Books in Review
Kate Ervine
Carbon
Cambridge, UK. Polity Press. 2018.
222 pages.
The problem of carbon is challenging every
aspect of society today, and there are no easy
answers. Kate Ervine, a faculty member in
the International Development Studies Pro-
gram at St. Mary’s University in Nova Sco-
tia, tackles the complexity of the issue with
an in-depth analysis of the environmental,
economic, and sociological consequences of
the use of fossil fuels. Her solution, which
she describes as “democratic ecologies,”
involves social justice, ethics, and tech-
nology, countering the “luxury ecologies”
accessible by the privileged few. While they
are not described in-depth, “democratic
ecologies” do seem to be our only path
forward to achieve lower carbon usage and
more equitable access to clean resources and
economic participation.
Carbon does not start out with a solution;
instead, it approaches the question, “What is
carbon?” with a lengthy description of its
unique chemical properties that make it
possible to have so many different struc-
tures, allowing for long, complex chains and
rings with single, double, and triple bonds.
Ervine’s narrative is of transformation and
the miracle of life; however, she points out
that the same element, carbon, that is a
building block of life, is, when misused, the
vector of extermination of life on earth. Car-
bon becomes weaponized as carbon dioxide
(CO 2 ) and becomes the primary greenhouse
gas, responsible for climate change and the
acidification of the oceans. When Ervine
begins to discuss the impact of the byprod-
ucts of the consumption of carbon and a
carbon-based economy, her narrative turns
resolutely apocalyptic, as we find ourselves
on a trajectory toward a dead planet. And
thus, the central problem of carbon narra-
tives is exposed; they can be nihilistic, self-
limiting, and subvert science.
There is certainly nothing new in inform-
ing us about extinctions and contamination.
However, Ervine evaluates the strategies of
carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon
offsets, and cap and trade. CCS is a tech-
nological approach that purports to be able
to take the CO 2 produced by manufactur-
ing and to either inject it innocuously into
porous underground geological formations
or to inject it into partially depleted oil and
gas reservoirs where the CO 2 will interact
with the residual oil, change its miscibility,
and allow the hydrocarbons to be produced.
Thus, it is possible to simultaneously dis-
pose of CO 2 and recover the oil that was leftbehind. Ervine acknowledges that enhanced
oil recovery (EOR) using CO 2 injection is a
good idea, but CCS and EOR will only take
care of a minuscule percentage of the CO 2
generated by human activity.
Ervine also critiques economic solu-
tions. She demonstrates how cap and trade
and carbon offsets are, in reality, destruc-
tive. First, cap and trade allows polluters
and carbon users to simply buy their way
to continuing their practices. In theory, the
trading will result in an equilibrium, but
the world’s poorest economies are often theFEATURED REVIEW78 W LT SUMMER 2019