OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #237, JULY 9, 2025.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #237, JULY 9, 2025.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

 

War against Nature
Patrick Whitmarsh.  Writing our Extinction.
Barry Sanders.  The Manifesto of Herman Melville.

 WAR AGAINST NATURE FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT

Writing Our Extinction: Anthropocene Fiction and Vertical Science by Patrick Whitmarsh.  Stanford UP, 2023.  228pp.

Excerpts + more

DescriptionReviewsAbout the Author

Mid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology produced new understandings and images of the planet that circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and including the extinction of humankind.

Whitmarsh examines works by writers such as Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Reza Negarestani, and Colson Whitehead alongside postwar scientific programs including the Space Race, atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, and geological expeditions such as Project Mohole (which attempted to drill to the earth's mantle). As Whitmarsh argues, by focusing readers' attention on the fragility of postwar life through a vertical lens, Anthropocene fiction highlights the interconnections between human behavior and planetary change. These fictions situate industrial history within the much longer narrative of geological time and reframe scientific progress as a story through which humankind writes itself out of existence.

 

OIL AND THE DESTRUCTON OF NATURE AND CIVILIZATION

Barry Sanders.  The Manifesto of Herman Melville.    The
US literary masterpiece, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville condemns totally the war against nature by the relentlessly acquisitive US whaling industry, which he applies to the petroleum industry with equal indignation.  It’s a two-pronged indictment:  a thorough condemnation of the immensely rapacious and cruel whaling industry’s killing of millions of whales for industry and domestic uses, and a parallel case against the ensuing destruction of nature by the petroleum industry.  These two histories of vicious greed via capitalism have brought us to the end of nature and our civilization.  Here’s a sample passage from his conclusion: “’…we have little time to save what remains of the natural world.  [The] Sixth UN Assessment of the Condition of the Climate warns that we have moved dangerously close to the point of no return.  If we do not radically reduce our levels of greenhouse gases, life on Earth will struggle and stumble for perhaps thirty more years. . . .Can we turn aside our suicide mission?  Is it too late?  Is the killing of nature just too much for us?” (83).   –Dick.