54 pages 1 hour read

Naomi Oreskes

The Collapse of Western Civilization

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Frenzy of Fossil Fuels”

A map of Bangladesh from 2300 comparing current sea levels with 2000 shows the country mostly underwater.

Scientists speaking out about the climate crisis were accused of attention-seeking. Such scientists were denounced and threatened, and some were legally prosecuted and had their work subpoenaed. Some countries—namely the US—passed laws that limited what scientists could research. In 2025, the US passed the National Stability Protection Act, under which hundreds of scientists were imprisoned for reducing public safety by emphasizing the climate crisis and potentially preventing economic development. While climate science did receive funding, it was at the expense of other branches of science and of the arts; the historian speculates that the arts were underfunded because artists grasped the consequences of the zeitgeist. The artists and scientists were proven correct, and, in 2010, it was recognized that scientists had underestimated the implications of climate change.

The historian attributes “human adaptive optimism”—or the perception of illimitable human adaptation—as a primary cause for humans’ failure to take climate action seriously, while scientists’ failure to recognize the severity of climate change is attributed to then-common discipline specialization and reductionist methods.

blurred text

blurred text

Related Titles

By Naomi Oreskes

Study Guide

logo

Merchants of Doubt

Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway