| THE CLIMATE BOOK Greta Thunberg New York: Penguin Press, February 2023 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-593-49230-7 | ||||
| ISBN 0-593-49230-7 | 446pp. | HC/BWI | $30.00 | |
This work includes 85 articles by 104 separate authors,1 with 18 commentaries by Greta. It is comprehensive, as befits the multi-faceted nature of the task it lays before us: nothing less than stabilizing Earth's climate while assuring fair treatment of the peoples of less-developed countries, including providing them the clean energy they need to improve their lives.
The book presents a very basic, but very thorough and correct, overview of how the global overheating we humans are currently causing on the only planet where we can live affects us — and all the life on this planet.
This book is intended to be democratic, because democracy is the best tool to solve this crisis. There may be subtle disagreements between the people writing from the front lines. Each person in this book is speaking from their own point of view and may arrive at different conclusions. However, we need all of their collective wisdom if we are to create the enormous public pressure required to make change. And rather than having one or two 'communication experts' or individual scientists drawing all the conclusions for you as a reader, the idea behind this book is that, taken together, their knowledge in their respective areas of expertise will lead you to a point where you can start to connect the dots yourself. At least, this is my hope. Because I believe the most important conclusions are yet to be drawn — and hopefully they will be drawn by you. – Page 5 |
There are those who denigrate Greta Thunberg as a child being led astray by her parents, or by radical climate alarmists, or perhaps by some cynical "Big Green" cabal that aims to foster the growth of renewable energy and earn, thereby, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
How dare they?
The better question is: "How dare they not?" They are bound to defend the fossil-fuel status quo — either because they profit from it themselves, or because they have been taught to fear the changes that must come if we are to deal with climate change.
Fortunately, there is another assessment.
Last week, some of the world's leading climate change scientists confirmed that humans are making irreversible changes to our planet and extreme weather will only become more severe. This news is a "code red for humanity," said the United Nations secretary general. It is — but young people like us have been sounding this alarm for years. You just haven't listened. – This Is the World Being Left to Us by Adults Greta Thunberg, et al. |
Pay heed to the young folks making the independent assessments: Greta Thunberg and the three other activist who wrote this opinion, and the countless other young folks who are joining them. It's their future.
Its five sections are devoted to:
How can one review a work of this scope? I certainly cannot do a thorough review, any more than I could with The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. I can mention the wide variety of contributors, from well-known experts like Michael Mann and Katherine Hayhoe, through other professionals such as Sonja Vermuelen, to regional activists like Hilda Flavia Nakabuye of Uganda. I might summarize or quote from an article or three. But it's clear I won't be able to read everything here in a timely fashion.
What I can do is review Greta herself. I've been following her work since she appeared on the scene. I watched the lonely beginning of her Skolstrejk för Klimatet outside the Swedish parliament, and saw her end it after 251 weeks. I heard her address the United Nations in 2019, and watched her sail across the Atlantic on the racing yacht Malizia II to make that speech.2 She had planned to travel overland to the climate conference (COP25) in Santiago, Chile. But the conference was moved to Spain because of protests in Chile. I watched her return voyage to Lisbon aboard the catamaran La Vagabonde, from where she traveled to Madrid for COP25. I watched her visit multiple wilderness areas in order to better understand climate change's impact on those places. And I observed how she was treated by America's politicians and pundits.3
What I saw was a very dedicated and highly intelligent girl who speaks English far better than I will ever speak Swedish. I saw her transcend both unwarranted scorn and unwarranted praise as she became a young woman and shed some of her outrage. What remains are her dedication, her intelligence, a growing sophistication, and her original, vital message: trust the scientists and get on with the job of fixing climate.
So, given Greta Thunberg's track record, I conclude that this book she has pulled together is a worthwhile compendium of perspectives on our current climate crisis and how to solve it. There are black and white photographs and plenty of graphs and tables. There is a good Index and a detailed Table of Contents. There are production defects. The main one flows from the fact that you don't fit this many words into a standard-sized book of 446 pages without reducing the font size. Also, the pages of Greta's commentaries are printed low-contrast in black on dark-gray pages. These are minor defects, in my view. I give it full marks and rate it a keeper (if not necessarily a book that must be read all the way through.)
I'll give her the last words — even if those words are questions. How better to prompt a reader to start thinking?
If you, for example, live in Warsaw and would like to buy the most sustainable tomatoes from your local food shop, which ones should you buy? The organic ones from Spain or the non-organic ones grown in Poland? A likely answer is that none of them are sustainable. But perhaps an even better reply would be: who cares? Of course it is important to support and develop organic farming methods, and if we had a hundred years to solve this crisis, then these choices would really matter. But if we keep focusing solely on small, separate issues concerning our individual consumption we will not stand a chance of reaching our international climate targets. We don't need to keep telling people to change their light bulbs, to vote, or to stop throwing away food. Not because these things aren't important — they are — but because we can safely assume that the people who read books, watch TV documentaries or attend seminars about the climate crisis are already well aware of the importance of the democratic process and the fact that people in the Global North should use fewer resources. In fact, these narratives might even risk doing more harm than good, as they send a message that we can solve this within our current systems — and we no longer can. Voting is the most essential duty for all democratic citizens. But who do you vote for when the politics needed are nowhere in sight? And what do we do as democratic citizens when not even the universal compromise of voting for the best available candidate will bring us closer to finding a solution to our greatest problems? – Page 424 |
She answers those questions in the next couple of pages. I suggest you seek them out.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.