Cory Doctorow on Distributed Paths to Climate Progress and Sane Social Media
Cory Doctorow's latest book, The Lost Cause, is an intergenerational-tussle #clifi novel set 30 years from now. He joined me in a bracing conversation on why he chose this climate theme and what he, as a blogging pioneer and open-knowledge activist, thinks of the information climate these days.
Watch and share our chat on:
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Insert, Nov. 20, 5:30 p.m. ET - I’ll add some takeaways here anon. - end insert
Docotorow has one of the most multi-dimensional minds and skill sets I’ve run into on the World Wide Web and at some past meetups.
Subscribe to his near-daily Pluralistic “blog” to get the idea.
Below is the publisher’s summary of the new novel. He’s also book touring at the moment, so visit his Crapound online home for cities and dates.
It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go?
For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.
But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.
And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.
The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?