The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World

The goal of the book is to provide theory that, at best, provide tools to make sense of climate disruption and how to act in it; and at worst, to not mislead those who want to act in the current climate.Yes, the book has some weaknesses. The writing style can be a little difficult to follow, and his rhetoric regarding animals as well as catastrophism could be more subtle. Overall though, it's a devastating critique of all the academic crap that one finds on these subjects. The author relies heavily on Marxist critique. This isn't really evident until the closing chapters. But this is a Marxism that makes sense and the author weilds it well.The book is relatively accessible. Without grouding in social, economic, and philosophical theory, you'll manage, but slowly.

“The Progress of this Storm” by Andreas Malm offers a useful theory for survival in a warming world. Mr. Malm is a Swedish academic and award-winning author on the topic of fossil fuel capitalism. This timely, powerful and on-point book succeeds in focusing our attention on the urgent need to challenge capitalism.Mr. Malm sets up the discussion by contemplating an image depicting the Royal Navy’s discovery of coal on the island of Labuan in 1837. Among many interesting discussion points, we learn that our warming planet is a revenge of history as the fossil fuels burned in the past wreak havoc with us today. The main point is that planetary biocide is a direct consequence of fossil fuel-driven global capitalism.Mr. Malm then turns his attention to dismantling the precocious theories that distract many of us from what must be done. Specifically, ‘Constructionists’ such as Bruno Latour are taken to task for proposing that the world consists of ‘hybrids’ that cannot be separated for analysis and critique. Mr. Malm shows the absurdity of this line of thinking by clearly and concisely writing about who bears responsibility for the climate crisis. Interestingly, the author warns that ‘solar radiation management’ (geoengineering) is a predictable capitalist response: when the world is regarded as a machine, a hubristic Big Science attempt to control it may be humanity’s final mistake.On that point, Mr. Malm finds inspiration from Marxist thinkers such as John Bellamy Foster to offer a way out of the crisis. The ineradicable autonomy of labor and nature from capital offers hope. Mass popular resistance to a system that is relentlessly warming the world for the benefit of the few is necessary. We can no longer treat nature as a slave to capital. Humanity must relearn how to live within the constraints imposed by the natural world. Our survival is at stake.I highly recommend this excellent book to everyone.

The author of this book (AM) is a Marxist; I'm not. But I found this book well worth reading for its critique of leftist attitudes about climate change. If you've ever been perplexed or irritated by authors who declare that there isn't any such thing as Nature, or that there wasn't any such thing as Nature until humans came on the scene, you may appreciate it too. AM deploys historical materialism to show that humans can be "natural" beings, and yet at the same time can alter the behavior of natural systems from how they were during most of human history, in ways that might kill us all. As someone who majored in physics long ago in college, I'd thought physics, chemistry and biology would be sufficient to lead to this conclusion -- but evidently many humanities scholars are resistant to such arguments.About two-thirds of this book is given over to a well-deserved skewering of "progressive" academic silliness about climate change. While these chapters cover a broad range of different views, all of these ideas owe something to French scholar Bruno Latour, whom one of his most ardent admirers describes as "a politically benevolent French centrist with progressive tendencies" and "a liberally minded Hobbesian who adds inanimate entities to the political sphere" (Graham Harman, quoted in this book @154). I'd tried and given up on several of Latour's books during the past couple of decades, finding them written with a charlatan's vagueness and oddly conservative (as when he cautions us somewhere -- sorry, I've lost the cite -- not to criticize economists so much). But while my impatience with Latour's style prevented me from drilling deeply into his work, forcing me to rely mainly on a "smell test" sort of evaluation, AM articulates his critique with precision, counterexamples that are simple and vivid, and refreshing common sense.In philosophical terms, AM describes a Cartesian distinction as relying on two separate "substances," e.g. mind and body. The well-known problem with this view is, if they're separate "substances," then how can they interact so that one affects the other? Latour and his followers are instead monists about "substance" -- but also monists about the properties of the substance. As a result, everything is the same as everything else. This can go in several different directions, such as (i) everything "natural" is actually socially created by humans (constructivism), so all is human and Nature is "dead," or else (ii) humans are on a par with all other material objects ("New Materialism"), so that inanimate objects can have "agency" and ought to have political rights (seriously!), or else (iii) everything is a mix of natural and human ("hybridism").Historical materialism, on the other hand, is monist as to substance, but dualistic as to the properties of substance, per AM. (He acknowledges that pluralism about properties may be relevant in some cases, but he insists dualism is sufficient for considering environmental destruction, @71.) To adapt one of AM's analogies: The human heart is integrated into the whole body system and is affected by nerves, hormones, etc. But at the same time it's an identifiably separate organ with its own structures and functions. It has two "properties" at once, even though it's made out the same substance in either case. In the same way, humans are natural, material beings who aren't separate from nature. But they can also dump sufficient amounts of stuff into the atmosphere that, due to natural processes that pre-existed humanity, such as the laws of chemistry and physics, the atmosphere is going to start doing stuff back to us in ways it hadn't done before. Now, any Latourian worth his or her salt would counter that there were no such "laws" before Newton, Galileo et al. To which the historical materialist (and plain vanilla scientist) response would be: Oh. Get. Real. Sure, there weren't *names* for the laws of physics, but the principles were still there and operative.Again, if you're a scientist or engineer (unless you're a quantum mechanic who believes the world vanishes when you're not looking), you may be flabbergasted that profs at top universities can make a living publishing sophistry à la Latour. Unfortunately, though, once you dive into the academic literature about sustainability, biodiversity, etc. you see that some bizarre attitudes about the human relationship to the natural world abound, and that they could even influence policy. If enough readers can ignore the Marxist banner flying from this book, it could have a very salutary effect.The remaining one-third or so of the book is more overtly Marxist in its concerns. In particular, one chapter is given over to inside baseball score-settling with Jason W. Moore, particularly his essay "The Rise of Cheap Nature" (2016), as to whether some attitudes are or aren't expressions of a Cartesian dualism (which in this sort of discourse would be a Bad Thing, to borrow capitals from Sellar & Yeatman). I've found Moore makes some good points despite deploying some other rhetoric that doesn't move me, and while there may be some merit to AM's arguments, this part of the book left me indifferent. If anything, I thought AM's later defense of "catastrophism" at the end of the book (@226) was unsubtle: he overlooks the fact that catastrophistic rhetoric about climate change galvanizes some people to action but has the opposite effect on others, and that different rhetorical approaches might be useful for persuading different audiences. But whatever my issues with these last few chapters, they didn't diminish the benefits of reading the earlier ones.One aspect of the book that does diminish its usefulness, though, is the system adopted for citations. There are only footnotes, without any list of references. After a work has been cited the first time, all subsequent cites refer to it only by author name and first word of the title, e.g. "Latour, 'Agency', 5" -- and that's regardless of where the later cites occur in the book. So if the first cite is in chapter 4, say, and you run across this abbreviated cite in chapter 7 without having memorized the names of every work cited up to this point, you've got to go back all the way to Chapter 1 and scan every darn footnote to figure out what work is being referred to. Since I was interested in some sources, I wasted a lot of time on these wild goose chases. There are simple ways this could have been avoided: short-form cites in the notes followed by a list of references, or even just giving a full cite each time a work is first cited within a chapter. The system chosen is simply rude to the reader. That accounts for 3/4 star deduction in my rating.

This is a fine book which can teach its readers a lot about the elements which go into the problem of climate change, yet I found the whole approach that the author takes, particularly due to the presence of a post-modern 'hybridist monism' as interlocutor, as forcing the author into some strange conversational dialectics.For example, take the very common human situation of not insulting someone who you feel compelled to insult. Is this situation not somewhat akin to the difference between nature and society, or mind and matter (the author goes into issues within philosophy of mind like aspect monism and property dualism to make out the distinction between the former and the latter - which seems a bit drastic to me). On the physical level, that is, at the level of my body as a regulatory system determined by homeostatic set-points correlated to the relational/social values of my developmental contexts, a persons way of regulating themselves under such a circumstance is pretty straight forward: insult the person. Why? Because the entropy, or tendency, of my system is to do so. It is easier. On the other hand, my mind, insofar as it can represent a mode of responding, or imagine a different way of acting then what is currently being compelled, can inhibit that response. Both modes of response are derived from real developmental situations, both of which emerge out of the geometrodynamical constraints that force out this particular qualitative form of knowing. What makes the mind, or the 'social' aspect of our existence relevant, is the degree to which we can stimulate our own awareness to attend to the consequences we'll be creating for the other by acting this way. Although mind is thoroughly natural, it is a type of nature that is quite able, quite naturally, to pay attention to consequences.Andreas Malm then is speaking in a lingua-franca that seems a bit mechanistic for my liking. The issue is not whether mind or social processes are different from natural processes; but whether human beings feel incumbent to attend to consequences which will affect different subjectivities - beings besides themselves.Both the substance dualists and the hybrid dualists seem equally organized in a similar way: they both dissociate from the incoherency of their positions vis-a-vis the consequences that their particular way of focusing will create for the people, world and generations beyond the here and now of their existing. The truth is, the self is defending itself with these sorts of philosophical doctrines - for the simple reason that it is seeking to preserve a regulatory value, a coherent-way-of-making-meaning-in-the-world, which comports with their particular community of 'truth-seekers'.I don't particularly disagree with Malms analysis, but I do find it to be missing the mark in identifying what is actually wrong with people, specifically post-modernists who pursue this hybridist monism view, who feel the need to devalue the significance of 'differences which make a difference', as gregory Bateson would have put it. The question is, why? Why can't they recognize the significance of this colossal error? Malm speaks to them as if they are psychologically developed adults, whereas I, backed by developmental psychology, clinical psychology and neuro-traumatology, cannot help but see such people as engaging either in a) at best, they are delusional and have difficulties reasoning effectively, or b) at worse, are deliberately seeking to obfuscate, in which case they are carrying forward the ancient traditions of all self-styled elites: sorcery. That sorcery exists, and that magic partly entails conspiring with others through secret societies, is unfortunately not on the radar screen for most intellectuals, but it is quite clearly a very real and yet (again, unfortunately) seldomly emphasized tactic used by elites to vitiate a particular movement or argument.We can go back to ancient times and the situation has barely changed. How do we quantify how another person values the world when values are prefigured in early relational communication patterns between self and other? The metaphysical individualist doesn't really care about the 'other' - unless, of course, that other is an other who is also a metaphysical individualist. The self evolves through countless experiences of non-verbal cuing followed by normal allostatic and homeostatic regulation so that, by the time language develops, the mind is thoroughly focused on the 'world' in terms of a meaning that is metaphorical embodied in these basic relational patterns.Speaking about the illogicality of the others viewpoint is meaningless - its akin to speaking Chinese to an English speaker. People today are still very, deeply naive about this; they wrongly or exaggeratedly believe that people can be persuaded through rational argument - when in fact, developmentally speaking, what matters is how you speak, not what you say. A person who cant see the reality of the real world probably had a caregiving environment that didn't quite recognize their own motivational states, leaving them feeling 'unreal' to the other, which of course, left them feeling that the other, rather then they, was unreal (the basis of a solipsism).People are religiously committed to their values, indeed, in ancient times these we're the gods and godesses worshipped in temples. Much was done and is still done to maintain a thorough allegiance and identity with values.In the end, there are two approaches towards other with different values which sense: love, and war.Discussion, and logic, however, is far to heady and disembodied to mobilize the affective processes which change a person's values.

Climate change is real, fossil-fuel dependent industrial capitalism is its main cause, and Andreas Malm has no patience for theories which obstruct these premises of radical action. It’s time for a reckoning, he says in The Progress of This Storm: “If everything is up for re-evaluation in a warming world, this must apply to it [theory] as well: theory too is called to account” (16) Accordingly, he tells the reader, “we shall begin from the premise that any theory for the warming condition should have the struggle to stabilise climate – with the demolition of the fossil economy the necessary first step – as its practical, if only ideal, point of reference. It should clear up space for action and resistance.” (18). Malm wants to make confrontation with climate villains thinkable and actionable.From the beginning then, Malm’s perspective appears to be one which looks in on theory from the outside, from a place of action. This, it should be said, is a dubious prerogative for a theorist to claim. It obscures the fact that these premises of action – the reality of climate change, the need for militant resistance – are themselves the results of theory and argument all the way down. It also empowers one theorist, equipped with premises which appear incontrovertible, to put the screws to other theories he dislikes. At the beginning of each encounter with other theories, he already knows the confessions and allegiances which he has to extract: climate change is an unquestionable reality; humans – unique sources of agency in the world – and our socioeconomic structures are its cause. These confessions in turn vindicate the premises of the interrogation.These are not contentious claims, but it’s a sham trial. And this is a tragedy because his accused really are guilty as charged: constructionists, new materialists, French postmoderns, and their associates really do fail to make sense of the uniqueness of human agency in causing climate change. By consequence, they are not obviously useful in the cause of climate struggle; Malm is right. The problem, however, is that his urgency to prove their guilt biases him toward a militancy about theory which mirrors his militancy in the real-world fossil economy. This tempts him into selective, truncated, and unfair evaluation of his opponents: in addition to Malm’s habit of dismissing his opponents as obstructionists (not only are they wrong; they are in the way) or insulting them (Bruno Latour is castigated for being a ‘French centrist’), readers familiar with these philosophical debates will recognize Malm’s militant urgency in the alarming speed at which he reaches outsized conclusions.Consider his section on climate realism. Here he reasons from the evidence collected by science to the conclusion that, beneath all of the evidence, there must be a reality to climate change which the very possibility of having evidence presupposes, and which would be happening whether or not we knew about it. But he doesn’t discuss the difficult work of science in gathering evidence and using it to justify theories or actions; instead, he makes direct reference to the truth of climate change. Why, though, do we need to recruit immaculate truths? Why can’t we say that we have overwhelming evidence, and that the amount of evidence we have is sufficient for action? The difference may seem quibbling, but it is not. The presumptive authority of the theorist to bracket the difficult work of science and make direct reference to the truth is an arrogation of near-oracular power. *Claims to theoretical powers like this stand as concerning moments in the loopy structure of the book’s overall argument: in order to live up to the practical needs of a climate movement, he demands the preservation of certain conceptual distinctions. From here, he makes a neo-Kantian elision between our empirical concepts about the world on the one hand, and claims about world’s actual and necessary structure on the other. These ostensibly necessary truths about the world are then fed back into the beginning of the whole exercise as premises: the climate is, in fact, changing; society is responsible; change is urgent; theory should be policed accordingly.This is a rotten kind of argument; it acts to justify itself all on its own, and it empowers its author to speak both the facts of the world and what must be done about them.Ironically, it’s the use of theory to arrogate this kind of power which is the animating concern of some of Malm’s opponents – especially Latour. Malm is mistaken if he thinks that his opponents are concerned first and foremost with a set of metaphysical distinctions about nature and society, or about the locus of agency in the world. While it is surprising to have to insist on this with a Marxist: it is about power.Consider, for example, how Latour opens his (yes, mostly incomprehensible) The Politics of Nature by positioning Plato’s myth of the cave as philosophy’s original sin. It is a dangerous fantasy, he intones, to believe that there are a select few of us who can exit the world of appearances and behold the truth. Not only does such a view lack justification but it is authoritarianism inchoate. As with Plato’s imagined guardians, the claim to authority over the truth implies the claim to authority over people. Consequently, we should institute a rule: we ought not to adopt theories which concentrate power in a small class of people and place them beyond criticism. Latour’s whole book is an extravagant act of imagining a world without this dubious power.One need not be an intellectually flamboyant French postmodern (Latour rejects the label) to believe this. Famous 20th century philosophers like Karl Popper and John Dewey were animated by similar concerns, and they were carrying forward a heritage which extends back to the original empiricists. The common commitment of all these approaches is that we should try and understand our scientific and political lives as common, as something that must be collectively achieved and publically shared. And of course this places constraints on us: our reasoning, theory, and evidence must also be public. Sometimes this amounts to the demand that only certain kinds of reasoning are allowed (e.g. ‘appeal to shared evidence’) or that only certain kinds of evidence are allowed (e.g. ‘no divine inspiration’).One way of interpreting this is that, in the interest of building and preserving a common world, we must appeal to common procedures of argument, demonstration, and dispute – with science as our exemplar.Malm appears to chafe on this ideal. In passing, he subscribes to the Marcusean view that science and technology are essentially modes of apology for established political orders, that they provide cover for programs of domination, that they are ‘reified ideology’. To be sure, he mustn’t think this is the whole story because he happily frames his argument with the deliverances of climate science. But it is enough, I think, to reveal a characteristic mistrust of common projects. Instead of a world aimed at an ideal of cooperation, Malm opts for a world of confrontation – and this comes at the cost of common projects.To abjure the public values at the core of scientific reason should also mean the forfeiture of its results. Anything less is inconsistent or (one of his favourite accusations) a performative contradiction: he should not frame his argument in terms of particular scientific results (like the evidence of climate change) if his argument fails to live up to the public values which inhere in processes which delivered those results.If the reader of this review agrees with my approach then they ought to be skeptical at this point that I have arrogated special powers for myself: that by a trick of definitions I can tie Malm’s project up into a big contradiction. Especially since he has what seem to be pure motives and many moments of lucid argument. So I will leave the argument and finish with a practical note:Militancy and confrontation aren’t necessarily bad; there are many ways in which ostensibly cooperative projects can be corrupt, imposing, and therefore deserving of resistance. But even confrontational movements require their own forms of internal cooperation. If a vanguard treats the procedures of shared reason as if they were shackles then they must replace their cooperative function with something else. And Malm has an instinct for that ‘something else’: a ‘politics of negativity’ which insists on internal uniformity, which regards dissent as obstruction, and which lays monopolistic claim on what is to be done. This is the looming practical fallout of a militant, confrontational theory. “Less Latour, more Lenin” indeed.Graham Bracken*By counterpoint, his chapter against hybridism and in favour of a meaningful distinction between nature and society, is very good, even though it remains the case that his substantive arguments fail to address some of his opponents’ concerns about theoretical procedure. Here he is clear about his theoretical debts and the orienting, extra-theoretical demands that explanations should be materialistic and continuous with one another. This equips him well for attacking some of the most extravagant attempts to collapse the distinction between nature and society (though it is unfortunate that he makes a habit of attacking the most extravagant versions). This chapter is recommended.