After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort
Written by Eric Dean Wilson
Narrated by Eric Dean Wilson
4/5
()
About this audiobook
In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s—when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress—to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm.
Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture—in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values—combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. “Meticulously researched and engagingly written” (Amitav Ghosh), this “knockout debut” (New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.
Eric Dean Wilson
Eric Dean Wilson’s essays, poems, and criticism have appeared in Time, Esquire, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Tin House, among other publications. A graduate of The New School’s creative writing MFA program, Wilson is pursuing a PhD in the English program at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where his work focuses on American studies, environmental humanities, and the Black radical tradition. He currently teaches writing at Queens College. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he now lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Related to After Cooling
Related audiobooks
Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Losing Earth: A Recent History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined - And Redefined - Nature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Life of Ice: Dispatches from a Disappearing World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Time and Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America's Coasts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whose Water is it, Anyway?: Taking Water Protection into Public Hands Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Plastic: A Toxic Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Environmental Science For You
Silent Spring Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Without Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sixth Extinction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Teaming With Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life on Earth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underland: A Deep Time Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim our Health Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Uncertain Sea: Fear is everywhere. Embrace it. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way of Imagination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for After Cooling
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The author is a confused and pretentious man. Mixing his feelings about the feelings of other people about his sexual orientation with the technology of energy and refrigeration did neither of the stories justice. He so thoroughly propagandized by the political correctness of the left that he has lost the use of his native language. Excuse me while I turn the thermostat down.