Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays

by Paul Kingsnorth

Overview

A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide”

Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change.

Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds.

This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555977801
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	402,268
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Kingsnorth is the author of Beast and The Wake, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He is cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists, and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Finding the River 1

I Collapse

A Crisis of Bigness 9

Upon the Mathematics of the Falling Away 14

The Drowned World 26

The Space Race Is Over 31

The Quants and the Poets 41

A Short History of Loss 51

II Withdrawal

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist 61

The Poet and the Machine 83

Learning What to Make of It 90

The Barcode Moment 107

Dark Ecology 119

III Connection

In the Black Chamber 153

The Old Yoke 180

The Bay 188

Rescuing the English 197

The Witness 213

Singing to the Forest 225

Planting Trees in the Anthropocene 234

Epilogue

Uncivilisation Dougald Hine 257

The Eight Principles of Uncivilisation 283

Editorial Reviews

05/08/2017
In this eclectic but uneven essay collection, Kingsnorth (Beast), an English novelist and cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, tries to reconcile his past with the present, highlighting his growing disillusion with the environmental movement. These 18 essays, most of which were originally published between 2010 and 2016, deal broadly with feelings of frustration, disconnection, and loss. In his youth Kingsnorth fancied himself a conservationist, “preventing the destruction of beauty and brilliance, speaking up for the small and the overlooked and the things that could not speak for themselves.” Now, however, Kingsnorth admits to disenchantment with the environmental movement’s shift toward sustainability and questions its effectiveness. In “Rescuing the English,” he ruminates on ways in which Britain has been changed by global capitalism. “The small and the local, the traditional and the distinctive, were being stamped out by the powerful,” he writes. Kingsnorth bemoans the erosion of England’s national identity and cautions against an influx of newcomers, sentiments that have an analogue in certain aspects of the Brexit movement. Some selections, including one on his frustrations with the quantification of environmental issues and another on the “difference between action and activism,” prove difficult to dive into or to decipher. Kingsnorth offers an idiosyncratic perspective as well as an occasional test of the reader’s patience. Agent: Jessica Woollard, David Higham Associates. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

This book is refreshing in both a literary respect and an environmental one. What Kingsnorth argues in these essays is so radical that, if put into practice, it could effect meaningful preservation. . . . Kingsnorth’s is a much-needed perspective in the environmental movement, recovering or otherwise.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“Versed in both art and science, he uses an engaging prose style to link disparate topics, from cave paintings to the space race, from the poetry of Charles Bukowski to the Norman Conquest. . . . Although he writes about feeling despair, grief, and loss in the face of climate change, Kingsnorth says he has not given up hope—only what he perceives as false hope.”—Sierra Magazine

“This collection speaks not of defeatism or of mere retreat, but of the particular kind of hope to be found in realism and in responsibility to the place where you are right now.”—Orion Magazine

“Lyrical, compelling and provocative.”—National Catholic Reporter

“Kingsnorth writes with undeniable love: for the planet, for locations and histories, and for people. . . . The overall effect is necessarily grim, but often remarkably uplifting as well. In a world on the brink of collapse, Kingsnorth offers humor, compassion, humility and wisdom.”—Shelf Awareness

“Arresting and bracing.”—Small Farmer’s Journal

“A brilliant and sobering collection recommended for anyone, liberal or conservative, concerned about the runaway train of climate change.”—Booklist

“A fervent plea to respond creatively and personally to environmental destruction. . . . A hard-hitting collection that shows why we need new stories to revise our perceptions of civilization, progress, and nature.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Kingsnorth's essays are sobering and thought provoking. Recommended for those worried about the planet yet frustrated with the modern environmental movement.”—Library Journal

“Kingsnorth is a talented, engaging writer. . . . Every essay provides food for thought and given a chance, can rearrange the way you view things. . . . It could even change the way you decide to live.”—The Ecologist (UK)

From the Publisher

06/01/2017
CIA former environmentalist and the creator of the Dark Mountain Project, an online global network of artists and authors, Kingsnorth (Beast; The Wake) states in the introduction to this intriguing title that by 2008 he had stopped believing that the planet could be saved through activism. By then, he was certain that human beings, obsessed with growth and progress and convinced that the universe revolves around them, are unwilling to effect real change. Kingsnorth's disenchantment with the environmental movement is evident; he describes it as "a human-centered piece of politicking disguised as concern for 'the planet.' " The author cites wind farms as an example of an environmentalist half measure: while they don't pollute the atmosphere like fossil fuels, they do destroy otherwise untouched land. At the end of the book, Kingsnorth offers an alternative solution from his website's manifesto Uncivilisation, a challenge to artists and writers to transform the human narrative. VERDICT Kingsnorth's essays are sobering and thought provoking. Recommended for those worried about the planet yet frustrated with the modern environmental movement.—Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Library Journal

2017-05-01
A fervent plea to respond creatively and personally to environmental destruction.In these urgent essays, all but one previously published, British novelist and essayist Kingsnorth (Beast, 2016, etc.), co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of "writers, artists, thinkers and doers" responding to "the age of ecocide," explains why he rejects environmentalism in favor of ecocentrism. Environmentalists, he believes, focus obsessively on climate change, "spend their time arguing about whether they prefer windfarms to wave machines or nuclear power to carbon sequestration" but fail to question "the Western model of progress" that relies on humans' manipulation and pillaging of nature. Environmentalism, Kingsnorth argues, "is not about reforging a connection between over-civilised people and the world outside their windows. It is not about living close to the land or valuing the world for the sake of the world." Once an environmental activist, the author has rejected "the urban consumer machine" by moving to rural Ireland, where he and his wife grow their own food, home-school their children, and use a composting toilet that he constructed himself. "I will fertilise my own ground with my own manure," he writes, "and in doing so I will control an important part of my life in this world." A Thoreau-vian spirit infuses these essays: "I feel a personal duty," Kingsnorth writes, "to live as simply and with as little impact on the rest of nature as I possibly can." Denying that he is a Luddite, romantic, or untenably nostalgic, Kingsnorth nevertheless suggests actions that underscore those designations: "withdrawing from the fray"; "preserving non-human life," for example, by buying some land and rewilding it; "getting your hands dirty"; "insisting that nature has a value beyond utility. And telling everyone." Through the Dark Mountain Project, he calls for "Uncivilised writing" to question the "myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature.' " On the whole, a hard-hitting collection that shows why we need new stories to revise our perceptions of civilization, progress, and nature.

Kirkus Reviews