The Great Derangement is separated into three sections: Stories, History, and Politics.
In “Stories,” Ghosh claims that contemporary fiction does not deal with climate change in any real way. It might include aspects of the supernatural, or take on a dystopian theme, but it does not deal with the crisis in the here and now. He connects this to the development of the modern novel, which happened coterminously with science’s embrace of “gradualism” as opposed to “catastrophism.” The modern novel was not supposed to embrace too much time, like the ancient epics, or go far beyond individual character development. Thus, climate change only plays a role in some science fiction works, but the mere fact that the subject is taken up by a genre deemed inferior or niche indicates that literature is, as a whole, unwilling to take it seriously.
In “History” Ghosh traces the development of the carbon economy, linking it to capitalism and, perhaps more importantly, imperialism. He shows how imperialism actually forestalled the growth of Asia as an economic (and polluting) powerhouse, and says we would have reached our point of no return much earlier but for colonialism. This is not a commendation of colonialism, of course, but a reorientation of our thinking: he stresses there is no one place or people to blame, but rather that we are all in this together.
In “Politics” Ghosh analyzes the shortcomings of the Anglosphere’s political structures and accounts for how the distribution of global power is a core problem in the addressing of the climate crisis. He ends by contrasting two important texts issued in 2015, a year of extreme weather events: the Pope’s encyclical LaudatoSi’ and the Paris Agreement on climate change. While the latter was important in terms of its collaborative nature and its embrace of climate science, the encyclical was far more impressive in its clarity, brevity, and willingness to accept hard truths about the drivers of climate change and who/what is to blame. Ghosh ends by saying he finds hope in religions’ potential role in driving awareness and change, as their characteristics are more conducive to this than those of political apparatuses, and they are already far-reaching and established as opposed to the sorts of activist networks that would need to form.
