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Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World
"From a climate activist who has grown up in the decades in which climate change has transformed from abstract threat to urgent crisis, an exploration of how young people live in the shadow of catastrophe Warmth is a new kind of book about climate change--not a prescription or a polemic, but an intensely personal examination of how it feels to imagine a future under its weight, written from inside the youth-led climate movement itself. It is a critical excavation of the ways we talk about the climate crisis--at the national level, in our communities, and to ourselves--and a memoir of the ongoing struggle to sustain the difficult work of crafting "modest plans to divert annihilation." Though it addresses an issue of global concern, Warmth arises from a specific time and post-Sandy New York. Weaving sit-ins and snowstorms, synagogues and subway tunnels, Sherrell delves into the questions that feel most urgent to young people at our current crossroads. He explores how we conceptualize the crisis, the ethical implications of having children, our changing relationship to time, and the metaphors that mediate our individual and collective emotional responses--breaking "climate" out of its discursive box in the process. In seeking new ways to understand and respond to these forces that feel so far out of our control, Warmth lays bare the common stakes we face, and illuminates new sources of faith in our shared humanity"--
271 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 3, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
July 7, 2023
WARMTH is one of the best books I've ever read, able to articulate all of what I've felt "coming of age at the end of our world" — and infinitely more, given that Sherrell's a brilliant climate organizer who's thought deeply about the collapsible tensions between feeling and strategy, then and now, knowledge and realization.
In WARMTH, Sherrell is unselfconsciously earnest and vulnerable in his grappling with what he calls the Problem, a many-sided "hyperobject" he's trying to move from his "brain down into [his] bones" (253). For him, "the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocene" is to "finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care" (80). WARMTH is a clarion call of care, a letter from a father to his unborn child, an absolute "pouring forth" of love and insight (249).
Miraculously, Sherrell's also a musician on the page. Here's a more or less random paragraph, plucked from the middle of an early chapter: "This questioning is far from new. Millions of people before me have had to consider the prospect of a child in a context made hostile by the Dream. They've done this from plantations and refugee camps, reservations and war zones—places far more devastating and dangerous than anywhere I've ever been; places where a world was ending or had ended. And though it may have felt hopeless and reckless and futile, sometimes from out of this grappling there came a child. I still cannot fully understand the depth of love it took to do this, to loft a tiny salvo of life into a death as wide as the sky. It amazes me. So too the other choice, the one we hear less about. Those families who chose to truncate their trees rather than see its branches hacked at and burned" (77-78).
WARMTH helped me to fit the hyperobject of the Problem "into [my] heart without it breaking" (246). Read it, mark up its pages, then pass it hand to millennial hand until it buckles under the weight of your attention.
In WARMTH, Sherrell is unselfconsciously earnest and vulnerable in his grappling with what he calls the Problem, a many-sided "hyperobject" he's trying to move from his "brain down into [his] bones" (253). For him, "the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocene" is to "finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care" (80). WARMTH is a clarion call of care, a letter from a father to his unborn child, an absolute "pouring forth" of love and insight (249).
Miraculously, Sherrell's also a musician on the page. Here's a more or less random paragraph, plucked from the middle of an early chapter: "This questioning is far from new. Millions of people before me have had to consider the prospect of a child in a context made hostile by the Dream. They've done this from plantations and refugee camps, reservations and war zones—places far more devastating and dangerous than anywhere I've ever been; places where a world was ending or had ended. And though it may have felt hopeless and reckless and futile, sometimes from out of this grappling there came a child. I still cannot fully understand the depth of love it took to do this, to loft a tiny salvo of life into a death as wide as the sky. It amazes me. So too the other choice, the one we hear less about. Those families who chose to truncate their trees rather than see its branches hacked at and burned" (77-78).
WARMTH helped me to fit the hyperobject of the Problem "into [my] heart without it breaking" (246). Read it, mark up its pages, then pass it hand to millennial hand until it buckles under the weight of your attention.
April 7, 2022
this was an incredibly thought-provoking book about climate change and the effects the knowledge and dangers of it has on young people.
i related to a lot of sherrell’s experiences. i, too, grew up with the looming threat of climate change and know what it’s like to have it shape so many aspects of your life.
i also know what it’s like to feel hopeless about climate change and the state of the world. i felt heard when reading this book, like i was not alone in the thoughts i’d been having over the years.
the discussions around guilt, anger, and the desperation for things to get better were so poignant. there were many moments where i had to stop to reflect on what i’d read.
in conclusion, this book was deeply personal and emotionally raw, and i couldn’t put it down. i would definitely recommend it.
4/5 stars
i related to a lot of sherrell’s experiences. i, too, grew up with the looming threat of climate change and know what it’s like to have it shape so many aspects of your life.
i also know what it’s like to feel hopeless about climate change and the state of the world. i felt heard when reading this book, like i was not alone in the thoughts i’d been having over the years.
the discussions around guilt, anger, and the desperation for things to get better were so poignant. there were many moments where i had to stop to reflect on what i’d read.
in conclusion, this book was deeply personal and emotionally raw, and i couldn’t put it down. i would definitely recommend it.
4/5 stars
September 11, 2021
How, if you are a person aware that we are living in an age of climate emergency, do you choose to bring a child into a world that is all but guaranteed to experience catastrophe after catastrophe during the lifespan of the next generation?
This is a question I’ve never found a satisfactory answer to, a question that is hard to even approach without appearing to cast judgment on the choices of others, a question that feels impossible to raise without being accused of tipping into climate despair. It’s this question that Daniel Sherrell, a climate activist, tackles in this incredibly beautiful memoir/love letter to his own possible child that he hopes/fears to one day choose to have. By turns philosophical and deeply personal, Sherrell’s prose gorgeously lays out the question and refuses any easy answers (which I appreciated), maintaining both a clear-eyed understanding of the enormity of The Problem, as he calls climate change throughout, and the massive, nearly incomprehensible scale of its impact, as well as an ability to describe in intimate detail what that impact could and does mean at the level of an individual and particular life.
It’s a difficult, momentous, important book. Reading it during my 39th week of pregnancy, in a season of unprecedented pandemic and wildfires and hurricanes, felt like both a haunting and a benediction.
This is a question I’ve never found a satisfactory answer to, a question that is hard to even approach without appearing to cast judgment on the choices of others, a question that feels impossible to raise without being accused of tipping into climate despair. It’s this question that Daniel Sherrell, a climate activist, tackles in this incredibly beautiful memoir/love letter to his own possible child that he hopes/fears to one day choose to have. By turns philosophical and deeply personal, Sherrell’s prose gorgeously lays out the question and refuses any easy answers (which I appreciated), maintaining both a clear-eyed understanding of the enormity of The Problem, as he calls climate change throughout, and the massive, nearly incomprehensible scale of its impact, as well as an ability to describe in intimate detail what that impact could and does mean at the level of an individual and particular life.
It’s a difficult, momentous, important book. Reading it during my 39th week of pregnancy, in a season of unprecedented pandemic and wildfires and hurricanes, felt like both a haunting and a benediction.
February 26, 2022
Thank you, Daniel Sherrell and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read this book!
“Another way to put this is that we are involved in a kind of transgeological grave robbing, in light of which, The Problem can rightly be seen as a haunting.”
Warmth
Warmth by Daniel Sherrell is not like anything I have read before. It is a semi-memoir that begins with the self-immolation of David Buckel. He did this as an act of protest against fossil fuels. This moment greatly affected the author. The author then goes into his education and his dedication to passing legislation to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. In this desperation, he begins to write to his child that he may have in the future explaining the complexities of capitalism and how fossil fuels are affecting the environment, which in turn affects our ability to survive on Earth.
I agree with pretty much everything the author stated in this book. It is well researched and it is obvious that he has first-hand knowledge of why it is so difficult to work with governments and establish real change. There are quite a few trigger warnings like suicide, climate change, death, anxiety, and depression. He discusses at length how global warming is affecting the Earth and how he is becoming increasingly anxious about it.
Since this book is written to his future child, one of the main aspects that are discussed is procreation. He asks himself why he would bring a child into this dying world…how is that fair to the child? If we do nothing then The Problem will result in so much hardship for future generations. While I agreed with everything that he said, I did find the book to meander without much structure. I appreciate that he is honest and open about his anxieties but I think it would have made more of an impact had he provided more statistics and sources for the rest of us. I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.
“Another way to put this is that we are involved in a kind of transgeological grave robbing, in light of which, The Problem can rightly be seen as a haunting.”
Warmth
Warmth by Daniel Sherrell is not like anything I have read before. It is a semi-memoir that begins with the self-immolation of David Buckel. He did this as an act of protest against fossil fuels. This moment greatly affected the author. The author then goes into his education and his dedication to passing legislation to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. In this desperation, he begins to write to his child that he may have in the future explaining the complexities of capitalism and how fossil fuels are affecting the environment, which in turn affects our ability to survive on Earth.
I agree with pretty much everything the author stated in this book. It is well researched and it is obvious that he has first-hand knowledge of why it is so difficult to work with governments and establish real change. There are quite a few trigger warnings like suicide, climate change, death, anxiety, and depression. He discusses at length how global warming is affecting the Earth and how he is becoming increasingly anxious about it.
Since this book is written to his future child, one of the main aspects that are discussed is procreation. He asks himself why he would bring a child into this dying world…how is that fair to the child? If we do nothing then The Problem will result in so much hardship for future generations. While I agreed with everything that he said, I did find the book to meander without much structure. I appreciate that he is honest and open about his anxieties but I think it would have made more of an impact had he provided more statistics and sources for the rest of us. I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.
September 14, 2021
my favorite book of the year! one of the best books i've ever read! an instant, all-time favorite! maybe my favorite piece of nonfiction that i've ever read! fuck!
January 6, 2022
I would describe Warmth as a mawkish slog. The whole book felt like a meandering stream-of-consciousness and the framing device of a letter to an imagined future child only further enabled this. There was also the commitment to using the euphemism “The Problem” (proper noun) to refer to climate change/global warming which only added to the tweeness and prevented me from actually modeling the real situation and its severity as I read. I usually just interpreted it as some abstract “problem,” some nothingness, some anything. There are even a few tiny sections in which the author acknowledges his privileged, straight, white, male-ness, comparing it to those in slavery and living in war-torn countries before kind of saying, “oh well,” and continuing on pondering ego-first whether or not he should feel guilty about wanting to father a child. I had to cringe. Save that shit for your journal mate or maybe actually do something with that information if you’re going to bring it up. Honestly, nothing about Warmth really sat right with me.
February 12, 2022
It took me a long time to finish this, in part because of the heavy subject, but mostly because I didn’t want to lose Sherrell’s company. This is - without a doubt - one of the best books I’ve ever read. Regardless of which generation you were born into: read it.
Sherrell’s mastery of language and sentence composition is absurd. His ability to articulate the daily toll of existentialism that millennials and Gen Z face is uncanny. This is the toll born of an exhausting tension between responsibility and resignation, necessary optimism and realistic cynicism; the desire to live in the present - to live our lives - with the understanding that thinking about the enormity of the future is morally imperative.
Sherrell acknowledges how the intensity of this toll is inextricably linked to intersectionality and environmental racism, as well as the subjection of both young people and the Global South to flooding debt, political gaslighting, poor healthcare, and the ideological paradox of needing to fight capitalism’s wreckage with a dogged capitalist ethic… effecting activist burnout (in all its energy metaphors) and condemning the geographically oppressed to a longview genocide.
Sherrell is heavy on metaphors, and once or twice I felt tired with them. But then the author pointed out… how else to talk about this? All comparisons will fall short, but it seems ontologically impossible to face the issue any more directly.
As it went on, the epistolary premise sometimes felt a little gimmicky and precious. But then Sherrell addressed that reaction, too… how else to position the Problem in a meaningful way, than through imagined intimacy and radical care (in other words, compassion) for the reader and for the future? How else to do so than to write with emotion? As exhausting as it is, sustaining emotion is critical to sustaining reform.
There aren’t solutions here, but sometimes we focus so much on the scramble for solutions we forget to check in with ourselves. Which is to say: it’s terrible - and it’s much more terrible for people who don’t have the privilege many of us do - but it’s not singular. Let that be a balm to the exhaustion we feel thrashing in the nets of anxiety and depression. As Sherrell reminds us, there are plenty of reasons why it’s still worth the fight, and we cannot fight alone.
Sherrell’s mastery of language and sentence composition is absurd. His ability to articulate the daily toll of existentialism that millennials and Gen Z face is uncanny. This is the toll born of an exhausting tension between responsibility and resignation, necessary optimism and realistic cynicism; the desire to live in the present - to live our lives - with the understanding that thinking about the enormity of the future is morally imperative.
Sherrell acknowledges how the intensity of this toll is inextricably linked to intersectionality and environmental racism, as well as the subjection of both young people and the Global South to flooding debt, political gaslighting, poor healthcare, and the ideological paradox of needing to fight capitalism’s wreckage with a dogged capitalist ethic… effecting activist burnout (in all its energy metaphors) and condemning the geographically oppressed to a longview genocide.
Sherrell is heavy on metaphors, and once or twice I felt tired with them. But then the author pointed out… how else to talk about this? All comparisons will fall short, but it seems ontologically impossible to face the issue any more directly.
As it went on, the epistolary premise sometimes felt a little gimmicky and precious. But then Sherrell addressed that reaction, too… how else to position the Problem in a meaningful way, than through imagined intimacy and radical care (in other words, compassion) for the reader and for the future? How else to do so than to write with emotion? As exhausting as it is, sustaining emotion is critical to sustaining reform.
There aren’t solutions here, but sometimes we focus so much on the scramble for solutions we forget to check in with ourselves. Which is to say: it’s terrible - and it’s much more terrible for people who don’t have the privilege many of us do - but it’s not singular. Let that be a balm to the exhaustion we feel thrashing in the nets of anxiety and depression. As Sherrell reminds us, there are plenty of reasons why it’s still worth the fight, and we cannot fight alone.
August 22, 2021
Evocative, beautiful language in a well-crafted book that often articulated how I feel but have been unable to express. Hope to use this to provoke conversations with the boomers in my life.
October 22, 2023
Well, fuck. A memoir about a millennial grappling with whether they should bring a child into a world currently being destroyed by late stage capitalism? Please. That's just my actual life.
August 13, 2021
It is difficult to find the right language to discuss climate change, or "the Problem," as Sherrell labels it in Warmth. I don't know of a vocabulary for an inescapable, omnipresent externality that also inspires a personal, internal sense of loss. For me, this usually leads to some sort of resignation, assumption that there is no hope, avoidance. For a problem facing all living things, the Problem paradoxically makes me feel alone.
Warmth makes me feel less alone. It is a book that challenges my gut reaction to give up or to feel pure despair. It proposes a way of thinking about the Problem that is compassionate and realistic, beautifully capturing feelings I've felt but have never described, even to myself. I am thankful Sherrell took on this project, and in awe of the result.
Warmth makes me feel less alone. It is a book that challenges my gut reaction to give up or to feel pure despair. It proposes a way of thinking about the Problem that is compassionate and realistic, beautifully capturing feelings I've felt but have never described, even to myself. I am thankful Sherrell took on this project, and in awe of the result.
August 13, 2023
This book took me so long because it made me feel devastatingly seen. It’s not a book of solutions. It’s more akin to commiserating with a friend who knows exactly what you’re going through. Sometimes that’s helpful, but sometimes you need to stop and think about something else. I wish we weren’t here. Man! I wish we weren’t here.
November 30, 2025
Truest words. The first two sections leading up to the NY legislation were great: immensely introspective and so relatable; the ones in Australia had more musings that were less engaging but the prose was still very pretty. I listened to the audiobook read by the author which was additive.
March 29, 2024
Extremely glad I chose to read this book, it was such a gift.
Sherrell and I have had remarkably similar decades in our twenties — cutting our teeth in the fossil fuel divestment movement at our university campuses, trying to win visionary climate justice legislation in the states, spending time on country with mob fighting fossil fuel projects in different parts of Australia. So, reading this book felt remarkably personal, as our minds have inhabited quite similar spaces, questions, patterns of thought. It was incredibly cathartic to witness him articulate so many emotions that I have felt but struggled to grapple with, even alone, let alone with others — and so beautifully, carefully, with nuance and vulnerability and humility. I had to read it slowly, to savor all the diverse but connected reflections on what it means to be alive in this time, and let them echo into my own life.
I think anyone who has lent some of their best years to the climate movement will deeply appreciate this book; I hope it speaks to people outside it too. I have been fortunate to pick this up at a time when I am struggling more than usual to find the hope to balance the grief, and I found it challenging in the best possible way.
I have a feeling I’m going to come back to this book more than once.
Sherrell and I have had remarkably similar decades in our twenties — cutting our teeth in the fossil fuel divestment movement at our university campuses, trying to win visionary climate justice legislation in the states, spending time on country with mob fighting fossil fuel projects in different parts of Australia. So, reading this book felt remarkably personal, as our minds have inhabited quite similar spaces, questions, patterns of thought. It was incredibly cathartic to witness him articulate so many emotions that I have felt but struggled to grapple with, even alone, let alone with others — and so beautifully, carefully, with nuance and vulnerability and humility. I had to read it slowly, to savor all the diverse but connected reflections on what it means to be alive in this time, and let them echo into my own life.
I think anyone who has lent some of their best years to the climate movement will deeply appreciate this book; I hope it speaks to people outside it too. I have been fortunate to pick this up at a time when I am struggling more than usual to find the hope to balance the grief, and I found it challenging in the best possible way.
I have a feeling I’m going to come back to this book more than once.
May 5, 2022
I got a third of the way through and had to stop. How can you go on and on about our world dying and NOT ONCE mention capitalism?????? AND to make it seem the only way to change this is through the state? Like the state isn’t responsible for all of this?? And he focuses on one big bad guy and does not mention that our govt made him happen! Supported him! Like if you want to say that policy is the only way forward, at least criticize the govt for Christ sake. Not one mention of the military and what it’s doing to the environment. Idk. Maybe down the line he would get to these points but it really didn’t seem so.
Anyways, I vote for more violence. Blowing up things is better than begging the govt to fix things bc they broke it in the first place.
Anyways, I vote for more violence. Blowing up things is better than begging the govt to fix things bc they broke it in the first place.
June 3, 2022
I really thought I was going to like this book more than I did. But to be honest, I thought it would be a little more prescriptive, and a little more focused on actually exploring ways to hold hope and navigate the grief of the world we are in right now. Instead it felt like just a detailed memoir of one organizer’s experience in the movement. At first this was fun for me to read since he spoke to events I had participated in or been involved in during my past career, and the author’s writing is genius. But it dragged. I felt like I already knew everything he was going to say half way through.
November 1, 2025
ich hätte gerne meinen eltern dieses buch geschenkt (sie lesen nur leider selten englisch), weil es sich zum ersten mal nach einem authentischen, ehrlichen einblick in das dasein als klimaaktivist*in angefühlt hat. das bedeutet nicht, dass es für mich langweilig gewesen wäre, keineswegs, ich habe gelacht, geweint, alles. krass ist, *wie* ähnlich aktivistische erfahrungswelten auch in einer anderen zeit waren, hatte zuerst sorge vor cringe wegen des formats (ein brief an seine ungeborenen kinder), aber auch die wurden ausgeräumt. kluge gedanken zum erwachsen werden in der krise und langfristig aktiv sein, ohne zu pathetisch zu werden. mochte es sehr.
September 27, 2021
More like 3.5 - really enjoyed the writing and had some valuable takeaways, but the writing to your unborn child premise felt a little gimmicky to me towards the end, and it read repetitive to me
February 8, 2025
this book did me in in a big way. it's a bit long, but here's one of the passages that punched me in the gut:
"I was caught between these options for years: too hopeful to cave, too hopeless to simply put on a brave face. I wanted to mourn and organize, but could do neither fully, mired as I was in the sense that they precluded each other. Fuck this choice. I reject it and I want desperately to keep you from falling into it's trap. It is a terrible, impossible, dichotomy and what's more, it is false. I no longer believe that grief and resistance are mutually exclusive: I think the former is necessary to the latter, that honest sorrow is perhaps the only thing that makes a real fight even possible. To mourn without fighting is to tap out at the exact moment when we need to step in, but to fight without mourning is to grapple with a ghost, to try to stop something you've never actually realized."
"I was caught between these options for years: too hopeful to cave, too hopeless to simply put on a brave face. I wanted to mourn and organize, but could do neither fully, mired as I was in the sense that they precluded each other. Fuck this choice. I reject it and I want desperately to keep you from falling into it's trap. It is a terrible, impossible, dichotomy and what's more, it is false. I no longer believe that grief and resistance are mutually exclusive: I think the former is necessary to the latter, that honest sorrow is perhaps the only thing that makes a real fight even possible. To mourn without fighting is to tap out at the exact moment when we need to step in, but to fight without mourning is to grapple with a ghost, to try to stop something you've never actually realized."
September 30, 2021
A nice, necessary meditation on climate change, grief, the decision to have children, and so much more. It definitely meandered from time to time (I question whether certain sections needed to be included at all) and the frame of "letter to my future child" seemed to pivot from being deeply moving to an afterthought throughout. But I found this meaningful, and the ending in particular blew me away.
(Thanks to my friend Kurt — who gets a shoutout in the book — for the suggestion!)
(Thanks to my friend Kurt — who gets a shoutout in the book — for the suggestion!)
August 31, 2022
i never really understood why people described a book as “devastating”, and then continue to read it, until this book. this is a memoir about a young climate organizer in new york city, so it felt fateful that this book crossed my path somewhat serendipitously. at times i had to take a break because it felt like reading my own journal, and at times i lost focus on what i was reading, but i think the author did a really beautiful job in painting the lines of anger, hope, despair, and love that are necessary for sustainable (haha) involvement in the climate movement, or in any movement.
April 17, 2025
een baby tussen stream of consciousness en non-fictie, maar dan blijkt dat het helaas zo’n vervelend vrije opvoeding ettertje is geworden.
Read
April 21, 2025did my professor write this?
May 12, 2022
Beautiful writing that articulates so well this moment our generation finds itself in. So much of this resonates with me. Recommended reading for all millennials.
August 8, 2022
It is strange when you read a book with a title like Warmth but you get so little of it. And when you get it, it comes with a name that represents a variety of things: "the Problem". Climate change, depletion of natural and finite goods, destruction of nature, corporate greed, etc, etc, etc? Actually, Sherrel decides to use a group of chosen words to mean a whole bunch of things, just like "The Dream". Or "Pruitt" like the evil itself.
Having trouble making sense of nowadays's constant need to create theories/words for every single move we make, I believe that when we use a collective word to mean a whole bunch of things and people, we end up causing more damage in our pursuit of finding solutions to solve the stinking messy shit we humans do. It impoverishes language and it centers the goals on abstract ideas/people, leaving aside the rest of the evil in peace, let alone not looking at the man/woman in the mirror. It is as when we say "corruption" and think of politicians and corporate greed alone, but we forget to look at the mirror and see our small acts of corruption that deplete the sense of common good as well.
The only part of the book I enjoyed more or less was while staying in Australia and visiting the town of Broome, he learns so much with the Goolarabooloo clan, the Aboriginal family that takes care of the particular stretch of coastline that is their land, but whose governor of the state tried to sell away to oil conglomerates. Here, Sherrel has the best lesson he could ever achieve, away from his native America: to see the world through other eyes, to learn that grieving doesn't answer our need to fight, harder and harder; that when we say that we come of age at the end of our world, we have already given up any hope and planet Melancholia is on its way back after a fly-by.
Last, it shocked me that Sherrel could bring about Coase's externalities, but failed to even come close to mentioning the design principles of stable local common pool resource management identified by Elinor Ostrom and her work on environmental protection.
Having trouble making sense of nowadays's constant need to create theories/words for every single move we make, I believe that when we use a collective word to mean a whole bunch of things and people, we end up causing more damage in our pursuit of finding solutions to solve the stinking messy shit we humans do. It impoverishes language and it centers the goals on abstract ideas/people, leaving aside the rest of the evil in peace, let alone not looking at the man/woman in the mirror. It is as when we say "corruption" and think of politicians and corporate greed alone, but we forget to look at the mirror and see our small acts of corruption that deplete the sense of common good as well.
The only part of the book I enjoyed more or less was while staying in Australia and visiting the town of Broome, he learns so much with the Goolarabooloo clan, the Aboriginal family that takes care of the particular stretch of coastline that is their land, but whose governor of the state tried to sell away to oil conglomerates. Here, Sherrel has the best lesson he could ever achieve, away from his native America: to see the world through other eyes, to learn that grieving doesn't answer our need to fight, harder and harder; that when we say that we come of age at the end of our world, we have already given up any hope and planet Melancholia is on its way back after a fly-by.
Last, it shocked me that Sherrel could bring about Coase's externalities, but failed to even come close to mentioning the design principles of stable local common pool resource management identified by Elinor Ostrom and her work on environmental protection.
November 11, 2021
Wow, this book so perfectly put to words so many of my nebulous feelings and thoughts about the futility of the future of our planet. It felt especially poignant and relatable because the author and I are of the same generation (we even graduated high school & college in the same years). At the same time as it honestly exposed that futility, it also offered hope and motivation to keep fighting, pointing out that even a couple degrees’ difference in our planet’s temperature can make a substantial difference. As a random side note, I loved the natural pauses created by the style of page breaks the author used, because it made it much easier to read while my toddler was playing. 😆
August 19, 2021
Two short passages from Warmth:
*
The nature of fossil fuel is essentially ambivalent: an invisible pervasion that powers all things and will also, inevitably, destroy them. It is produced by drilling, extracting, and refining those delicate ferns and planktons that millions of years ago were ground to sludge by the planet’s crust. The sludge gets processed into coal, gas, or petroleum, then shipped off to power plants where it is converted into energy. In this way we power the present almost exclusively by burning the remains of the past. Unearthed, our history surrounds us, dissolving through the air, until its ubiquity comes to look very much like the future itself.
Another way to put this is that we are involved in a kind of transgeologic grave robbing, in light of which, the Problem can rightly be seen as a haunting.
*
This is maybe the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocene. To finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care.
*
The nature of fossil fuel is essentially ambivalent: an invisible pervasion that powers all things and will also, inevitably, destroy them. It is produced by drilling, extracting, and refining those delicate ferns and planktons that millions of years ago were ground to sludge by the planet’s crust. The sludge gets processed into coal, gas, or petroleum, then shipped off to power plants where it is converted into energy. In this way we power the present almost exclusively by burning the remains of the past. Unearthed, our history surrounds us, dissolving through the air, until its ubiquity comes to look very much like the future itself.
Another way to put this is that we are involved in a kind of transgeologic grave robbing, in light of which, the Problem can rightly be seen as a haunting.
*
This is maybe the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocene. To finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care.
January 5, 2022
“And so now I am clear on what I love, I have to be.
I love you. I love you even though I don't know you, even
though you're still just a choice. What I think I mean by this is
that the thought of you makes me less important to myself, turns down the volume on that incessant engine of subjectivity—the weaver of narrative, the hoarder of self—so that for a moment I can tune out its roar and inhabit the wonderful, dissolving quiet of the space beyond my head, where relation splits open identity and grace comes flooding through the breach.”
+
“And soon the earth's pace will draw near to your own, and
there will be no distinguishing the two. Rivers will run their
banks and mountains will slide down themselves and baby teeth will wiggle loose and fires will leap from their rings and rings will be fitted to fingers and the smoke will ruin the photos and the glaciers will wind up their gullies and the videos will play on fast-forward and the cat will lie down on the carpet and the ocean will rise from its knees and you will wake up exhausted, listening for rain.”
I love you. I love you even though I don't know you, even
though you're still just a choice. What I think I mean by this is
that the thought of you makes me less important to myself, turns down the volume on that incessant engine of subjectivity—the weaver of narrative, the hoarder of self—so that for a moment I can tune out its roar and inhabit the wonderful, dissolving quiet of the space beyond my head, where relation splits open identity and grace comes flooding through the breach.”
+
“And soon the earth's pace will draw near to your own, and
there will be no distinguishing the two. Rivers will run their
banks and mountains will slide down themselves and baby teeth will wiggle loose and fires will leap from their rings and rings will be fitted to fingers and the smoke will ruin the photos and the glaciers will wind up their gullies and the videos will play on fast-forward and the cat will lie down on the carpet and the ocean will rise from its knees and you will wake up exhausted, listening for rain.”
October 14, 2021
Daniel Sherrell’s offers an insight into my son’s generation into the “Problem” and how his generation views it. I often complained to my son that he is too pessimistic of the future. Sherrell articulates that pessimissim - and some optimism - about the future challenges the human race faces, but more importantly whether they have a future at all. His generation is the first that may not be guaranteed a livable world in their old age. I found myself nodding often during reading. I was often able to put by own worries about the “Problem” on a back burner because I know I won’t live to see the rest of it. Wish every politician could read this viewpoint, but I know that won’t happen. Outstanding writing an introspection.
April 10, 2022
Insightful, heartfelt, resonating, and simply wonderfully crafted. Sherrell writes a letter to his potential future child, addressing the insecurities, emotions, obstacles, and fights of our time and generation. Hauntingly adequate to the anxieties felt when thinking about our world and it’s days to come, he weaves anecdotes, theory, science, and activism together. This book gives a space for us to place the experienced oscillation between despair and hope. It takes us with it through the motions without thickly spread pathos, romanticization or visions of doom. This is certainly a book for my generation to feel our anxieties recognized and shared. It is, however, also a book for other generations to understand our current location, emotionally as well as scientifically.
January 3, 2022
3.5. Really interesting thoughts and stories in the first half, I felt the anecdotes were disjointed by the end. I think there should be more books exploring climate anxiety from millennial activists but from writers with experience outside of NGO organizing. He did acknowledge his position within the movement as a white man but if he really believed that why’d he make the book so long lol. I still enjoyed it and ruminated on its last chapter.
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