The 2084 Report

Ive read the original (2011) back in 2019 and found it very poignant, especially for the politics that were occurring during that time in the United Stares. Ive read this revised (2020) second edition and found it an excellent and gripping read. This year Ive used it as a book club book and it stirred up a lot of conversation about the environment, climate changes, and politics. Especially in a region that is notoriously conservative and regressive in climate politics. For these purposes, it was excellent.
I recommend this book if you have difficulty abstracting a future were the effects climate change are hard to imagine and want someone (fictionally) to paint you a picture.
Also, if you judge a book by its cover, you will be pleased. The book cover is pretty cool.

This is a very sobering account of what the future could look like if the world doesn’t wake up and do something about global warming (especially the republicans in politics in the US, which is mentioned in the book). When people and corporations make decisions based on short-term profit, instead of long-term consequences, the situations in the book result.

These stories are told in a fashion similar to, “World War Z”, with the author interviewing various people from around the world for first-hand accounts of the effects of global warming. Some of these accounts are truly terrifying. People die. Billions of people died. At one point, someone makes an off-hand comment that the current population is 3 billion. The comment is never addressed, but when you realize the population today is 7 billion (and rising), the full effect of the disaster hits you in the gut–hard.

I wish the members of congress would read this book, especially those who claim global warming is a hoax or that God will save the planet. I don’t know if these people are just stupid, corrupt, or truly don’t believe in climate change. I think the first two are the most likely scenarios. When money is at stake–lots of money–corrupt people do stupid things in their own self-interest. Throughout the world, republicans in the US are pretty much the only ones who don’t admit to believing in climate change although the proof is staring them in the face. Unfortunately, they also have a lot of power. If a republican President is elected, we can all kiss the world goodbye.

Our descendants (if any survive) will hate us (as they do in the book) for not doing anything to address this problem. It has been well-known for decades when there was still time for us to do something to stop it. We didn’t. And this book may address the consequences of this inaction perfectly. Or it could be worse.

This climate change warning novel was written from a future historical perspective and is scientifically and politically spot-on, albeit somewhat depressing. However, it could have drawn in a wider range of readers if the author had used this format to develop more appealing characters that would emotionally link the reader to the events depicted.

I really wish that everyone could read this book, or one like it, with the understanding that while this is mostly fiction, the consequences of doing nothing could prove much of it truth. In addition, I found the insight of nuclear energy interesting.

One word sums this book up: terrifying. TERRIFYING.

Written by geologist Dr James Lawrence Powell, this is a book of fiction, but reads as non-fiction. Set in the year 2084, it is an oral history of the devastation wreaked upon our planet by unchecked global warming. The narrator interviews different people in different areas of the world to see why we didnt do enough to save our planet, what we could have done, and how global warming affected everyone, everywhere. The book is divided into different chapters that deal clearly with areas such as melting ice/rising sea levels, drought, fascism, immigration, war, extinction, and clean energy possibilities.

One could say that this is dystopian fiction, but I think we would be better off categorizing this as a red flag warning: in 2020 we are still not striving to reverse the effects of the damage that our nations are creating to the environment, and every year we are losing the chance to ensure that our children and grandchildren live in a world where they will thrive. This is really our last chance.

Just this August here in California we had a week of sustained temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Its not difficult to imagine this becoming the norm, to imagine losing power constantly, not being able to grow food And so on. The 2084 Report provides a pretty terrible overview of what our world will look like in 2084, and a lot of it is based on hard scientific facts.

If you are going into this book thinking that you will be reading a novel, you may be a bit thrown off by the content. It reads as an oral history, and therefore as nonfiction. I personally think that this is the best way to deal with this topic: it is very real, and very terrifying, and the only way to make a change in what our next generations will face, is to make it now.