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A polemic about global warming and the environmental crisis that argues that ordinary people have consistently opposed the destruction of nature and so provide an untapped constituency for climate action.Crimes Against Nature uses fresh material to offer a very different take on the most important issue of our times. It takes the familiar narrative about global warming - the one in which we are all to blame - and inverts it, to show how, again and again, pollution and ecological devastation have been imposed on the population without our consent and often against our will. From histories of destruction, it distils stories of hope,
About the author
Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor, broadcaster, and Walkley Award–winning journalist. He is a columnist for The Guardian Australia, a former Breakfaster at Melbourne’s 3RRR, and a past editor of Overland literary journal. His most recent books are Fascists Among Us: online hate and the Christchurch massacre; Trigger Warnings: political correctness and the rise of the right; and No Way But This: in search of Paul Robeson. He lectures at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne.
Summary
A polemic about global warming and the environmental crisis which argues that ordinary people have consistently opposed the destruction of nature and so provide an untapped constituency for climate action.
Crimes Against Nature uses fresh material to offer a very different take on the most important issue of our times. It takes the familiar narrative about global warming — the one in which we are all to blame — and inverts it, to show how, again and again, pollution and ecological devastation have been imposed on the population without our consent and (often) against our will. From histories of destruction, it distils stories of hope, highlighting the yearning for a more sustainable world that returns again and again.
In the era of climate strikes, viral outbreaks, and Extinction Rebellion, Crimes Against Nature moves from ancient Australia to the ‘corpse economy’ of Georgian Britain to the ‘Kitchen Debate’ of the Cold War to present an unexpected and optimistic environmental history — one that identifies ordinary people not as a problem but as a promise.
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Praise for No Way But This:
‘Sparrow shows how this admittedly splendid actor, this marvelous singer, this charismatic speaker, had somehow evolved into something more: he had for many people become the embodiment of the global longing for a better world, a juster dispensation … Sparrow has made perfect and haunting sense of him.’
