IMPASSE

In Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, novelist, essayist and climate philosopher Roy Scranton offers a profound and unflinching take on humanity's ecological crisis. Drawing on history, philosophy, anthropology, cognitive science, literary criticism, climate research and personal experience, he argues persuasively that climate change isn't a problem to be solved but a predicament to be faced. He then goes on to address earnestly the question of how best to face it.

The book opens in the ruins of Chaco Canyon, once the center of a thriving Ancestral Puebloan civilization, with Scranton reflecting that "ruins are both monuments and memento mori, emblems of our arrogance and warnings against our pride." This scene frames his central argument: like Chaco, our own global system is fragile, complex and vulnerable to collapse under the stresses imposed by the ecological crises now bearing down on it.

Scranton builds on anthropologist Joseph Tainter's theory of the diminishing returns of societal complexity, which says that civilizations collapse when the rising energy costs of maintaining complexity outweigh the benefits. He argues that this is proving to be the case with our current global industrial system, and that every proposed solution, from carbon taxes to geoengineering, faces insurmountable resource constraints and resistance from vested interests. Moreover, these solutions require further investments in complexity, which in turn stands to hasten our societal collapse rather than prevent it. In other words, the obstacles are structural; they're embedded in the very systems designed to address them.

Impasse is divided into two parts. The first, titled "The Broken Thread," examines why our current civilizational crisis is so difficult to understand and address. Central to this section is Scranton's critique of what he and other ecological thinkers–including Wendell Berry, John Michael Greer and Rob Nixon–call "the myth of progress," or the widespread assumption that our civilization is destined to continue indefinitely, always moving onward and upward. Like these thinkers, Scranton sees progress not as a steady march but as a brief, fossil-fueled anomaly in human history. In its tacit assumption that humankind can keep exploiting nature without regard for ecological limits, faith in progress, he contends, "rejects both religious humility and empirical skepticism."

His dismantling of the myth is as cogent and compelling as that of Berry and the others, drawing on evidence from philosophy, history, physics, ecology and energy economics. Scranton argues that the myth is maladaptive because it fosters false hope and reinforces our denial of the crises we face. In his words, it is "a bad fiction for making sense of our impasse."

A related target of Scranton's criticism is blind optimism in the face of our predicament. In a chapter titled "Get Happy," he dissects humankind's optimism bias and argues that it serves us poorly because it distorts reality, fosters complacency, and can lead those who espouse it to cause or excuse harm in the name of their visions of a better future. He cites evidence from cognitive psychology, behavioral science, climate communication research, systems theory and archaeology.

Scranton also takes aim at the "tone police" who claim fear-based messaging is counterproductive. Citing research showing that fear, when combined with practical guidance, can strengthen people's sense of collective efficacy, he insists that "fear in the face of our impasse is not only justified but effective."

Part one goes on to show how human cognitive biases hinder our ability to confront harsh realities, a problem compounded by today's deep political polarization and the misinformation-rife public discourse on climate change. Scranton also links these biases to the limits of scientific authority, pointing out that scientists, like everyone else, can be overconfident and are inevitably influenced by the cultural assumptions that frame their work. This section also addresses how the limits of science, combined with growing public distrust, exacerbate the situation, and assesses the relative effectiveness of optimistic versus fear-based climate messaging, concluding that the latter can motivate action if coupled with practical guidance.

Part Two, "The Leap," turns to the question of how to live ethically within the context of our impasse. For Scranton, this involves adopting a stance he calls "ethical pessimism," which accepts ecological limits and commits to living ethically within these limits and amid the realities of civilizational decline. He defines ethical pessimism as a disciplined realism founded on values of empirical accuracy, resilience, compassion and a sense of shared responsibility. It is a philosophical orientation that draws on traditions as wide-ranging as Stoicism, Buddhism, Afropessimism and existentialism.

By letting go of blindly optimistic narratives like the myth of progress, Scranton argues, we can act with greater clarity, humility and solidarity, while avoiding the deluded thinking that can lead optimists to do harm in the name of hope. He emphasizes that this does not mean turning to fatalism. "Pessimism," he writes, "is not nihilism: a pessimist believes in suffering and death because a pessimist believes in reality, and suffering matters to pessimists because there are things in life worth valuing."

Some of the book's most intriguing material lies in Scranton's case for ethical pessimism. He notes research showing that mildly depressed individuals often make more accurate assessments of reality than those who are not, a phenomenon called "depressive realism." His survey of pessimism's philosophical roots covers a lot of fascinating ground, from Stoicism to Buddhism to Afropessimism. He concludes with an analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hugo-winning story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," a parable about the moral cost of societal happiness that casts a sobering light on our planetary predicament. Scranton reads Le Guin's tale as a reminder that "to live at all means to suffer and cause harm."

Impasse succeeds in its aim of candidly assessing our planetary predicament and offering a realistic, ethical way forward. Its achievement lies not in offering solutions–since Scranton persuasively argues that none exist–but in clarifying the nature of the bind we are in and offering a way to live meaningfully within it.

*******

If you enjoyed this review, try Prairie Fire. Imagine Tom Clancy writing a multilayered thriller about peak oil.