Desert

by Anonymous

A text that plays significantly on the invisible committee's concept of desert and also desertion, this is a gloves-off assault on optimism and the hope of saving the world. It asks the question "what does it mean to be an anarchist, or an environmentalist, when the goal is no longer working toward a global revolution and social/ecological sustainability?"

In some ways, this is the equivalent of Nihilist Communism for a green anarchist audience.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Ecology, Environment, Ebooks

68 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

though some of the sections of this book were good and useful, I had to put it down after some of the sections (specifically those on food and conservation) had a lot of misinformation and were borderline ecofascist. specifically, the author takes a Malthusian lens to food production and claims we have an overpopulation problem now that will get any worse if we give up industrial ag.
1) we dont have a food production problem, we have a food distribution problem. we grow plenty of food to feed 10 billion people, it's just caught up in biofuels and overproduced in some regions so as to undermine farming in others
2) we can produce enough food for 10 billion people with no extra land cleared and *better nutritional results* with agroecological methods instead of industrial ag.
3) for someone citing famine theory, they dont seem to really understand famine theory.
it's clear the author had no understanding of what they were talking about here, and as this is a central point of the work, it's hard to trust that they know what they're talking about on things I'm not able to judge based on my background knowledge.
while some sections I got to were definitely worth reading (esp the first), it's a shame that I've seen this uncritically passed around some leftist circles, probably by those who simply didnt know better. I guess my takeaway is read critically, and dont assume this author really knows what they're talking about.

[Stephanie McGarrah]

We are in a period of grace, we have the time — perhaps a generation — in which to save the environment from the final effects of the violence we have already done to it.” Similar pronouncements can be heard today but the period of grace is probably over.

When I was young, I had dreams of being an environmental scientist in the true sense of the term. I wanted to study animals and their environments. I poured over animal encyclopedias, My small amount of money was donated to the WWF and I enjoyed learning what tracks and scat were what. Little did I know that my romantic notions of sailing on the seas tagging humpback whales to better understand their lives, was only the reality for a small minority of biologists. For all the others, it is merely about collecting more and more data. It turned out it was more about my desire to be in the wild, away from cities and people and closer to the non-human beings I felt more affinity to than anyone, including my own family, that drew me to these areas of study.

When I found out what was actually being taught, I was dismayed. I decided to drop out of college for the third time and became increasingly disillusioned with ecological struggles. I was well on my way along the pessimist path after the revelation that environmental studies in today’s world means selling “green” products and promoting the illusion that through solar panels, wind farms, self-driving cars and other new technologies will turn back the clock. Desert recognizes the hopelessness of the situation, and doesn’t apologize for pointing out the obvious: We are probably out of time.

And yet, to be a pessimist is to be heretical, and slandered as passive and cowardly. Even Desert drifts into optimistic language here and there when describing possibilities of living freely in apocalyptic circumstances, though they are right to point out that there is no way to foresee what will happen if there is a global collapse, which scientists have been alarming us too for some time now.

Ultimately, I think I wanted to like Desert more,there was just one too many facts for my taste, but it’s not a bad text, and I will still recommend it to people critical of civilization with an interest in different perspectives on anarchism and especially to anyone planning on taking ecology courses.

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a while now I have been reading books that somehow relate to the climate crisis. I have been trying to read books that approach this from different angles. Desert is the first one I've read that looks at it from an anarchist point of view. And it is very much written specifically for that group. Probably exclusively for that group. The author isn't really trying to convince anyone, just preaching to his (or her) coir, and I don't belong to it.

The good thing about this book is that in many ways it is well researched. This anonymous author has clearly spent a long time looking into this issue, and I think he (or she) is probably right about a lot of things.

What I don't think the author is right about is how far we have already come. My understanding is that he (or she) is saying that it is already too late to do anything about this. After listening to quite a few climate scientists, I think there is still time to react to the crisis, there is still time to change course, before things start to collapse.

But in some sense the collapse seems to be what this author is banking on at this stage in the game. It sounds as if the author has done the fighting, and has given up after coming to the conclusion that the global anarchist movement is so small that it will never manage to revolt agains society, but in collapse it may rise, at least in some places.

In a way it is the old return-back-to-nature idea. I don't think the reality is quite as simple as all that. I think it is a lot better to react to crisis, than to wait for it and hope for the best. So I found this book a bit interesting, but essentially unhelpful.

[aa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a strong retort to disillusionment and nihilism. By giving up on the "total victory" which we all secretly knew wasn't going to happen, the author is opening the door to so many possibilities that anarchists must try to figure out in coming times.

At first this book depressed me, but now that I've accepted its conclusions I'm actually energized by it.

[0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

alejandro de acosta's response is worth reading:

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/librar...

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like this book that much when I first read it, and I like it even less now.

On a base level, it can be read in a sort of individualist or quasi-nihilist vein of living in the present and not putting much faith in possible futures. But despite this, there is still a heavy amount of speculation about what climate change may bring, or at the very least, a sort of faith in the idea that things will become worse.

There is also something strange going on, which I can't quite pin down, with regards to how it starts from the position that anthropomorphic climate change cannot be stopped and then gives a sort of anti-civilization analysis. From my perspective (in the U.S., in particular types of milieus), I don't really know of any anarchists, especially anti-civ or primitivists, who are particularly concerned about "stopping climate change." That's a cause usually reserved for liberals. It seems to me that most green types of anarchists are more interested in keeping land intact because that's where they want to live and play (already in the present, and sure, in the future too). Along with this, there is usually a value of sorts placed on life (I'm speaking here particularly of non-human life). Desert seems to heavily gloss over non-human animals and interconnected webs of life. I think it's fair to say that most green anarchists don't care for niche causes of "climate change," but rather a more total thinking dealing with civilization as a whole.

I've come away from Desert with the impression (pseudo-apologies in advance if I'm completely off the mark) that the author has a background as either a red anarchist who sees a contradiction between the factory and the environment or some slant of liberal environmentalist-academic who is delving into anarchist thought. Along with all this, the text reads way too similarly to environmental studies courses I used to take at the university. I find that style obnoxious, overly-reliant on scientific sources, and a little distracting.

[M]

It’s taking me some time to formulate my thoughts about this. I’ve been drawn to its quote “In our hearts we all know the world will not be ‘saved’” ever since I first found it in a book of poems, and now, since I found it again in the Total Liberation zine (published by Active Distribution), and then stumbled upon the book at the local anarchist distro, I had to grab it.

The idea of active disillusionment as liberatory is close to me, because I feel more and more disillusioned with the hope of “another world”, no matter how much I cling to it. And “Desert” lays it clear and flat: the world is getting more repressive and there is no way we’re going to halt climate change (well, it might be a bit wrong on this one but it is mostly right, I gather). Anarchists are few and far between and no revolution is in sight. Moreover, the idea of revolution itself is an enlightenment remanence, one we ought to abandon. “The illusion of a singular world capitalist present is mirrored by the illusion of a singular world anarchist future.”

In Desert, we’re presented with a blight of a future, both full of horrors and possibilities opened up by climate destruction. It lacks in a few areas - its population argument isn’t contextualized enough to be antiracist and feminist; its dedication to the “wild” seems uncritical towards nature; it says little to nothing on matters related to nonhuman animals, disability, colonialism, and others. Yet, it proposes a “nihilistic” idea that can aid us in our thinking of how to organise, and for what. It asks us to really try to imagine the future, with what we know, and also let go of not being able to imagine or, well, plan it. To act “locally”, in classic anarchist ways.

Its emotion lingers for days - this desertification in the heart which knows the world will not be saved. Is it the “right” emotion to live with, though? And who can afford to give up? In climate justice circles we always ask this. Some of the people on the frontlines can’t - they must, and they will, keep fighting. Maybe fighting, even with a small chance of winning, is better than disillusionment. For some. But maybe, the anonymous author of Desert, is right as well. In some places, it’s better to stop dreaming, accept “defeat” and act in the now.

“To give up hope for global anarchist revolution is not to resign oneself to anarchy remaining an eternal protest. (...) Even if an area is seemingly fully under the control of authority there are always places to go, to live in and to resist from. And we can extend those spaces. The global situation may seem beyond us, but the local never is. As anarchists we are neither entirely powerless nor potentially omnipotent, thankfully.”

I’ll keep processing it for a while.

[Blake Keno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changed everything I thought about anarchy and politics in general. Turned me into a green and destroyed my illusion of the inevitability of a global revolution.

[David Grobgeld · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected to hate this. I didn't. Some people call it a "green nihilist" text or whatever. It isn't. The author makes repeated statments about the value anarchist ethics. I expected a highly aestheticized primmie text, but it was mostly cogent, intelligent and level-headed (aside from an embarrasing defense of neo-Malthusianism).

I did however disagree with what I took to be it's main conclusion which is something to the effect of "anarchism will not win, anarchist spaces are not prefigurative because we will never remake the world in our image. Instead we should place value on creating pockets of liberty to which to retreat where anarchist ideals can flourish. The soone we give up the notion of saving the world, we can make peace with this and be more satisfied with the small victories which are possible." I think it's entirely correct that we will not have a World Anarchist Revolution. I also think it's plausbible that we have very little chance of stopping cataclysmic climate change (although we should still sure as hell try). But I still see the argument in Desert as a kind of short-sighted defeatism. I think that anarchism can be the seed of the new world. I think we can have a huge impact on society. Is it likely? Probably not. But as long as it's possible I think it's worth betting everything on it. Granting that we are facing some sort of giant societal collapse, anarchism will still be crucial, not just to create islands in the hellworld, but as an ideal for remaking a new, better society. If the world we know crumbles, I want the anarchism found in the ruins to be endlessly audacious and ambitious, reflecting the mindstate that "We want everything!" What have we got to lose?

[JC]

I was stuck in a Chapters bookstore at First Markham Place waiting for family friends to arrive for dinner and found Anna Tsing’s book “The Mushroom At the End of the World” on a shelf labelled something like ‘Business - Money/Markets’. I settled into a very unsatisfactory corner on a busy Saturday afternoon and flipped to the book’s prologue. I came across a quote early on in the book that Tsing attributes to a ‘radical pamphlet’. I had to read it a few times before I understood it to be a very critical and nihilistic angle on radical soteriology. This is the quote in its fuller context from Desert:

“The spectre that many try not to see is a simple realization — the world will not be ‘saved’. Global anarchist revolution is not going to happen. Global climate change is now unstoppable. We are not going to see the worldwide end to civilisation/captalism/patriarchy/authority. It’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s unlikely to happen ever. The world will not be ‘saved’. Not by activists, not by mass movements, not by charities and not by an insurgent global proletariat. The world will not be ‘saved’. This realization hurts people. They don’t want it to be true! But it probably is… if we don’t believe in a global revolutionary future, we must live (as we in fact always had to) in the present. Shelves overflow with histories of past struggles and hallucinations of the post-revolutionary future whilst surprisingly little has been written about anarchist life under, not after, capitalism.”

The pamphlet’s writer goes onto quote Gustav Landeur:

“The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.”

I had first come across ‘green nihilism’ (and this pamphlet I believe) in a link to Toronto’s Anarchist Reading Group shared on a Harvest Noon social media page, back when that little spot was still serving affordable vegan fare on the U of T campus. ‘Green nihilism’ did not sound very appealing to me then. I am a person of faith. I believe another world is possible. Yet this radical disbelief, this infinite resignation is precisely the prerequisite required for a Kierkegaardian double movement of faith — the dirty existentialist task of living in the ‘now’. As the unattributed Fredric Jameson cliche goes: it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And I think this text takes a very realistic and painfully honest take on the deep unlikelihood of global revolution, the end of capitalism, and the cessation of climate catastrophe. It claims that this brutal reality should not alter the radical fostering of community that anarchists and communists perform every day. But these things should be done because they make life better now, regardless of the outcome. The memorable line from the text goes:

“As Raoul Vaneigem said, for many, ‘the greatest kept state secret is the misery of everyday life.’ Our lives can be better, freer, and wilder than this and as anarchists we do our utmost to make them so, not in the ever-after of post-revolutionary heaven, but now.”

And near the end of the text, the author admits:

“I can already hear the accusations from my own camp; accusations of deserting the cause of Revolution, deserting the struggle for Another World. Such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millenarian and progressive myths are at the very core of the expansion of power. We can be more anarchic than that.”

I’m still pondering a lot of the stuff in this book, and I think it’s fairly interesting stuff to ruminate on, even if I disagree with quite a bit of it (another world is possible, I still believe it, even if in a weird Kierkegaardian way). The obsession with Lovelock is not something I can really relate to, but I think this book paints a very interesting and well-cited portrait of what global climate change will actually mean and how the world will look like in the coming century. I have found it very difficult for people to make clear articulations of probable futures we will face as our planet warms. I think for that alone, this text is worth reading, even if it was written quite a while ago (almost a decade ago). It addresses this aspect of climate science being an unceasingly moving target, but then makes some very reasonable propositions regarding the future of human civilization and the distribution of our species across our planet, and what that might mean for radical politics. As might be obvious, the writer of this tract has a very negative perspective on religion and theology as a whole, which I think is mistaken, but not that important. What I do find tremendously useful about this deep skepticism and ’nihilistic communism’ is this focus on how we can make life better now, and not make everything about the post-revolutionary hereafter.

[Rachel Ashera Rosen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am always on the lookout for books that are about how we live in the ruins that previous generations have left us, and this book, I thought, was that. Which it's not. It's not even that doomer, as it's often described. It's bog-standard anti-civ fantasizing, which is only rendered slightly understandable due to the book's timing, when its author was no doubt as disillusioned by Occupy's failures as I was at the time. But besides that it's really nothing you haven't seen before if you've read Future Primitive or had a crust punk crash on your couch until they'd stained the whole thing brown.

The thing is, it's not all garbage or no one would talk about it. The introductory assaults on optimism are a good reality check! The ending isn't bad. Unfortunately there's a lot of Malthusian junk in the middle that borders on eco-fascism, with the author falling victim to the same Millenarianism that they accuse the anarchist movement of having in the first chapter. The tantalizing appeal of anarcho-primitivism is that, of course, you, the anarcho-primitivist, don't actually have to do anything. Civilization will fall on its own. 90% of humanity will die on its own, allowing you, the intrepid vagabond gatherer-hunter, to live in its ruins. Anonymous is slightly more nuanced than that in that they posit that civilization will carry on in temperate zones in a sort of walled-off state, which is more likely to be true given the patterns we're seeing, but they still fall victim to the same sense of historic inevitability that also annoys me when Marxists do it.

(I say they, but definitely a cis dude wrote this. You can tell, reading it, that this person has never had to deal with menstruation, pregnancy, hormone therapy, or disability. This is nearly always a demographic certainty with anti-civ types.)

There's interesting stuff in here, particularly about African rural anarchist-adjacent tendencies, but given their cursory understanding of agriculture, cities, and food production and given that they're British, I don't know how accurate it is. And it is, in places, beautifully written, especially the passages on weeds and the wilderness.

The thing is, the political tendency best poised to ascend during and after climate collapse is eco-fascism, not anti-civ/anarcho-primitivism, despite both being relatively small movements now and the latter likely being slightly larger than the former. Anarcho-primitivism is an ideological dead end. Maybe everything else is too but at least we should put some effort in.

You can make an interesting comparison to Malm's How To Blow Up a Pipeline, in that they both begin from a similar premise (in Elizabeth Sandifer's immortal words, "Let us assume that we are fucked."). But I am certain that Malm actually has grounding in science, theory, and praxis—in fact, he confesses to several actions in that book that are definitely crimes—and it's a vastly better book. Not because it's more optimistic, but because it doesn't presume inevitability and because its hope is grounded in realism rather than fantasy.

[Benjamin]

Dated in some ways. Malthusianism that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Still a good introduction to climate nihilism - what to do if we can't "save the world", and an important text in the growth and pivot of the green movement.

[Arno · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of observations and anarchist musings, somewhat scattered. Interesting as a time document, to see that people where already at this point much earlier than I was personally, which is humbling.

[Nebuchadnezzar Kander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe this book will be remembered by generations to come, but in the realist spirit of the book itself I must assume it will be forgotten and lost in just a few years. This is a crying shame: Desert is possibly the first truly sober text I read on climate change. It glances, not pessimistically nor optimistically but realistically, over the turning globe which we inhabit. It sees new hot deserts forming rapidly, cold ancient deserts retreating, and new ethnic wars merging with the old, all while the elites go on robbing and pillaging the wilderness. In the new world there are no ulimate apocalypses and no total revolutions. And for this world, which could manifest as soon as 2050, Anonymous poses hard questions about life. In the future, how could we live a life of liberty and struggle? While the questions are not pretty, they do instill in the reader a sense of purpose, and are, in my opinion, something to be grateful for.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some dry stuff in here, the sum of which is a cross between a scientific/anti-political understanding of where the world is headed. A lot of ideas are in between the lines, but it definitely left me with a sober feeling and while I'm still processing that, I'd definitely recommend it. A warning though: there's no real conclusion or wrapping up to the book. The intro has as much of that as you'll get. Also, there's this essay (very different style of writing) that speculates and expands on the philosophy between Desert:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/librar...

[Deep · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good as a pamphlet and call to action, with an sobriety and critical perspective often missing in pieces of similar kind. But if you're searching for a theory and understanding of the processes and obstacles described (capitalist subsumption, domestication, technology & technics etc) look elsewhere.

[Artur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really thought this would spoon feed me blackpills but honestly this a very hopeful book like the last two chapters really got me

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

'can active disillusionment be liberatory'? asks a blurb on the cover of my edition of DESERT. The constant optimism that pervades liberal/left organizing spaces asks us all to imagine a "better world" outside of capitalism, but such movements since the spread of capitalist monoculture have been ineffective at promoting widespread change. it's this dissonance the author explores in DESERT. When faced with the futility of mass social movements, what is left? Deserting society, the author argues, is the logical next step, and draws on their own experiences living in and among anarchist subcultures that arise on the fringes of capitalism.

Extremely readable and with over 120 delightful annotations, I found this a nice read as someone with anarchism/environmentalism leanings but who's not the most well-read leftist. I wanted more of the authors personal experience; more reports from the fringe societies on which the author pins their hopes for a better world. Such reports can fortunately be found in the footnotes.

[Mansoor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's more pragmatic that people give it credit for. But it's still a book of defeat. One that i find hard to argue against as I don't see a world anarchist revolution in the future either.

[Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the poster book for green nihilism. to sum it up: climate change is now unstoppable and will be catastrophic, we will never see the global revolution that we hope for, and the worldwide end to capitalism/patriarchy/etc. is probably not going to happen. what are we to do?

i can't say i ever believed in the inevitability of global revolution, but this book shed light on the true magnitude of the (to quote brokeback mountain because that's my favourite thing to do) goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation that we're in when it comes to climate change. the author encourages us not to fall into a pit of disillusionment at this miserable realization, but to look towards what we can do given the circumstances. still, it filled me with angst—and anger, too, at the people who go on like everything's fine, building pipelines and throwing money at so-called "solutions" that don't do nearly enough.

of course, fighting for change in our communities is one of the most meaningful things we can do. many leftists get caught up in the theory and nearly unattainable goals, only involving themselves in their communities when something "big" (i.e. newsworthy) happens (like the widespread blm protests). but even just touching one person's life and doing what you can to better it is a thousand times more important and impactful than reading all 2000+ pages of das kapital.

despite all this, there's one part of the book that i found a bit of comfort in (although some may find it existentially dreadful)—a chapter called Nature bats last. and it's like two paragraphs long so i'm just gonna paste it here.

In Eastern Europe an amazing wilderness throngs with elk and wolves. Above the woods and pastures of Wormwood Forest eagle owls fly whilst beavers build dams in the rivers and swamps. In what has become effectively one of Europe’s largest nature reserves creepers climb buildings, lynx run in abandoned fields and pines have long since broken through much of the tarmac. Welcome to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Following the 1986 nuclear disaster over 120,000 people were evacuated from the area — most never to return. In the heart of the zone, the previously 50,000 strong city of Pripyat is now deserted — bar a small number of squatters — but is by no means a ghost town. “Pripyat began returning to nature as soon as the people left, and there was no one to trim and prune and weed.”

Nature’s incredible power to re-grow and flourish following disasters is evident both from previous mass extinctions and from its ability to heal many lands scarred by civilisation. Its true power is rarely considered within the sealed, anthropocentric thinking of those that would profit from the present or attempt to plan the future. Yet the functioning of the Earth System is destructive as well as bountiful and it is not a conscious god with an interest in preserving us or its present arrangement — something we may find out if the Earth is now moving to a new much hotter state. With us or without us, “while the class war is vicious — there can be only one winner, the wild.” In a sense there is solace in this, but we should not look to such ‘victory’ as Christian Fundamentalists look to their ‘rapture’, for those species that have been pushed to oblivion will not rise from the dead and neither shall we. Nevertheless, nature bats last.

special thanks to all the eco-anarchists and anprim accounts on instagram that spam my feed with "read desert" memes. now, excuse me, it's time to lay in bed and simulate a return to monke by blasting pink floyd's magnum opus, several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict.

[horusseyeisamoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desert by Anonymous is an alright book. A lot of the ideas it suggests are interesting, but the writing style can be somewhat pretentious when it isn't working of citations from scholars, and it overall doesn't present any clear solutions to the climate crisis, only the problems it will cause. For a short read, though, it's a pretty good way to get people to think about certain scenarios.

It starts off by writing off any sort of human overturning of capitalism, setting the general idea of the book as giving options for how people can function within the state's decay due if said decay is a byproduct of the climate, and the various problems that may result as a product of that scenario. In addition to this, it also describes effects of climate change that are often ignored, such as potential paths of human migration, and heat becoming trapped between carbon and the ozone layer, which will come down to earth and further increase the temperature once (if) human emissions of industrial carbon dioxide are ceased. It also goes into detail about emerging megacities and their slums that will become even more overpopulated once much of the global south's rural land is uninhabitable, as well as the untapped oil reserves in the thawing global north, which are already under the microscope of industry's moguls. Overall, it sees the current path as a destruction of civilized urbanism due to population density and uninhabitable conditions in the south, and a new focus on industry in the arctic, with people seeking a decent living emigrating there for cheap work in a similar scenario to Western expansionism in the U.S. as seen after the Louisiana purchase. This will come at the expense of said area's native populations, of course.

However, as mentioned previously, it doesn't really present any solutions to the climate issue that involve green or nuclear technology, only scenarios involving communes or a return to nomadic living. The issue with this is obviously that a 'reset' in human life would inevitably result in a new era of imperial wars and ecological exploitation using more advanced technologies if there are no equivalent ones that are communally owned. It will be necessary that some sort of defense against the barbaric violence has plagued 'civilization' since its inception be used by said nomads, or communes, because without them there will simply be a new dark age, a new industrial revolution, etc etc. Overall, the book is written from an almost Kazinsky-esque anarchist perspective that may present short term solutions to stateless life after the climate holocaust, but will leave communities open to imperial wars and new agrarian or industrial exploitation centuries down the line. So that's why I gave it three stars.

[KC]

The planet is on a path toward ecological destruction and the human species will eventually go extinct. This will likely happen sooner than it would have otherwise as a result of the extractive, short-sighted systems we've put in place during our time here. ("Our," in this case, is not simply humans. I can reasonably narrow it down to mostly just power-hungry white dudes throughout history.) Further, any "utopia"—be that of anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, white nationalists, black separatists, whatever—is realistically out of reach on this timeline.

The important thing is to not let this realization create a defeatist outlook where no fight is worth our time. What this means is that the stakes are different. In a way, truly, "the only thing to lose is your chains." Pain is real, suffering is real, and the logic of the systems in place has a way of delegating these things to the least deserving, and keeping this fact out of sight and out of reach. This fact will continue, though it can be fought. It might not look like utopia in your (our, humans') lifetime, but pain and suffering can be curbed during the time of humans on Earth... if you still fight. This fight is worth it.

It seems some research in this book was out of date and a little misguided (namely that plenty of food is *produced* to feed the Earth, and the problem instead lies in getting it to who needs it), but I'm a fan of its underlying ideas.

[Mark Plaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful perspective of anarcho-environmentalism in the "post-left" anarchist tradition. The author offers a critique of the idea of activism with the goal of future environmental utopia, which lacks the self-awareness that the ecosystem of this planet has passed the point of no return. Instead, they provide information and thoughts about the state of the world and how environmentally conscious anarchist can live in the present and maintain their conviction to such principles as a way of life.

The author combines their own thoughts with an abundance of citations that skillfully engage the topic as part of a living discussion that challenges the reader to join by provoking deep thoughts. While the thoughts provided by the author are counterintuitive to ordinary people deep in the muck of society, the clear language makes this book unexpectedly accessible.

[Mason Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a fresh take on climate catastrophe. The sentiments are well-founded. It has often been described as a work of green nihilism. I wouldn't call it nihilistic. It offers a rather optimistic view of humanity. This book wouldn't have been written if the author didn't believe that some readers could shake themselves out of the delusion that we can do what needs to be done through the current social and environmental mechanisms. Basically stating that once you give up that hope you can go on to envision a better future for the planet. I agree with that sentiment. It is necessary to shake ourselves free from the limitations of our current environmental discourse. If we do that, a different future is possible.

[M.S.Cem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read many anarchist books,but this one was the best,and probably one of the best ideological books I've ever read.

I loved its realistic approach,I loved its realistic pessimism,I'm not gonna lie,I cheered with joy everytime I read about how the world will end and civilisation may never recover from this ecological disasters.
I was surprised to see that the idea of the civilisation ending,billions dying by 2100s made me relaxed,made me less tense,made me see my problems in a more "Zen" perspective.
I certainly recommend this book to everyone,not just people interested in anarchism and what does it mean to be an anarchist in today's society.The ideas listed in this book will help everyone from every kind of ideology to broaden their horizons and bettering their arguements.

[Se · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There are many possibilities for liberty and wildness still. What are some of these possibilities and how can we live them? What objectives, what plans, what lives, what adventures are there when the illusions are set aside and we walk into the world not disabled by disillusionment but unburdened by it?”


This felt like a great brief way to summarize the writer’s argument/the meaning behind the book/zine. The book’s way of trying to take a clear-eyed view of the likely future definitely resonated with me. It doesn’t come as diminished expectations per se, but at the author’s attempt to deliver a painful but almost certainly true message -- that we’re not going to win, at least on the scale that we might want. Grand systemic change is not likely forthcoming.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been a gradual read for me. At times, Desert is a dry read (do excuse me), but valuable as a piece of contemporary radical ecocritique that refuses to become lost in heady idealism.

Truly realist ecocriticism of this type is frequently quite disconcerting for many, and understandably so. It's not a book to turn to when in search of any hope for the future. But that doesn't mean Desert is needlessly pessimistic - the overall argument is not only convincing, but also supported more and more with every passing week/month etc.

I'm a little unsettled by the potential comforts of global pessimism. That may be something to think about later. Fitting.

[Xx0th · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some useful insights in this text, but far and few between while also coated in a sludge of idiotic pessimism. This text is far too over hyped for it's own good. To think that people will just see collapse and do nothing, rather than see it as a blessing or sign of an end, and to think people would even believe in a collapse of some kind while in a capitalistic world. While we already know what would happen under a collapse (the Great Depression) people will act as though it has never happened.

[Andy-Roo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. It's quite succinct and outlines a way of thinking I think will be useful for many anarchists in the domesticated world. I felt the section on the surveillance state didn't fully mesh well with the rest of the writing, which is the only reason why I gave it a 4/5 as opposed to a 5/5 but the chapter is short enough that it doesn't take away from the overall reading experience.

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost a decade on and it's clear that it'll be at least another 10 year until the general public has as coherent a picture of the coming deviation of climate catastrophe as this author had. I don't rate this book 5 stars because I believe it is an enthralling read or even a fully realized political position, I rate this book 5 stars because it opened the door to an important area of consideraton for anarchists in a concise, precise, and impeccably evidenced manner.