Publishers Weekly
02/08/2021
Aronoff (co-editor, We Own the Future), a staff writer at the New Republic, delivers an urgent and persuasive study of the links between neoliberal economics and climate change. According to Aronoff, every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan’s has prioritized market-based solutions to environmental issues, and has sought the fossil fuel industry’s input on its own regulation. The result, Aronoff argues, has been little to no progress on an existential threat to humankind. She critiques the notion that carbon taxes alone can curb greenhouse gas emissions to the degree necessary, and details how Waxman-Markey, a 2009 bill that would have established a cap-and-trade program in the U.S., was undermined by poor messaging from the Obama administration and handouts to fossil fuel companies and Wall Street. Aronoff also sketches the history of the New Deal to argue that the Green New Deal can restore the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic and help Democrats build an electoral coalition to “bat off challenges from the right,” and examines grassroots campaigns to “reassert democratic control” over publicly owned energy utilities. Though Aronoff covers familiar ground, she does so from a fresh angle, and offers brisk yet detailed analysis of why the U.S. approach to climate change has fallen short. Policy makers and environmental activists will find much food for thought. Agent: Ian Bonaparte, Janklow & Nesbit. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
The business model of the fossil fuel industry, she concludes in this well-documented and necessarily provocative book, is “incompatible with a livable future.”…An informative, urgent, and sure to be controversial argument.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Urgent and persuasive… [Aronoff] offers brisk yet detailed analysis of why the U.S. approach to climate change has fallen short…Policy makers and environmental activists will find much food for thought.”—Publishers Weekly
“Aronoff provides an exhaustively reported look into how capitalism and unfettered growth have destroyed the environment…Overheated covers an ambitious amount of history, but the most interesting parts delve into how we could do better in the future. I was constantly pulling out pithy facts about how we’re not implementing solutions on the necessary scale…This is very much a book for right now.”—Outside Magazine
“There are a lot of books about the climate crisis. A new one—Overheated, by Kate Aronoff, who covers climate issues for The New Republic—is not to be missed.”—Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
"Kate Aronoff is so sharp, witty and relentlessly on-target that reading her fills me with hope. Overheated is a blistering account of the many varieties of denial that have prepared the ground for climate catastrophe — and a thrilling tour of the kind of visionary politics and policies that could put the future back in our hands. Please: read this book."
—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
“As this masterful volume makes clear, Kate Aronoff is one of the most important writers ever to take on the climate crisis. She's hard-headed in her assessment of how neoliberalism put us on the brink of civilizational collapse, but she's not hard-hearted: she offers a persuasive case for how, with lots of solidarity, we could still escape the worst of this mess. This book is careful, comprehensive, and compelling, and it should be widely read, since it offers a baseline understanding for thinking through the greatest challenge humans have ever faced.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
“In this deep and vital analysis, Kate Aronoff subjects every flimsy pretext and prevarication for postponing the climate emergency to a forensic analysis. She uncovers the genealogy of ideas, and the flows of money behind them. And then, with a razor-sharp intellect, she eviscerates the climate deniers, one lie at a time. If we are to win the battle for a livable planet, we’ll only do so with the moral clarity and intelligence that Overheated has in abundance.”
—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
“The Bible observes that, ‘the heart is deceitful, who can understand it?’ The greed at the heart of climate denialism isn't new, but understanding how it has warped our imagination for what is possible is critical work for our time. I'm grateful to sister Kate Aronoff for doing this work and for making plain exactly what sort of bold action is needed if we are not only to preserve a livable planet but also revive the heart of our democracy.”
—William J. Barber, II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and author of We Are Called to Be a Movement
“Climate-driven apartheid that sacrifices the many for the few, or reformed democracy that will work for the vast majority? That is the choice, explains Kate Aronoff in this bracing call to save ourselves by saving our planet from fossil fuel corporations and their enablers.”
—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-01-26
Our environmental future depends on radical economic change.
Drawing on government documents, interviews, environmental studies, and reports from a wide range of media sources, journalist and New Republic staff writer Aronoff mounts a compelling indictment of capitalism for making climate change reform impossible. The fossil fuel industry, representing “the most powerful and politically entrenched companies on earth,” has hijacked such reforms, she asserts, funding climate change deniers, influencing governmental policy, and blocking any measures that would affect the industry’s financial growth. “The line between what constitutes an official US governmental priority versus that of its biggest companies is a thin one,” writes the author. To undermine politicians who seek reform, for example, the industry has engaged in “fearmongering” about how measures such as cap and trade, designed to limit carbon emissions, “would kill jobs and raise fuel costs.” Portraying fossil fuel executives as opportunists, Aronoff reveals that from 2000 to 2018, despite “selling themselves as climate champions,” energy companies invested less than 4% of their capital expenditures in low-carbon technologies. To counter the pernicious effects of capitalism, the author proposes “low-carbon populism” that sets out goals “other than the boundless accumulation of private wealth.” As in her previous book, A Planet To Win, Aronoff champions the Green New Deal as a flexible, responsive framework “for reimagining the fractured social contract upon which this country was built” and for acknowledging the connection between racism and environmental vulnerabilities. Reprising the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Aronoff suggests nationalizing the fossil fuel industry, turning to unions to train workers for clean energy jobs, and spurring technological innovation. “The New Deal’s throughline wasn’t socialism or even big government,” she asserts, “but a thoroughly democratic political economy.” The business model of the fossil fuel industry, she concludes in this well-documented and necessarily provocative book, is “incompatible with a livable future.”
An informative, urgent, and sure to be controversial argument.
