The weak link in McKibben’s strategy is that like many greens he still seems to be trying to scare the public so badly that it will overlook the many obvious and frequently fatal flaws in the hodgepodge of dubious policy ideas the green movement floats.
Indeed. I don’t mind the occasional reference to inundated riparian or esturine cities such as one finds, say, in Jack McDevitt’s series that starts with The Engines of God (Amazon claims this to be called the “Hutch” series but that moniker grates for some reason). But the crap some people are writing where the climate is the protagonist and the characters are just there for window-dressing really tends to piss me off.
SF used to be about big themes and big dreams. Today it’s largely been co-opted by the “right-thinking” people just like everything else, and most of it sucks big donkey wang — and rightly deserves the dismissive epitaph epithet** “sciffy” that folks like Forrest J Ackerman* despised.
H/T: Insty.
* I had the pleasure of meeting Forry in 1979 at NorthAmericon, and toured his home in 1980 while visiting friends in LA. He was a great and personable man with whom I am honored to have had the chance to chat a couple of times.
** Update: While I think SF as a genre is generally dancing on the edge of the grave these days, the word I really did mean to write was “epithet”.