27/01/2021

12 New Books Explore Fresh Approaches To Act On Climate Change

Yale Climate Connections - 

Authors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action given 'new possibilities' in 2021.


Despite a journey to this moment even more treacherous than expected, Americans now have a fresh opportunity to act, decisively, on climate change. The authors of the many new books released in just the past few months (or scheduled to be published soon) seem to have anticipated this pivotal moment.

Their number includes a scientist, an entrepreneur, and a journalist, each of whom has published among the first calls to action on climate change: Michael Mann, Bill Gates, and Elizabeth Kolbert.

But all the authors recognize that our repeated failures to seize previous opportunities says something about our market economy, our mindsets, and our political institutions. Thus the solutions offered in these new titles are as often political as they are scientific and technical, and psychological as often as they are environmental.

Americans succeeded in making a critical change: a climate denier no longer presides over the United States. With the 12 titles listed below, Americans can now consider new possibilities – at all levels – made possible by that first change.

As always, the descriptions of the 12 titles listed below are adapted from copy provided by the publishers.


The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, by Michael E. Mann (Public Affairs 2021, 368 pages, $29.00) (Editor’s note: A separate book review on this title will be posted soon at this site.)

In The New Climate War, renowned climate scientist Michael Mann shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change. But all is not lost. In his new book, Mann outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, by allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels, by debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate, and by combatting climate doomism. The societal tipping point necessary to win the new climate war won’t happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward.



How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates (Penguin Random House 2021, 272 pages, $26.95)

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical – and accessible – plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.



Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Penguin Random House 2021, 256 pages, $28.00)

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.




There Is No Planet B, Updated Edition, by Mike Berners-Lee (Cambridge University Press 2021, 321 pages, $12.95 paperback)

Hunger, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics, pandemics – the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, and what should we do first? Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly in a low-carbon world? How can we take control of technology? And, given the global nature of these challenges, what can any of us do as individuals? Mike Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers and plotted a course of action that is full of hope, practical, and enjoyable. He offers a big-picture perspective on the environmental and economic challenges of our day. This updated edition has new material on protests, pandemics, wildfires, investments, carbon targets and of course, on the key question: given all this, what can I do?



How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos, by David Pogue (Simon & Schuster 2021, 624 pages, $24.00 paperback)

In How to Prepare for Climate Change, bestselling self-help author and beloved CBS Sunday Morning science and technology correspondent David Pogue offers sensible, deeply researched advice for how we should start to ready ourselves for the years ahead. Pogue walks readers through what to grow, what to eat, how to build, how to insure, where to invest, how to prepare your children and pets, and even where to consider relocating when the time comes. He also provides wise tips for managing your anxiety. Timely and enlightening, How to Prepare for Climate Change is an indispensable guide for anyone who read The Uninhabitable Earth or The Sixth Extinction and wants to know how to make smart choices for the upheaval ahead.


The Story of CO2: Big Ideas for a Small Molecule, by Geoffrey A. Ozin and Mireille F. Ghoussoub (University of Toronto Press 2020, 280 pages, $34.95)

The climate crisis requires that we drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors of society. The Story of CO2 contributes to this challenge by highlighting the cutting-edge science and emerging technologies that can transform carbon dioxide into a myriad of products such as feedstock chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and fuels. This approach allows us to reconsider CO2 as a resource, and to add “carbon capture and use” to our other tools in the fight against catastrophic climate change. The Story of CO2 seeks to inspire readers with the latest carbon utilization technologies and explain how they fit within the broader context of carbon mitigation strategies in the shift towards a sustainable energy economy.


To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning, by Mitchel Thomashow (The MIT Press 2020, 288 pages, $30.00 paperback)

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene’s rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.


Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, by Vincent Ialenti (The MIT Press 2020, 208 pages, $25.00)

We live on a planet careening toward an environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth’s life span. In this book, political economist Vincent Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation, and the deflation of expertise – today’s popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet’s emergency. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.


The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty, by Maria Ivanova (The MIT Press 20201, 384 pages, $30.00 paperback)

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) was founded in 1972 as a nimble, fast, and flexible entity at the core of the UN system – a subsidiary body rather than a specialized agency. In this book, Maria Ivanova offers a detailed account of UNEP’s origin and history and a vision for its future. Ivanova counters the common criticism that UNEP was deficient by design, arguing that UNEP has in fact delivered on much (though not all) of its mandate. UNEP’s fiftieth anniversary, Ivanova argues, presents an opportunity for reinvention. She envisions a future UNEP that is the go-to institution for information on the state of the planet, a normative vision of global environmental governance, and support for domestic environmental agendas.


How Are We Going to Explain This? Our Future on a Hot Earth, by Jelmer Mommers (Simon & Schuster 2020, 224 pages, $16.95 paperback)

If climate change is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced, then why are we doing so little about it? Journalist Jelmer Mommers knows most people prefer not to talk or even think about climate change, and that is exactly why he wrote this book. Denial and despair are not the only possible responses to the current crisis. Drawing on the latest science, Mommers describes how we got here, what possible future awaits us, and how you can help make a difference. Five years in the making, How Are We Going to Explain This was an instant bestseller in the Netherlands. This updated translation, which includes responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, brings Mommers’ unique blend of realism and hope to the wider world.


The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking, by Roman Krznaric (The Experiment 2020, 288 pages, $25.95)

“Are we being good ancestors?” asked Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine in 1953 but refused to patent it – forgoing profit so that more lives could be saved. Salk’s generosity to future generations should inspire us. But when philosopher Roman Krznaric examines society today, he sees just the opposite: Our short term mindsets have “colonized the future.” In The Good Ancestor, Krznaric reveals six practical ways we can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including Deep-Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime). He aims to inspire more “time rebels” like Greta Thunberg – to shift our allegiance from this generation to all humanity.


Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis, by Elin Kelsey (Greystone Books 2020, 240 pages, $22.95 paperback)



We are at an inflection point: today, more people than ever before recognize that climate change and biodiversity loss are urgent and existential threats. Yet constant reports of climate doom are fueling an epidemic of eco-anxiety. Hope Matters boldly breaks through the narrative of doom and gloom that has overtaken conversations about our future to show why hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for tackling the planetary crisis. Award-winning author, scholar, and educator Elin Kelsey describes effective campaigns to support ocean conservation and species resilience, and rewilding. And she shows how we can build on these positive trends and harness all our emotions about the changing environment into effective personal and political action.


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Curb Population Growth To Tackle Climate Change: Now That’s A Tough Ask

The Conversation - 

Shutterstock/Liudmyla Guniavaia

Author
 is Associate Professor in Economics, University of Waikato     
Population growth plays a role in environmental damage and climate change.

But addressing climate change through either reducing or reversing growth in population raises difficult moral questions that most people would prefer to avoid having to answer.

The English political economist Thomas Robert Malthus laid out a compelling argument against overpopulation in his famous 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

He argued that increases in food production improved human wellbeing only temporarily. The population would respond to greater wellbeing by having more children, increasing population growth and eventually over-running the food supply, leading to famine.

But his essay could not have been timed worse, coming near the beginning of the longest period of sustained global population growth in history. This was driven in part by vast improvements in agricultural productivity over time.

This idea of hard environmental limits to population growth was resurrected in the 20th century in publications such as The Population Bomb, a 1968 book by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, and The Limits to Growth, a 1972 publication commissioned by the Club of Rome think-tank.

The implication of these treatises on the perils of population growth suggest population control is an important measure to limit carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and global climate change.

Four key drivers of global emissions

 Population growth is not the only driver of global CO₂ emissions and climate change.

The Kaya identity, an equation introduced by the Japanese energy economist Yoichi Kaya in the 1990s, relates the total emissions of CO₂ to four factors:
  1. total population
  2. GDP per person
  3. energy use per unit of GDP
  4. CO₂ emissions per unit of energy.
CO₂ emissions can be addressed by reducing any one (or more) of those four factors, provided the other factors are not growing even faster than those reductions.

Not all of the factors are equally easy to affect though. That explains why to date, most countries have concentrated on reducing energy intensity (such as with home insulation to increase the efficiency of energy consumption) and reducing carbon intensity (such as with wind and solar as greener energy production methods).

But the rate of progress in slowing global CO₂ emissions has not been sufficient as yet to achieve agreed targets.

Restricting economic growth

 Many people have argued we should target lower economic growth to curb environmental damage.

Globally, the trend is for GDP per person to increase generally over time. Reducing this growth, or moving into managed economic decline, would contribute to reducing CO₂ emissions.

But achieving reductions in CO₂ emissions through reducing economic growth comes with unavoidable distributional consequences, both within and between countries.

Not all countries have shared equally in past economic growth. Low-income countries could persuasively argue it is unfair for their current low level of development to be locked in by reducing their ability to continue to grow their economies.

The moral dilemma of population control

 That leaves population control, but the issues here are no less challenging. Government-led population control presents serious moral questions for democratic countries.

That’s why the only country to have undertaken a (moderately) successful form of population control is China, through the One Child Policy that ran from 1979 to 2015. Over that period, the total fertility rate in China roughly halved.

But an unintended consequence of the policy is an accelerated rate of population ageing in China, which now has one of the oldest populations in Asia.

The most challenging aspect of using population control to reduce CO₂ emissions is ethical.

If our concern about climate change arises because we want to ensure a liveable future world for our grandchildren, is it ethical to ensure that pathway is achieved by preventing some grandchildren from ever seeing that world because they are never born?

That is a very difficult question to answer.

Population declines in some countries

 Public policy initiatives to control population growth are probably not even necessary.

All high-income countries currently already have below-replacement fertility, with fewer children being born than are necessary to maintain a constant population.

In the year to June 2020, New Zealand experienced its lowest total fertility rate ever, with 1.63 births per woman (replacement fertility needs at least 2.1 births per woman).

Other countries are also seeing their populations decreasing. For example, the population of Japan peaked in 2010 and has declined by more than 1.4 million people over the past decade.

Future population growth is projected by the United Nations to peak at around 11 billion in 2100 and then to slip into slow decline after that.

So if we can get through this century without catastrophic environmental effects, then population may start to decline as a contributor to climate change.

Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty about future population growth, so only time will tell whether the UN’s predictions hold true.

Other solutions

 There are many ways to tackle climate change, and not all focus on emissions. We could attempt to mitigate its impacts, or adapt to environmental changes, or use technology to remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere.

On the emissions side, we could look to reduce further the energy intensity or carbon intensity of the economy (the final two factors in the Kaya Identity).

Innovations in any of these areas are likely to be the most fruitful avenues for dealing with climate change, in large part because they avoid the most difficult moral questions.

But if we are unwilling or unable to make those changes work, and soon, then managing population and economic growth may become our only recourse. At that point, humanity will have to confront increasingly difficult moral questions.

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Greta Thunberg's Message To World Leaders At #DavosAgenda

World Economic Forum - Greta Thunberg 
Greta Thunberg has delivered a powerful message on climate change to participants of the virtual Davos event. Image: World Economic Forum
  • Greta Thunberg calls for urgent action to address the climate and ecological crisis.
  • She reminds the world of the promises made to children and grandchildren - a promise they expect to be kept.
  • The proposals being discussed and presented at the moment are 'very far from being enough.'




My name is Greta Thunberg and I’m not here to make deals. You see, I don’t belong to any financial interest or political party. So I can’t bargain or negotiate.

I am only here to once again remind you of the emergency we’re in. The crisis that you and your predecessors have created and inflicted upon us. The crisis that you continue to ignore. 
I am here to remind you of the promises that you have made to your children and grandchildren. And to tell you that we are not willing to compromise on the very minimum safety levels that still remain.

The climate and ecological crisis can unfortunately no longer be solved within today’s systems. According to the current best available science that is no longer an opinion; that’s a fact.

We need to keep this in mind as countries, businesses and investors now rush forward to present their new so-called “ambitious” climate targets and commitments.

The longer we avoid this uncomfortable truth, and the longer we pretend we can solve the climate - and ecological emergency - without treating it like a crisis — the more precious time we will lose. And this is time we do not have.

Today, we hear leaders and nations all over the world speak of an “existential climate emergency”. But instead of taking the immediate action you would in any emergency, they set up vague, insufficient, hypothetical targets way into the future, like “net-zero 2050”.

Targets based on loopholes and incomplete numbers. Targets that equal surrender. It’s like waking up in the middle of the night, seeing your house on fire, then deciding to wait 10, 20 or 30 years before you call the fire department while labeling those trying to wake people up alarmists.

We understand that the world is very complex and that change doesn’t happen overnight. But you’ve now had more than three decades of bla bla bla. How many more do you need? Because when it comes to facing the climate and ecological emergency, the world is still in a state of complete denial.

The justice for the most affected people in the most affected areas is being systematically denied.

Even though we welcome every single climate initiative, the proposals being presented and discussed today are very far from being enough. And the time for “small steps in the right direction” is long gone. If we are to have at least a small chance of avoiding the worst consequences of the climate and ecological crisis, this needs to change.

Because you still say one thing, and then do the complete opposite. You speak of saving nature, while locking in policies of further destruction for decades to come.

You promise to not let future generations down, while creating new loopholes, failing to connect the dots, building your so called ”pledges” on the cheating tactics that got us into this mess in the first place.

If the commitments of lowering all our emissions by 70, 68 or even 55 percent by 2030 actually meant they aim to reduce them by those figures then that would be a great start. But that is unfortunately not the case.

And since the level of public awareness continues to be so low our leaders can still get away with almost anything. No one is held accountable. It’s like a game. Whoever is best at packaging and selling their message wins.

As it is now, we can have as many summits and meetings as we want, but unless we treat the climate and ecological crisis like a crisis, no sufficient changes will be achieved. What we need — to begin with — is to implement annual binding carbon budgets based on the current best available science.



Right now more than ever we are desperate for hope. But what is hope? For me hope is not more empty assurances that everything will be alright, that things are being taken care of and we do not need to worry.

For me, hope is the feeling that keeps you going, even though all odds may be against you. For me hope comes from action not just words. For me, hope is telling it like it is. No matter how difficult or uncomfortable that may be.

And again, I’m not here to tell you what to do. After all, safeguarding the future living conditions and preserving life on earth as we know it is voluntary. The choice is yours to make.

But I can assure you this. You can't negotiate with physics. And your children and grandchildren will hold you accountable for the choices that you make. How's that for a deal?

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