| OVERSHOOT How the World Surrendered To Climate Breakdown Andreas Malm & Wim Carton London: Verso, October 2024 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
|||
| ISBN-13 978-1-80429-398-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-80429-398-9 | 401pp. | HC/GSI | $29.95 | |
| Page 18: | "Five Countries in the global North — the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Norway—together accounted for 51 percent of the expansion from new oil and gas fields planned until mid-century." |
| Australia is in the global North? Yes; it is not a geographic description, but a socioeconomic one. See Global North and Global South |
| Page 27: | "...the hebdomadal of choice for the Atlantic liberal intelligentsia pronounced that time had come for 'a dose of realism'." |
| "Hebdomadal" denotes a period of seven days: a week. Thus, this word can fit a weekly magazine, but it is a stretch, and pretentious to boot. |
| Page 29: | "During the final days of the negotiations, G20 convened a parallel summit in Bali, and in a ceremony befitting of the cause, all twenty leaders—Biden of the US, Macron of France, Scholz of Germany, Modi of India and the rest—dressed up in white and grabbed hacks to plant saplings in a mangrove." |
| Terminology: a mangrove is a species of tree. S/B "mangrove swamp" or "mangrove forest". (See also page 90.) |
| Page 61: | "The IAM became, so it seemed, an increasingly trustworthy orbuculum." |
| An orbuculum is part of the armamentarium of divination or scrying; it is the oracular apparatus commonly known as a crystal ball. |
| Page 74: | "The virtue of this course of action, for which it would be consciously chosen, would not lay in the most excellent protection it would afford future generations, but in the lifting of a 'burden' on certain members of present ones." |
| Grammar: S/B "lie". |
| Page 90: | "Every November or December, people were interpellated as the subjects of a capitalist society still sailing toward sustainability." |
| Obscure vocabulary: S/B "interrupted". |
| Page 151: | "In a sign of the shift already underway, JPMorgan ended by noticing two new, if risky, spectre-defeating strategies on offer: carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". (See also pages 152 & 153.) |
| Page 166: | "The problematic of base and superstructure here resurfaces." |
| Missing word: S/B "The problematic nature of". |
| Page 167: | "Overshoot would play out in parallel with conventional mitigation, and carbon dioxide removal in particular would be rolled out in addition to emissions cuts, not as a substitute for them (the rationalist-optimist doxa)." |
| Obscure vocabulary: A doxa is an accepted belief or, in this context, the default optionS. S/B "default". |
| Page 182: | "A mine is not opened in a minute. It takes time before it yields it goods." |
| Typo: S/B "it yields its goods". |
| Page 192: | "Such quantities are the only that count for the climate." |
| Missing word: S/B "the only ones that count". |
| Page 192: | "To proclaim the transition underway would, in other words, require more than..." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". (See two more occurrences on this page.) |
| Page 212: | "It cheapens the utilisation of solar and wind, lubricate their diffusion and more fully realise their condition as free gits of nature." |
| Number errors: S/B "lubricates" and "realises". |
| Page 253: | "Others were somewhat more circumspect about the idea of giving the top job in international climate politics to an oil boss, a scepticism that lead to a trail of minor scandals..." |
| Verb tense: S/B "that led to". |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.