>>REVIEW
THE WEATHER MAKERS
Tim Flannery
HarperCollins Canada, 306 pp.
The Weather Makers is a compelling book about what climate change will do to the world if we don’t immediately start making dramatic changes to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions.
Author and scientist Tim Flannery describes what is already occurring around the world due to increasing levels of greenhouse gases ending up in the atmosphere, how scientists are measuring the changes and, most alarmingly, what scientists predict will happen if we don’t take meaningful action. He then delves into what humans need to do to avert disaster, and makes some concrete suggestions for individual action.
The book is a global call to arms from a passionate expert. His love of nature pervades the book and makes the reader fear for the fate of the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity as well as the future of the human race.
Everything Flannery writes about is backed up with science, but it’s relayed in an accessible, engaging manner. His overall message is hopeful, but he’s emphatic that there’s no time to waste. As he says, "the transition to a carbon-free economy is eminently achievable because we have all the technology we need to do so. It is only a lack of understanding and the pessimism and confusion generated by special interest groups that is stopping us from going forward."
He emphasizes that it’s not a question of when climate change will occur, because it has already; what matters is how severe those changes will be. There’s also no question as to why – he notes that half the energy generated since the Industrial Revolution has been consumed over the last 20 years, citing research that shows greenhouse gas emissions will have to be reduced by 70 per cent below 1990 levels by the middle of this century to stabilize the Earth’s climate.
"When we consider the fate of the planet as a whole, we must be under no illusions as to what is at stake," he writes. "Earth’s average temperature is around 15 degrees C, and whether we allow it to rise by a single degree, or 3 degrees C, will decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of species, and most probably, billions of people. Never in the history of humanity has there been a cost-benefit analysis that demands greater scrutiny."
This is an important, ambitious book by a talented writer. If you still don’t feel freaked out by the prospect of climate change, you will after reading it. |
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