Book review: "i eat the stars: how to live fully and beautifully in a collapsing world"

There is a new-ish genre called "collapse literature" and the best of the bunch is this book by Australian writer and journalist Sarah Wilson. I bought it because reviews suggested that she had arrived at the same point I had. The main arguments she makes are:

1. Efforts to reverse climate change have failed. We humans just can't do it. We haven't hit any targets or benchmarks and the planet just keeps getting hotter. We can already see this happening around us and it's going to get worse.
2. We should abandon the idea that we can do it, but not the effort itself. This is not defeatism; it's realism. It's asking how we can live better in a collapsing world. We just need to be adults about this - infinite growth is a delusion - and we should learn from nature.
3. Switching to renewables is not enough; that's holding on to a false hope: Jevon's Paradox. Rather, we need to "do less, buy less, grab less" and aim for "ungrowth" and "simplification."

Since I already agree with Wilson, what more can I add? Only that none of my neighbors believe in any of this... I live in a world of oversized houses and oversized cars (many are Teslas), streets that are like racetracks, noisy leaf blowers, artificial turf, swimming pools, ficus monocultures, delivery vans, overflowing trash containers, and pesticide companies. The neighbors appear to be at war with nature and I'm sure if I dared ask them about the 100 degree temperatures last week, they would say like "Yes, we need to get our act together on climate change."

The negative reviews and online comments about Wilson's book are revealing, because that's always the best way to see if an author has hit a nerve. There in all its splendid detail is the sense of entitlement and the privilege of the reviewers (and pretty much everybody in the Western world).

There are three things I can say about the negative reviewers of the book in the context of the Five Stages of Grief as we slide toward collapse. First, "It stressed me out. 2 stars" (!!!) said one. Seriously, why read the book if you are in denial? Wilson is explicit that some people are just not ready to read the book at this point. Second, some have moved to anger: "This isn’t the stuff people are comfortable talking about." What? That's the entire point of the book, to figure out how to live with this! Third, the ones who are ready to bargain: "It can be a little hard sometimes to swallow the ‘instant expert’ style of name dropping all the famous thinkers"... In this climate catastrophe, collapse literature has become precious turf to be defended!

But I also found strong affirmative positions like this one, although we could say they are in the fourth stage of grief - depression:

To see my hopelessness fucking written down!!!!!! What a massive relief. Finally! Finally! Alhamdulillah. So mostly I then I felt relieved and not like this fringe cynic about the way things are going.

I am sure this commenter is younger. When Wilson writes, "The system is going down," Gen Z intuitively understands this. Other generations, especially boomers, not so much. In other words, this rejection or dismissal of Wilson's ideas and the belief in endless growth is exactly what got us into civilizational collapse in the first place, and it will be younger people who will help us learn to live within it. That's the final step: acceptance. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?