltingly express what I enjoy about this or that aspect of this or that city, but constructing a coherent vision of what might be “good” or “bad” architecture escapes me. Reading architects talking about their purviews mostly bewilders me. Not so Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney columnist, architecture critic, and activist. Her “Killing Sydney: The Fight for a City’s Soul” is a refreshing, boisterous survey of the city she loves through the eyes of an architect, employing in different chapters varying lenses with which to examine older history but in particular what she considers (and I have to agree) a recent history of despoilment, greed, corruption, and mendacity. Farrelly writes exhilarating prose and her knowledge of the magic of Sydney’s location and varied suburbs and buildings is staggering. Her takedown of the recent massive developments that I’ve observed when travelling to my son’s house in Marrickville is eye-opening. If I am barely wiser in my own architectural acuity after finishing Killing Sydney, I am much richer for the read. Recommended for any Sydneysider, Australian (other Australian cities, I’m sure, face the same vicious environment), or fan of beautiful architecture.

On my bookshelf squats Mark Bittman’s massive How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a companion to my life, and the prodigious Bittman has written six related cookbooks. Now, with “Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal,” Bittman turns serious, and boy, how dark his intent is. This book is nothing less than an indictment of the entire thrust of humankind’s journey through the world of food and diet. Particularly savage is the tale of modern (read: American) industrial agriculture, which, following in the footsteps of British and other colonial powers, has scrunched the small, traditional farmer, starved and abused farm workers, embraced monoculture, and ended up at our current point of history, in which much of what is eaten is now formally “junk” that makes us sick and kills us. I had read parts of this history and naturally, having turned vegetarian solely to cut carbon emissions, am well aware of the blight of our modern food practices on Earth’s climate, but I had never seen the whole trajectory laid out before. The author is a smooth, engaging stylist and his carefully researched facts are expounded with fairness. His penultimate chapter, “The Way Forward,” begins thus: “I realize that much of this book has been, let’s say, not exactly uplifting,” which describes the impact accurately. His descriptions of what he describes as minor corrective revolutions offered me some cheer but not much. What will be needed, he says, is massive systemic change: “Innovation from industry is not going to fix food and diet, and neither is ‘buying right.'” Compendious and sweeping, Animal, Vegetable, Junk is a must-read for those of us who despair at the food terrain we gaze at.