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Title: As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial
ISBN: 1583227776
Author:
Derrick Jensen
Publicate Date: 2007-11-19
Publish: 2007-11-19
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.25
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Denial, aliens and bunny bombers...
The story seems simple but has a complex theme. Aliens show up who want to eat the world and, in return, will pay in gold. Of course the government gives in. The plot, in other words, is just a delivery system to tell us the facts. We're losing the planet. Much of what we do, from changing light bulbs to recycling, while good is not good enough. We need a total redesign of our culture, our ways of thinking, and we need to value life more than we value air conditioning and fast food. I'm not sure about using bombs and death rays BUT we do need to change things now. No, I mean right now. Not after YOU'RE dead. Funny enough this book very likely killed a tree but what can you do?
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2: Funny yet some truth to it
This is a funny graphic novel about the destruction of Earth because of greed. The solution in this book is violence and some reviewers have been appalled by this theory. What is the answer then? Carbon trading? Buying green products? Planting trees? These solutions do not solve the problem with the world, instead they solve the problem of shame in some people. If this book is a bit cynical for you try reading the Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken. I did one star because no one will read the review if I give it a good rating. This is a good, quick read and I definitely recommend this book to a friend.
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3: A Hugely Depressing Cartoon
Very depressing. Makes a clear case that corporate fixes for our doomed civilization are so muuch hogwash. You know, the fixes that urge us to buy new light bulbs and others seen on various corporate green ads. Oh, the one where a woman urges us to respect her company because it "keeps us moving" as if that were a great human need in a polluted world under constant onslaught from global warming storms, fires, and droughts.
Should be given to everyone who likes comics instead of non-fiction books.
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4: Easily digestible politics for the planet
With this graphic novel, Derrick and Stephanie demolish the absurdities and myths of the environmental movement in a provocative and hilarious fashion. They butt heads directly with the hypocrisies of dogmatic pacifists and green technophiles, much to their chagrin, but to people who love the land with an open mind, this is a great introduction to a depressing but necessary way of where we are, and where we need to go.
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5: Good message, crude presentation
I like the spirit and overall message of this little book: that the global climate crisis simply won't be solved by individual consumers turning down their thermostats or rotating their tires. These sorts of strategies, beloved by both liberals and capitalists, do nothing to change the economic and political structures that allow for environmental devastation in the first place, and very little to fix the problem of environmental destruction in the second. What's needed for radical problems are radical solutions.
I get that, and I endorse it. But the way in which Jensen and McMillan have presented the position is so crudely written and drawn that I find this book more embarrassing than enlightening or inspiring.
The plot is simple: because liberal do-gooders are ineffective at stopping environmental destruction (here represented by life-devouring robotic aliens who've bought franchises to the planet from the powers-that-be), nature herself--in the form of animals--fights back. Drastic resistance is the remedy, not getting celebrities to raise funds.
Stephanie McMillan, the artist, uses characters that were born in her political comic strip "Minimum Security." McMillan either has nearly no talent as an artist or she chooses to draw in an irritating faux-primitive style. In either case, her artwork here is even sloppier and unpleasing than in her strip. It looks as if she slapped the stuff out while watching television or clipping her toenails. It's genuinely bad.
To compound the calamity, Jensen's prose is heavy-handed, didactic, and progressively tedious. The bad guys are nothing but evil, in the best silent movie villain style; the naive liberals are laughable in their naivete (although one of them, who throughout the book has mainly played straight man....er, gal, finally gets converted); the good guys are good all the way through. There's no finesse, no suggestion that the people who benefit from an exploitive system might not also be victims in at least some way, no hint that liberal do-gooders might actually do some good. There's just black-and-white, good guy-bad guy thinking throughout.
Look: we do need a revolution. We do need radical change to save the planet. We do need more action and less letter-writing. But we don't need this sorry little book.
One and a half stars.
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