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Book reviews tagged with ‘Climate Change’
There is no question that we are addicted to fossil fuels — they are the lifeblood of our global economy and the main driver of the Second Industrial Revolution — so kicking the habit will be no easy task. As a key advisor to politicians throughout the world, Jeremy Rifkin has been working on a carbon-free alternative for over 30 years.
His new book begins with the obligatory dissection of the full crisis before us, which Rifkin describes in a nutshell as peak globalization. “We have reached the outer limits of how far we can extend global economic growth within an economic system dependent on oil and other fossil fuels,” he writes. He also cites climate change as another major threat that could be “cataclysmic” if left unchecked.
Click through for our full review…
R
esilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change
Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009, 166 pages.
Yogi Berra’s famous line, “The future ain’t what it used to be,” certainly rings true for decision makers and citizens concerned with the well-being of urban areas.
Resilient Cities, written by sustainability researchers Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer, describes a future in which peak oil and climate change will mean the end of many familiar signs of affluence. We will have to give up urban sprawl, transportation systems organized around personal motor vehicles, our dependence on global trade (especially in food) and, more generally, our ability … [Click here to read more!]
Climate change, climate forcing, global warming – all these terms frame a collective public debate about the future of the world as we know it. Since that “world” is dynamic and geographically diverse, it is not surprising that political responses range widely from hand-wringing to commitment and resignation, to disbelief and reticence, or even outright denial.
Why We Disagree About Climate Change + Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
Why We Disagree About Climate Change
Mike Hulme, Cambridge University Press; New York, 2009, 363 pages.
Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
Al Gore, Rodale Press; New York, 2009, 405 pages.
If we can’t agree about Climate Change, how can we possibly address the issues in time to prevent disaster?
Four decades of scientific study, unilateral government discussions and international collaboration, and here we sit with very little action to show for it. The question of why we can’t agree is therefore one of the most important questions of our age. University of East Anglia climate change professor Mike Hulme offers a valuable explanation in
his recent book Why we Disagree About Climate Change. He tells us it’s in the capital letters.
Scientific data about anthropogenic climate change: temperature rise, ice melt, impacts on ocean salinity and acidity, weather patterns and species loss fall into a largely uncontested category designated with a small “c.” But Hulme tells us that the problem of human response and cooperation resides in the big “C” of Climate Change; the social interpretation of those bare, irrefutable facts.
Once we enter the social sphere we find a vast territory peopled with cultural, experiential and linguistic differences as great as those of the physical planet. Choose any cultural lens: politics, … [Click here to read more!]
