This didn’t really work for me, unfortunately. On a basic level, I agree with the central tenets of Aronoff’s argument here which are that 1. The deregulation by the government of the private sector has allowed corporations (particularly fossil fuel companies) to exert concerning levels of control over policy-making (side note: if you are interested in learning more about that, I would highly recommend Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth, which covers the early research by fossil fuel companies into climate change in the 1970s and tracks the history of the climate change denial narrative from the early 70s to 1989); 2. The climate crisis is inherently tied to issues of social equity, and its solutions should address that; and 3. The United States (and the world) needs to move away from a fossil-fuel-dependent economy as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Aronoff majorly lost me in making that argument, for two reasons.

First, this book is simply too long. Particularly in “Part 2: Green Dreams Versus Eco-Apartheid,” Aronoff begins to repeat herself and restate her argument (sometimes in quite literally the exact same phrasing as she had used in previous chapters) in ways that do not add complexity or additional evidence to her previously established argument. In fact, when additional evidence was presented, I often found it to be presented in a convoluted and wordy way, which made it difficult as the reader to organize this new evidence within her larger argument. This was especially true when pieces of evidence were presented that appeared to refute Aronoff’s own political ideology, as she often seemed to go out of her way to minimize the evidence while also still bringing it up.

On a related note, my second gripe is less so to do with the content of the book, than with the unfortunate coincidence of the publication’s timing with President Biden’s announcement of his Build Back Better Plan. Aronoff makes it clear that her political ideology is closest aligned with that of Democratic Socialism and she is one of the strongest advocates of the Green New Deal (in 2021) that I have come across in a while. Because of this, she has a lot of critiques of both Joe Biden specifically and the sector of the Democratic Party he represents. While I can understand the critiques, I had a hard time reconciling those critiques with her discussion of the Green New Deal, given that the reality of our political climate/governmental structure means that Biden’s Infrastructure plan is the only “Green New Deal” we will realistically have* (not to mention that it does actually propose a fair amount of what she suggests in this book). On a related note, I also struggled in general with the way she approached policymaking, as many of her ideas seemed in direct opposition to one another, or simply unrealistic for an immediate policy proposal (or both!). This is particularly true in discussions of global politics, as Aronoff reiterates several times the importance of climate reparations for the Global South, but simultaneously proposes a lot of insular economic policies regarding global trade (except for when we will need to buy all our clean energy infrastructure from China because, as one of her interviewees basically says, they are the only logical manufacturers, but I digress…)

Finally, this book almost exclusively focuses its attention on climate mitigation, as opposed to climate adaptation (which, disclaimer, is much more where my professional and academic interests lie), so any potential reader should be prepared for much discussion about debt, energy infrastructure, and the economy. All in all, I do think there is an audience for this book, but I’m not sure more pragmatic readers interested in climate mitigation and adaptation solutions such as myself will find this as fulfilling.

*To hear someone else also say this, check out this post from The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet newsletter: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/04/the-one-thing-to-understand-about-bidens-infrastructure-plan/618587/

Thank you to the author and Bold Type Books (Harper Collins) for providing me with an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Overheated comes out this coming Tuesday, April 20.

Nothing about the book is bad exactly, and the topic(s) covered alone makes it essential. It doesn't however feel particularly enlightening for those familiar with the material nor does it feel designed as an intro for people unfamiliar. It mostly functions as a good synthesis for what you know from following the right people on Twitter.