No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies

by William T. Vollmann Narrated by Sean Runnette

Overview

The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where "America's best friend" is not merely a fuel, but a "heritage." Over the course of four years Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money.



To write about natural gas, Vollmann journeys to Greeley, Colorado, where he interviews anti-fracking activists, a city planner, and a homeowner with serious health issues from fracking. Turning to oil production, he speaks with, among others, the former CEO of Conoco and a vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of energy loans, and conducts furtive roadside interviews of guest workers performing oil-related contract labor in the United Arab Emirates.



As with its predecessor, No Immediate Danger, this volume seeks to understand and listen, not to lay blame-except in a few corporate and political cases where outrage is clearly due.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/23/2018
The world’s attachment to fossil fuels is questioned at length but with little depth in this second volume of the author’s scattershot jeremiad on global warming and unclean energy. Journalist and novelist Vollmann (Rising Up and Rising Down) reports on public opinion in hydrocarbon hotspots, including West Virginia coal towns ravaged by pollution and mountaintop removal; Colorado natural gas lands, where fracking has frayed nerves; and United Arab Emirates oil fields, where fearful immigrants work for a pittance. In rambling interviews with townspeople, workers, government officials, and anticarbon activists, he uncovers both dismay at the local downside of fossil fuels and support for them as necessary sources of jobs, energy, and cultural tradition despite the prospect of climate change. While the reportage is evocative, Vollman’s case against carbon-tolerant “ideologies” relies on glib sarcasm—thanks to fracking, he jibes, Americans “could go on generously warming the world!”—and undigested factoids (for example, that coal byproducts are in everything from stockings to pills) that never add up to a coherent argument. His ideological biases constantly intrude, especially in his ill-informed attack on nuclear power, a leading low-carbon energy source; the book often feels like a confused, omnidirectional assault on all of industrial civilization. The result is long but feckless, a lightweight analysis of energy and society. Photos. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (June)

From the Publisher

Praise for No Good Alternative:

“Carbon Ideologies is an almanac of global energy use . . . a travelogue to natural landscapes riven by energy production . . . a compassionate work of anthropology that tries to make sense of man’s inability to weigh future cataclysm against short-term comfort . . . one of the most honest books yet written on climate change.” —Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic

“[Vollmann] packs voice and passion into his examination of what we are doing to the earth, taking aim at coal, oil and natural gas and filling his book with interviews with people whose lives have been disrupted by those industries. Vollmann's intended readers, he says, are those in the devastated future.” —The New York Times Book Review 

“In the face of complex, contested data, Vollmann is a diligent and perceptive guide. He’s also deeply mindful of those who’ve been sacrificed in the name of profits and political expediency. Amid the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environment protections, these are incontestably important books.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Vollmann’s many fans . . . will not be disappointed . . . he packs research and voice into his impassioned works . . . Reading these two books did have an effect on me; I became even more conscious of the resources I waste in my own life.” —John Schwartz, The New York Times Book Review

“One of the enjoyable things about this massive work is the way Vollmann employs irony, and that bluntest of irony called sarcasm, throughout the volume. He can be quite humorous. You might even call this the Infinite Jest of climate books . . . there’s something admirable, even noble, about the sheer time and effort—and sheer humanity—that went into these volumes.” —The Baffler

“Equal parts gonzo journalism, hand-wringing confessional, and one hot mess . . . the books document Vollmann’s quest to understand how capitalism, consumerism, and fossil fuels are ruining the planet.” —Sierra

“The best part of the books [are] the conversations Vollmann had during his travels, the sensitive histories he gives of the places he visited, and the moral impressions those conversations and places have made on him. It’s these parts that made Carbon Ideologies a unique, lasting, definitive contribution to the global warming literature.” —The Humanist

“An elegy to our damned epoch that’s also a work of enlightenment and education . . . the book is a performance of the vexations involved in trying to understand our energy reality . . . [Vollmann’s] project—not unlike that of his historical fiction—is to show with utmost fidelity what it was like to be a human involved in terrible things.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Vollmann portrays individuals who have endured intimidation to speak out against the ‘callous villainies’ of fuel corporations.  Unflinching, exacting, and forthright, he brings abiding respect, empathy, and tenderness to this endeavor . . .  Invaluable, enlightening, and heartrending testimony to how enmeshed we all are in the carbon-industrial complex and accelerated climate change.” —ALA Booklist

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170928071
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Series:	Carbon Ideologies , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

What Should Be Measured?
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "No Good Alternative"
by .
Copyright © 2018 William T. Vollmann.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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