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521. Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Michael Shellenberger

Genre:  Non Fiction, Environmental, Public Policy

272 pages, published June 23, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

In Apocalypse Never, longtime environmentalist Michael Shellenberger addresses the alarmism surrounding climate change and other environmentalist issues.  Responding to these claims and the rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided to a deep dive and separate science from fiction.  He reports that carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade, deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades, and the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas.  Shellenberger also discovered that people who are the most apocalyptic environmentalists also tend to oppose the most obvious solutions like nuclear power.   He believes this is due to the desire among secular people to use environmentalism as a substitute for religion.

Quotes 

“nuclear has saved more than two million lives to date by preventing the deadly air pollution that shortens the lives of seven million people per year.”

 

“The news media also deserves blame for having misrepresented climate change and other environmental problems as apocalyptic, and for having failed to put them in their global, historical, and economic context.”

 

 “Economic development outweighs climate change in the rich world, too.”

 

“Only nuclear, not solar and wind, can provide abundant, reliable, and inexpensive heat.”

 

“All of which raises a question: if nuclear power is so good for the environment and necessary for replacing fossil fuels, why are so many of the people who say they most fear climate change so against it?”

 

“Between 1980 and 2018, U.S. carbon monoxide levels decreased by 83 percent, lead by 99 percent, nitrogen dioxide by 61 percent, ozone by 31 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 91 percent.”

 

“unless we do very, very disruptive actions, people do not want to talk to us.”

 

“Oppenheimer explained that nuclear weapons had created a revolution in foreign policy. No defense against them was possible, only deterrence, or frightening away adversaries through the threat of assured destruction.”

 

“environmentalists were “self-righteous, elitist, neo-Malthusians who call for slow growth or no growth . . . and who would condemn the black underclass, the slum proletariat, and rural blacks, to permanent poverty.”

 

“350.org, the Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF were all accepting money from fossil fuel billionaires Steyer and Bloomberg.”

 

“It is hard to imagine a more “pay-to-play” relationship than the one between Steyer and his grantees. It epitomizes the cynicism of Washington, D.C. And it exposes the news media’s double standard.”

 

“What is inappropriate is accepting fossil fuel funding while attacking others for doing the same. Even less appropriate is lying about it.”

 

“IPCC authors were exaggerating or misrepresenting the science for effect.”

 

“Many of the more worrying impacts of climate change are really symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment.”

 

“Happily, nobody saves mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, and sea turtles because they believe human civilization depends on it. We save them for a simpler reason: we love them.”

 

“Irrational ideas about nature repeatedly creep into the environmental sciences.”

 

“nature gracefully, gradually self-regulates species and environments”

 

“Solar panels require sixteen times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create three hundred times more waste.”

 

“The trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating. It leads its adherents to demonize their opponents, often hypocritically. It drives them to seek to restrict power and prosperity at home and abroad.  And it spreads anxiety and depression without meeting the deeper psychological, existential, and spiritual needs its ostensibly secular devotees seek.”

 

“people learning about climate change for the first time might understandably believe, upon listening to Lunnon and Thunberg, that climate change is the result of deliberate, malevolent actions. In reality, it is the opposite. Emissions are a by-product of energy consumption, which has been necessary for people to lift themselves, their families, and their societies out of poverty, and achieve human dignity. Given that’s what climate activists have been taught to believe, it’s understandable that so many of them would be so angry.”

 

“Just as the far higher power densities of coal made the industrial revolution possible, the far lower power densities of solar and wind would make today’s high-energy, urbanized, and industrial civilization impossible. And, as we have seen, for some advocates of renewables, that has always been the goal.”

 

My Take

In  Apocalypse Never, longtime environmentalist Michael Shellenberger lays out in painstaking detail how destructive much of the current environmental alarmism is to humanity, especially those humans at the lower rungs who require abundant energy to improve their economic plight.  A bit slow and dense in parts, but still an informative read that challenges the conventional orthodoxy.

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520. The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Amy Chua, Jed Rubenfeld

Genre:  Non Fiction, Race, Ethnicity, Public Policy

336 pages, published February 14, 2014

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In The Triple Package, Yale Law School professors Amy Chua (aka the Tiger Mom) and husband Jed Rubenfeld set forth their thesis that certain cultural groups in America that possess a “triple package” of traits succeed in America at a signicantly higher rate than the rest of the population.  The three characteristics are:  members of such groups believe the group is exceptional (i.e. a superiority complex), but still feel they must prove themselves, and impulse control, i.e. work for future goals instead of immediate satisfaction.  They identify several groups in America which exhibit these triple package traits and have achieved outsized success including Mormons, Asians, Jews, Lebanese, and Nigerians.

Quotes 

“A life that doesn’t include hard-won accomplishment and triumph over obstacles may not be a satisfying one. There is something deeply fulfilling — even thrilling — in doing almost anything difficult extremely well. There is a joy and pride that come from pushing yourself to another level or across a new frontier. A life devoted only to the present — to feeling good in the now — is unlikely to deliver real fulfillment. The present moment by itself it too small, too hollow. We all need a future. Something beyond and greater than our own present gratification, at which to aim or feel we’ve contributed.”

 

 “For most Americans, especially now, striving and insecurity are likely to be rewarded with more striving and insecurity; you can do everything right and still have little to show for it.”

 

“Chinese Americans are three generations behind the Jews” as both Jewish Americans and Chinese Americans share many similar behaviors like being instructed to learn how to play a musical instrument when they were little and encouraged to become a doctor, teacher or a lawyer.

 

My Take

I found The Triple Package to be a quick and fascinating read.  Chua and Rubenfeld support their thesis with a broad array of evidence and provide an interesting discussion replete with myriad examples of successful ethnic groups.  This book will get you thinking and would be  great fodder for a group discussion.

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519. The God of Small Things

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Arundhati Roy

Genre:  Fiction, Foreign

340 pages, published 1997

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The God of Small Things takes place in Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, in 1969.  It tells the story of an Indian family, young mother Ammu, her twins Rahel and Esthappen, the blind grandmother, Mammachi, Oxford educated uncle Chacko, and Baby Kochamma (grandaunt and ex-nun.  When the twins’ English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive for a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day.

Quotes 

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

 

 “…the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.  That is their mystery and their magic.”

 “And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

 

“If you’re happy in a dream, does that count?”

 

“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”

 

“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”

 

 “The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”

 

 “Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”

 

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

 

 “If he touched her, he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.”

 

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

 

 “Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative – they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”

 

 “Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.”

 “Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.”

 

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”

 

My Take

While Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is an acclaimed book, winning the 1997 Booker Prize, I had a hard time fully immersing myself in the story.  There were parts I liked and some beautiful language, but it left me a bit cold.

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518. Then Again

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Diane Keaton

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Entertainment

338 pages, published November 15, 2011

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In her memoir Then Again, actress Diane Keaton alternates between her life and the life of her mother Dorothy Hall, much of which comes from her mother’s lifelong journals.   The two share a strong bond and both have fascinating stories to tell.

Quotes 

“…I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That’s what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.”

 

“This living stuff is a lot. Too much, and not enough. Half empty, and half full.”

 

“That’s what I learned. I learned I couldn’t shed light on love other than to feel its comings and goings and be grateful.”

 

“Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary”

 

“We can’t save the past or solve the riddle of love. But to me, it’s worth trying.”

 

“The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn’t bring happiness”

 

“Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.”

 

“At times she’s so basic, at others so wise it frightens me that I got so far in this world without the benefit of such knowledge.”

 

“Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It’s the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it’s closed. We’re watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It’s a perfect afternoon.”

 

 “I want to hold my life up alongside hers in order to, as she wrote, reach a point where i begin to see me-and her-in a more understandable light.”

 

“If beauty is in the eye of the beholder are mirrors a waste of time?”

 

“I kept thinking if I’m so miserably maladjusted to this life, my absence would only be felt for a short time. And anyway, my responsibilities with the family are over. They no longer look to me for guidance. It’s more like I’m the one they’re stuck being responsible for. My company isn’t sought after. Whatever I have allowed to happen has also brought on this horrible lack of confidence. I’m intimidated. I have no one to tell my concerns to, NO ONE. I’ve let myself come to a very sad state, not only sad, but stagnant.”

 

My Take

I have always liked Diane Keaton and enjoyed learning more about her varied and interesting film career and the life of her mother Dorothy.  It was also fascinating to read about her relationships with some of the biggest names of her generation (Woody Allen, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty).  Keaton is a talented writer and I whipped through this memoir in just a few days.

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517. Van Gogh, The Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Art, Biography

976 pages, published October 18, 2011

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

Van Gogh, The Life is an incredibly detailed, exhaustive look at the life of Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh from his birth to his early death at age 37.  We follow Vincent’s early struggles to find his place in the world, his conflicted relationship with family, including art dealer brother Theo who financially supported Vincent during most of his life, his intense relationship with fellow Impressionist Paul Gaugin, his move to Provence, where in an explosion of productivity he painted some of the best-loved works in Western art and finally to the  mental illness he combated during a significant portion of his brief life.

Quotes 

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

 

“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”

 

 “…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

 

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

 

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”

 

“I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”

 

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”

 

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

 

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”

 

“Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”

 

 “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

 “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”

 

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

 

“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”

 

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

 

“I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.”

 

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

 

“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.”

 

“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”

 

“I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”

 

“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”

 

 “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”

 

My Take

I listened to the audio version of Van Gogh, The Life in connection with a class I took on Vincent Van Gogh.  It is an extremely long book that would have benefited tremendously from editing out some of the slower and repetitive portions.  That said, I did learn A LOT about Vincent Van Gogh, who in addition to being an artistic genius was a world class narcissist and free loader.  Vincent’s letters make clear that often acted like a real jerk, expecting his brother Theo to continuously provide him with material support with no questions asked while sometimes looking down on Theo because he was a businessman and not an artist.  A unique character!

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516. Anxious People

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Stephanie Schroeder

Author:    Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

341 pages, published September 8, 2020

Reading Format:   E-book

Summary

In Anxious People, a bank robber walks into an apartment open house after failing to actually rob the bank and holds an unlikely mix of strangers hostage.  The captives include a recently retired couple who buy fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage, a wealthy banker who has shut herself off from the world, a young, nervous couple pregnant with their first child, an 87 year old, feisty woman, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom.  As the police try to free the hostages, we learn surprising truths about each of them, including the ultimately sympathetic bank robber.

Quotes 

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim.”

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”

 

 “The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”

 

“That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.”

 

 “Some people accept that they will never be free of their anxiety, they just learn to carry it. She tried to be one of them. She told herself that was why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is.”

 

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

 

“Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”

 

“We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.”

 

“Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between the tables. First class on airplanes has no middle seats. Exclusive hotels have separate entrances for guests staying in suites. The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”

 

“God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”

 

“Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?”

“No.”

“You’re never more important that you are then.”

 

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.”

 

“Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.”

 

“that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.”

 

“We’re trying to be grown-up and love each other and understand how the hell you’re supposed to insert USB leads. We’re looking for something to cling on to, something to fight for, something to look forward to. We’re doing all we can to teach our children how to swim. We have all of this in common, yet most of us remain strangers, we never know what we do to each other, how your life is affected by mine.  Perhaps we hurried past each other in a crowd today, and neither of us noticed, and the fibers of your coat brushed against mine for single moment and then we were gone. I don’t know who you are.  But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well. There’ll be another one along tomorrow.”

 

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”

 

“Something my dad says…He says you end up marrying the one you don’t understand. Then you spend the rest of your life trying.”

 

“Because that was a parent’s job: to provide shoulders. Shoulders for your children to sit on when they’re little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure.”

 

“Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened. No one goes to see a psychologist to talk about all the times they weren’t hit in the head by a swing as a child. Parents are defined by their mistakes.”

 

“We are asleep until we fall in love.”

 

“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”

 

“You can’t live long with the ones who are only beautiful, Jules. But the funny ones, oh, they last a lifetime.”

 

“children used to be punished by being sent to their rooms, but these days you have to force children to come out of them. One generation got told off for not being able to sit still, the next gets told off for never moving.”

 

“This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends.  And to my wife, who lives with us.”

 My Take

Anxious People is the sixth book that I have read by best-selling Swedisth author Fredrik Backman (previous reads were:  A Man Called Ove, Beartown, Us Against You, Britt-Marie Was Here  And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer) and I like his wry, insightful style that peels back the layers of human nature.  He always has something interesting to say about the way human beings function and interact with each other and Anxious People is one of his better efforts.

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