by Allison Carruth
The University of Chicago Press, 2025
Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart
Think of clouds. Light, airy, floating around in our atmosphere. Therefore, the words “cloud computing” make it seem as if was light and airy too. But no. That name was just a monumental feat of green-washing. Calling computer processing the “cloud” conceals the fact that the data centers of Big Tech suck up energy and belch out carbon at an alarming rate. Now with the computing demands of AI, even more so, and worse, much of that energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Ever since Elon Musk built a massive supercomputer in Memphis to train its AI, it’s become the biggest polluter in the area, which includes several historically Black neighborhoods, adding environmental injustice to the many sins of the digital cloud.
In Novel Ecologies, Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech, Allison Carruth presents in-depth and expansive research on Big Tech’s eco-optimistic and capitalistic vision for the future, a future that involves the remaking of nature itself with geo-engineering and genetic manipulation. Carruth believes this is not humanity’s only path to survival and presents a counter argument to this new technological world. Unpacking the work of fiction writers such as Octavia Butler and Ruth Ozeki, as well as visual artists who imagine livable communities, she makes a strong argument that building strong human and non-human connections, along with restoration ecology, is a better way forward than Nature Remade. As she writes in the Epilogue “these literary imaginings are extraordinarily powerful tools for real-world transformation.”
Written with extensive notes and citations, this is very much an academic book. It is perfect for an environmental humanities class or anyone wanting a serious dive into the material. I wish it were mandatory reading for all of Silicon Valley, but alas, they have their heads stuck in the clouds.
JoeAnn Hart writes about the pervasive and widespread effects of the climate crisis on the natural world and the human psyche. Her most recent book, Arroyo Circle, a story of reclamation in a time of loss, was released by Green Writers Press in 2024. Her other books include the prize-winning environmental and animal fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, the crime memoir Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s, as well as Float, a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean published by Ashland Creek Press, and Addled, a social satire. She is a regular reviewer of climate and animal fiction at EcoLit Books.
