Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
Reflections on the End of a Civilization
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sean Runnette
-
By:
-
Roy Scranton
About this listen
Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or al-Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought - the shock and awe of global warming.
Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability but to civilization itself...and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in - the Anthropocene - demands a radical new vision of human life.
In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking listeners on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the number-one most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality.
Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that's true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity's most philosophical age - for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble now is that we must learn to die not as individuals but as a civilization.
Roy Scranton has published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.
©2015 Roy Scranton (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Small Place
- By: Jamaica Kincaid
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the prime minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a prime minister would want an airport named after him - why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen..." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the 10-by-12-mile island in the British West Indies.
-
-
I understand
- By Landomc on 05-26-21
By: Jamaica Kincaid
-
The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
-
-
Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.
- By Ricky on 03-17-19
-
This Changes Everything
- Capitalism vs. the Climate
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.
-
-
Didactic and preachy... and I agree with her
- By plau on 09-25-16
By: Naomi Klein
-
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
- By: Andreas Malm
- Narrated by: Brian Arens
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven't we moved beyond peaceful protest?
-
-
Neat summation
- By Anonymous User on 05-16-23
By: Andreas Malm
-
Dark Age America
- Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead
- By: John Michael Greer
- Narrated by: Michael Dowd
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After decades of missed opportunities, the door to a sustainable future has closed, and the future we face now is one in which today's industrial civilization unravels in the face of uncontrolled climate change and resource depletion. What is the world going to look like when all these changes have run their course? Author John Michael Greer seeks to answer this question, and with some degree of accuracy, since civilizations tend to collapse in remarkably similar ways.
-
-
A projection in to a future with less
- By Philomath on 03-26-17
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
A Small Place
- By: Jamaica Kincaid
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the prime minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a prime minister would want an airport named after him - why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen..." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the 10-by-12-mile island in the British West Indies.
-
-
I understand
- By Landomc on 05-26-21
By: Jamaica Kincaid
-
The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
-
-
Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.
- By Ricky on 03-17-19
-
This Changes Everything
- Capitalism vs. the Climate
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.
-
-
Didactic and preachy... and I agree with her
- By plau on 09-25-16
By: Naomi Klein
-
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
- By: Andreas Malm
- Narrated by: Brian Arens
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven't we moved beyond peaceful protest?
-
-
Neat summation
- By Anonymous User on 05-16-23
By: Andreas Malm
-
Dark Age America
- Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead
- By: John Michael Greer
- Narrated by: Michael Dowd
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After decades of missed opportunities, the door to a sustainable future has closed, and the future we face now is one in which today's industrial civilization unravels in the face of uncontrolled climate change and resource depletion. What is the world going to look like when all these changes have run their course? Author John Michael Greer seeks to answer this question, and with some degree of accuracy, since civilizations tend to collapse in remarkably similar ways.
-
-
A projection in to a future with less
- By Philomath on 03-26-17
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
-
-
Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Our Final Warning
- Six Degrees of Climate Emergency
- By: Mark Lynas
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse. We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond.
-
-
One of the best
- By Stephen on 08-15-20
By: Mark Lynas
-
The Ministry for the Future
- A Novel
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
-
-
Great ideas, uneven narration
- By depthpsychologist on 12-09-20
-
Merchants of Doubt
- How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, Al Gore - foreword
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Merchants of Doubt has been praised—and attacked—around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.
-
-
heroic
- By Anonymous User on 06-02-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
-
All We Can Save
- Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
- By: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine K. Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine K. Wilkinson, Cristela Alonzo, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States - scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race - and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
-
-
Saved My Life
- By Taylor Seamount on 11-07-21
By: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, and others
-
Overshoot
- The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
- By: William R. Catton
- Narrated by: MJ McGalliard
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth.
-
-
A Five Star Book... In Print Form.
- By Joshua on 11-04-20
-
Under a White Sky
- The Nature of the Future
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it? Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating.
-
-
Feel Sorry For Your Grandchildren
- By Allen Moody on 02-28-21
-
Sand Talk
- How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
- By: Tyson Yunkaporta
- Narrated by: Tyson Yunkaporta
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability - and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?
-
-
um...
- By Michael D. Phillips on 01-12-21
By: Tyson Yunkaporta
-
The Tortilla Curtain
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author T. Coraghessan Boyle weaves together the stories of two families in Southern California: one affluent, the other destitute. As Boyle creates a counterpoint of personal needs, civic responsibility, and social custom, each family's quest for the American Dream fuels deep fear and anger that ultimately lead to a perilous confrontation.
-
-
The Tortilla Curtain
- By Donald on 05-14-04
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Tribe
- On Homecoming and Belonging
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Sebastian Junger
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians - but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life.
-
-
The most profound book on the subject
- By joseph on 05-26-16
By: Sebastian Junger
-
Breaking Together
- A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse
- By: Jem Bendell
- Narrated by: Matthew Slater
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world.
-
-
A must read for anyone looking to make the most of our crumbling world
- By Gabriella Cordova on 09-01-24
By: Jem Bendell
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
-
-
One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
-
How Soon Is Now
- From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation
- By: Daniel Pinchbeck
- Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world needs to change. We have unleashed an ecological mega-crisis which is threatening the future of life on Earth. The actions we take over the next decade are critical. They will determine the destiny of our descendants and the fate of our world. How Soon Is Now presents a compelling manifesto for personal and planetary change. It proposes a revolutionary new narrative for a unified social movement. Through global cooperation, we can face this collective threat ecologically, socially, politically and spiritually.
-
-
Relevant!!!!
- By Anonymous User on 12-11-23
By: Daniel Pinchbeck
-
Why Geography Matters
- More Than Ever
- By: Harm de Blij
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent years our world has seen transformations of all kinds: intense climate change accompanied by significant weather extremes; deadly tsunamis caused by submarine earthquakes; unprecedented terrorist attacks; costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a terrible and overlooked conflict in Equatorial Africa costing millions of lives; an economic crisis threatening the stability of the international system.
-
-
A book that needs more than just narration
- By Organic Design on 06-10-15
By: Harm de Blij
-
Tropic of Chaos
- Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence
- By: Christian Parenti
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe - the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's mid-latitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters.
-
-
Absolute must-read topic!
- By Kevin on 07-07-14
-
Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
-
-
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
-
Progress
- Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.
-
-
Global Uptrends That May Surprise You
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 09-22-17
By: Johan Norberg
-
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
-
-
One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
-
How Soon Is Now
- From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation
- By: Daniel Pinchbeck
- Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world needs to change. We have unleashed an ecological mega-crisis which is threatening the future of life on Earth. The actions we take over the next decade are critical. They will determine the destiny of our descendants and the fate of our world. How Soon Is Now presents a compelling manifesto for personal and planetary change. It proposes a revolutionary new narrative for a unified social movement. Through global cooperation, we can face this collective threat ecologically, socially, politically and spiritually.
-
-
Relevant!!!!
- By Anonymous User on 12-11-23
By: Daniel Pinchbeck
-
Why Geography Matters
- More Than Ever
- By: Harm de Blij
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent years our world has seen transformations of all kinds: intense climate change accompanied by significant weather extremes; deadly tsunamis caused by submarine earthquakes; unprecedented terrorist attacks; costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a terrible and overlooked conflict in Equatorial Africa costing millions of lives; an economic crisis threatening the stability of the international system.
-
-
A book that needs more than just narration
- By Organic Design on 06-10-15
By: Harm de Blij
-
Tropic of Chaos
- Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence
- By: Christian Parenti
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe - the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's mid-latitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters.
-
-
Absolute must-read topic!
- By Kevin on 07-07-14
-
Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
-
-
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
-
Progress
- Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.
-
-
Global Uptrends That May Surprise You
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 09-22-17
By: Johan Norberg
-
Overheated
- How Climate Change Will Cause Floods, Famine, War, and Disease
- By: Andrew T. Guzman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
-
-
A must read!
- By Ted on 03-22-15
By: Andrew T. Guzman
-
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We're taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives.
-
-
A different point of view
- By Ballofyarn on 01-12-17
By: Alex Epstein
-
End Times
- A Brief Guide to the End of the World
- By: Bryan Walsh
- Narrated by: Bryan Walsh, Corey Carthew
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable - and inevitable - end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.
-
-
Important topic ruined by needless political blather
- By J. Gordon on 08-29-19
By: Bryan Walsh
-
Why the West Rules - for Now
- The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
- By: Ian Morris
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 24 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the 20th century secured its global supremacy.
-
-
Compelling and infuriating take at World History
- By Skeptical on 09-11-11
By: Ian Morris
-
The Nutmeg's Curse
- Parables for a Planet in Crisis
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis.
-
-
performance....
- By Bonnie on 11-15-22
By: Amitav Ghosh
-
Age of Discovery
- Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
- By: Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: how do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time? From gains in health, education, wealth and technology to crises of conflict, disease and mass migration, the similarities between today's world and that of the 15th century are both striking and prophetic: we have been here before.
-
-
A monotonous text disguised as casual reading.
- By Rob on 07-29-16
By: Ian Goldin, and others
-
A Brief History of the Future
- A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-first Century
- By: Jacques Attali
- Narrated by: Alan Robertson
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What will planet Earth be like in 20 years? At mid-century? In the year 2100? Prescient and convincing, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future. Never has the world offered more promise for the future and been more fraught with dangers. In this powerful and sometimes terrifying work, Attali analyzes the past and pinpoints nine distinct periods of human history, each with its world center of power and prestige, and predicts what the tenth will bring by the end of this century.
-
-
feels like a popular mechanics article
- By Robin on 07-11-17
By: Jacques Attali
-
The Vanishing Face of Gaia
- A Final Warning
- By: James Lovelock
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.
-
-
A New Perspective - A Must Listen - Very Moving
- By Thomas on 01-29-12
By: James Lovelock
-
It's Better Than It Looks
- By: Gregg Easterbrook
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most people who pay attention to the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more. Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than it ever has been. In the United States, disease, crime, discrimination, and most forms of pollution are in long-term decline, while longevity and education keep rising.
-
-
Too political
- By Anonymous User on 07-12-18
-
Dark Winter
- How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell
- By: John L. Casey
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Climate change has been a perplexing problem for years. Casey's research into the Sun's activity, which began almost a decade ago, resulted in discovery of a solar cycle that is now reversing from its global warming phase to that of dangerous global cooling for the next 30 years or more. This new cold climate will dramatically impact the world's citizens.
-
-
Global Warming Is A Hoax
- By Catamount on 11-20-17
By: John L. Casey
-
Nonzero
- The Logic of Human Destiny
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
-
-
Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
-
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
- A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
- By: Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore
- Narrated by: Simon Mattacks
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism.
-
-
A remarkable exposé & synthesis of the Ponzi scheme that capitalism is and always has been.
- By Scott on 02-10-18
By: Raj Patel, and others
What listeners say about Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 09-04-20
Worth it
We're all gonna die, and we might as well get good at it. This is definitely worth the read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Madison
- 02-13-19
Just Environmental Threats 101
This is a good book, but if you are already informed (or took just 1 or 2 college courses) about the changing climate and other environmental threats, you won't find anything new.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 11-18-16
Eye opening!
When you realize its not about you and you alone. Open your gobal eyes people.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gerald Ledbetter
- 12-18-19
“Learning to die in the Anthropocene “( Roy Scranton).
It was a convenient to hear the audible version of the informative book about a very real phenomenon that we should all be concerned about anticipating global warming proactively.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Love
- 09-18-19
A priest for the atheist.
Many call him a doomsday prophet.
I disagree. I call him a priest without a god that truest to give us new light in the darkness. Letting culture take the place of scripture when he preaches of the big questions of life and death. It is beautiful, and much needed.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Whoosh
- 06-24-20
Profound
One of the most profound books I’ve had the privilege of reading (well, listening to)
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lulu
- 12-05-16
A Lot to Reflect On
Very thought provoking book. It did not take quite the path I had hoped. But I recommend it heartily just the same.
This book deals with the topic of humanity coming to grasp with what might be the end of our civilization. An end that we have essentially brought on ourselves. There is nothing optimistic or hopeful in this book. The author sees no way out of the mess we have made of our planet and clearly believes that it is far too late to affect meaningful change and all of the "solutions" we have come up with to address the poisoning of our planet are too little, too late. He quickly dismisses most of the solutions that even now the eternal optimists among us promote - solar, wind and hyrdo power.
He shines light on many of the hypocritical events activists use to garner attention to their cause, and quickly explains why demonstrations, sit-ins, marches, etc. have absolutely no effect on the society they want to touch.
The author seems to have gone through the stages of grief and is now at the point of acceptance and asks the reader to join him there. Once we have accepted the inevitable, he believes, we can start discussing how humanity could and should work through the next steps, how we prepare, what and who we look to for guidance (not necessarily scientist, he thinks it is too late for them, but philosophers.) It is as if he wants civilization to think about how we can grow old gracefully and accept our fate without losing our humanity. Only once we get to this point, can we figure out if there is a path forward for at least some of us, so we can have some influence on the next civilization this planet creates.
It has been several days since read this and I find myself thinking about the book frequently. Very powerful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John Englander
- 06-06-21
A small but amazing nook on climate change
I work at a Climate Change and Everett dozens of books on the subject. This little gem it’s one of the best.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Susie
- 06-28-16
Grief Counseling for Civilization
In this existential meditation, Roy Scranton is not setting out to get you to go solar, or ride your bike to work. He's trying to convince you to accept that global warming is changing the world and that life as we know it is unsustainable. That humanity's greatest threat is "not terrorism, not WMDs but the machine of civilization breaking down," and the sooner we collectively accept this and the better we can cope and adapt.
With the prognosis as it is, a book like this is long overdue. A grief counselor for humanity. Scranton writes of serving in the military, "to survive as a soldier I had to learn to accept the inevitability of my own death, for humanity to to survive in the Anthropocene, we need to learn to live with and through the end of our civilization." The only way forward is acceptance.
This is a rich and deep philosophy and necessary for thinking and sensitive people.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- abun!
- 11-23-22
Compelling
This was a completely beautiful work and also wonderfully read. I found it very moving and am about to purchase a print copy for my physical library.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!