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Book reviews tagged with ‘Climate Change’
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
James Hansen, New York: Bloomsbury, 2009, 320 pages.
It’s odd. At 68, James Hansen, arguably the planet’s most renowned climatologist and one of the earliest prophets of human-induced global climate change, has finally published his first book.
“Odd” is a fitting description for the book as well.
Storms of My Grandchildren is an expansive treatise on the perils of increased carbon dioxide emissions, juxtaposed with anecdotes of Hansen’s 
meetings with the likes of Dick Cheney and his Climate Task Force, … [Click here to read more!]
The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
Rob Hopkins
White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2008, 240 pages.
At last, here is a book about our common future that we don’t have to be afraid to read. Written by “transition movement” founder Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook offers an inspiring and practical blueprint for community-based action in response 
to the challenges of climate change and … [Click here to read more!]
Climate Wars
Gwynne Dyer
Toronto: Random House, Canada, 2008, 288 pages.
Global Warring
Cleo Paskal
Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2009, 288 pages.
Here’s a fact I had never considered: the word “rival” comes from the Latin word rivalis, meaning “those who draw water from the same source.” Rivalry is closely related to the availability of shared resources, and tensions are easily triggered when food and water are at stake.
Now, let’s take this to the extreme: climate change projections suggest that the flow of many of the world’s major rivers will be seriously reduced as glaciers retreat. The scale of potential conflict is staggering. The Himalayan watershed alone, which includes the Ganges, Indus, Yangtze and Mekong 
Rivers, supplies water to almost half the people on this planet, including nuclear powers China, India and Pakistan.
But this is about more than rivers. Two new books on the issue, Climate Wars and Global Warring, introduce a bevy of reasons for concern: natural disasters, disappearing low-lying island states, shifting coasts and access to oceanic exploitation zones, the melting Northwest Passage, desertification and altered patterns of food production. Each has the potential to redefine how we interpret and conceptualize international law, how we interact diplomatically with other nations, and how and why we engage militarily.
Cleo Paskal, a fellow at Chatham House who boasts journalistic stints at The Economist and the Chicago Tribune, seeks to “introduce and legitimize the idea that environmental change is about to have enormous, and specific, geopolitical consequences.”…[Click here to read more!]
Now or Never 
Tim Flannery
Toronto ON: Harpercollins Canada 2009
In the 1970s, the environmental movement was regularly criticized for being too negative, and providing too little emphasis on positive solutions. Or, they were simply dismissed as “chicken little” radicals. These early criticisms ushered in several years of hushed tones and muted pessimism.
These days, as the world’s ecological and climate woes continue to worsen, there seems to be a little more straight talk from the green corner. The reason is hardly worth mentioning, but here goes. While ecological destruction throughout the… [Click here to read more!]
