No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

by William T. Vollmann Narrated by Sean Runnette

Overview

In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come-the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger, the first volume of Carbon Ideologies, by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort. Turning to nuclear power first, Vollmann then recounts multiple visits that he made at significant personal risk over the course of seven years to the contaminated no-go zones and sad ghost towns of Fukushima, Japan, beginning shortly after the tsunami and reactor meltdowns of 2011. Equipped first only with a dosimeter and then with a scintillation counter, he measured radiation and interviewed tsunami victims, nuclear evacuees, anti-nuclear organizers, and pro-nuclear utility workers.



Featuring Vollmann's signature wide learning, sardonic wit, and encyclopedic research, No Immediate Danger builds up a powerful, sobering picture of the ongoing nightmare of Fukushima.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/05/2018
Fossil fuels and nuclear power pose equally apocalyptic threats, according to this fact-strewn, muddled opening volume of a massive two-volume cri de coeur on energy. Addressing an imagined reader of the future, when climate change has made the earth a scorched wasteland, novelist and journalist Vollmann (Uncentering the Earth) opens with a guilt-stricken primer on mankind’s heedless production of greenhouse gases—then proceeds to attack nuclear power, one of the largest sources of low-carbon energy. Much of the book covers his travels in Japan, where he roamed the environs of the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011 taking readings with a radiation meter, talking to locals, and shuddering at desolate vistas of evacuated towns—the fruit, he contends, of a callous “nuclear ideology” that saddles humanity with poisoned landscapes. Vollmann’s critique doesn’t quite make a coherent case that Fukushima’s spew will have significant health effects (the scientific consensus says otherwise); instead he veers between sarcastic jibes—“unlike its three main rival fuels, nuclear could be fun!”—and alarmism about “gamma rays stabbing through me.” Nuclear power and energy policy deserve a more thoughtful, less biased exploration than Vollmann gives them. Photos. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

Praise for No Immediate Danger:

“Carbon Ideologies is an almanac of global energy use . . . a travelogue to natural landscapes riven by energy production . . . a compassionate work of anthropology that tries to make sense of man’s inability to weigh future cataclysm against short-term comfort . . . one of the most honest books yet written on climate change.” —Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic

“No Immediate Danger tussles with the comprehension-defying nature of climate change . . . terrifying insights are to be found . . . It embodies the confusion of our current moment, the insidiousness of disbelief, and the mania-inducing reality that our greatest threat is the hardest to act upon. It is a feverish, sprawling archive of who we are, and what we’ve wrought.” —The Washington Post

“In the face of complex, contested data, Vollmann is a diligent and perceptive guide. He’s also deeply mindful of those who’ve been sacrificed in the name of profits and political expediency. Amid the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environment protections, these are incontestably important books.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Vollmann’s many fans . . . will not be disappointed . . . he packs research and voice into his impassioned works . . . Reading these two books did have an effect on me; I became even more conscious of the resources I waste in my own life.” —John Schwartz, The New York Times Book Review
 
“One of the enjoyable things about this massive work is the way Vollmann employs irony, and that bluntest of irony called sarcasm, throughout the volume. He can be quite humorous. You might even call this the Infinite Jest of climate books . . . there’s something admirable, even noble, about the sheer time and effort—and sheer humanity—that went into these volumes.” —The Baffler
 
“Equal parts gonzo journalism, hand-wringing confessional, and one hot mess . . . the books document Vollmann’s quest to understand how capitalism, consumerism, and fossil fuels are ruining the planet.” —Sierra

“The best part of the books [are] the conversations Vollmann had during his travels, the sensitive histories he gives of the places he visited, and the moral impressions those conversations and places have made on him. It’s these parts that made Carbon Ideologies a unique, lasting, definitive contribution to the global warming literature.” —The Humanist
 
“An elegy to our damned epoch that’s also a work of enlightenment and education . . . the book is a performance of the vexations involved in trying to understand our energy reality . . . [Vollmann’s] project—not unlike that of his historical fiction—is to show with utmost fidelity what it was like to be a human involved in terrible things.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“[Provides] profound insights into both Japanese society and universal themes regarding the human response to and preparation for major disasters and tragedies.” —The International Examiner

“Vigilant in his precision, open-mindedness, and candor, Vollmann takes on global warming . . . [His] careful descriptions, touching humility, molten irony, and rueful wit, combined with his addressing readers in ‘the hot dark future,’ makes this compendium of statistics, oral history, and reportage elucidating, compelling, and profoundly disquieting.” —ALA Booklist (starred)

“[A] rewarding, impeccably researched narrative . . . Vollmann apologizes to the future that we’ve ruined, charting how our choices of energy sources made the planet scarcely inhabitable.” —Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2018-01-11
Vollmann (The Dying Grass, 2015, etc.) apologizes to the future that we've ruined, charting how our choices of energy sources made the planet scarcely inhabitable."Back when I lived," writes the author early on, "some of us believed that heavily polluting coal could somehow lift people out of poverty without impoverishing us in any more fundamental way. We believed that because it was convenient to believe it. So we kept the lights on." The italics are his, but in any event, it's a feint: we won't get deeply into coal until the second volume of this Carbon Ideologies series. The first is heavy going enough. Famously loquacious, Vollmann writes, without apparent irony, that his "little book" is full of questions and not solutions, true enough save that the little book stretches out over more than 600 pages and embraces a couple of dissertations' worth of data and research notes. In the main, the author's focus is on nuclear power, for, as he also notes early on, "the future for which I write will most likely also be a more radioactive time," not just because nuclear power may be the only way out of fossil fuel dependency—renewables make more sense, but they apparently don't offer enough bang for the buck for the corporate mindset—but also because, given the likelihood of accidents, the world is likely to have plenty of loose isotopes rolling around. Vollmann chronicles his travels to the site of the Fukushima reactor disaster, asking questions that journalists have not: "What color was the tsunami?" "Is it safe here?" It will come as no comfort to know that Fukushima won't, in fact, be safe for another 500 years—though, counsels one decontamination specialist, it may take only 300 years. That there are two or more answers to the question is emblematic, for every matter that the author raises leads onto many others, yielding a dense but—as always, with Vollmann—rewarding, impeccably researched narrative.Vollmann promises a second volume to come—and perhaps more beyond that. Only the irradiated future will tell.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171156756
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Series:	Carbon Ideologies , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

When We Kept the Lights On
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "No Immediate Danger"
by .
Copyright © 2019 William T. Vollmann.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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