The Lost Cause

It's thirty years from now. We're making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can't let go?

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.

And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they're armed to the teeth.

The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 11/14/2023
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.70h x 5.60w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781250865939

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2023 pg. 9
Publishers Weekly 09/11/2023
Booklist 10/01/2023 pg. 36