Greta Thunberg’s new book is urging the world to take climate action now

The Book of Climate
Crete Thunberg
Penguin Press, $30

The best shot we have at mitigating future climate change is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Since the Industrial Revolution began, man has already raised the average global temperature by about 1.1 degrees. If we continue to emit gases at the current rate, the world will probably exceed the 1.5-degree threshold before the end of the decade.

That fact clearly states that climate change is not so much a problem to be solved anytime soon; It is urgent that we respond now. However, most people don’t act like we’re facing the biggest crisis people have ever faced, not the politicians, not the media, not my neighbors, not me, if I’m being honest. This is what I realized at the end The Book of Climate by Greta Thunberg

The need to act now, to kick-start an approach to fossil fuels, almost leaves the page with a punch to the stomach. So while it’s not a pleasant read — it’s quite stressful — it’s a book I can’t recommend enough. The purpose of the book is not to argue with skeptics that climate change is real. We are well past that. However, anyone concerned about the future is called to be on the lookout.

It depends on the size of the bites; The Book of Climate It provides an encyclopedic overview of all aspects of the climate crisis, including basic science, the history of denial and inaction, and what needs to be done. Thunberg, who has become the face of climate activism since starting on Friday.SN: 12/16/19) convenes an all-star group of experts to write projects.

The first two sections of the book explain how a small amount of heating can have a large, far-reaching effect. Some readers will find this interesting. But when both build a little work next to each other, it becomes clear how delicate the system of the Earth’s atmosphere is. What also becomes clear is the significance of 1.5 degrees.SN: 12/17/18). Beyond this point, scientists fear, various aspects of the natural world may reach points that lead to irreversible changes, even if greenhouse gas emissions are subsequently brought under control. Ice sheets could melt, raise sea levels and submerge coastal areas. The Amazon rainforest could become a dry plain.

The cumulative effect would be complete climate change. Our health and the livelihoods of other species and entire ecosystems would be at risk, the book shows. Not surprisingly, essay after essay ends with the same message: we must cut greenhouse gas emissions now and quickly.

A repetition is found elsewhere in lib. Many essays offer overlapping scientific explanations, statistics on emissions, historical facts, and thoughts about the future. More than with boring repetition it reinforces the message that we know what climate change is, we know how to deal with it and we have known for a long time.

Thunberg’s anger and frustration over decades of inaction, false starts and broken commitments are revealed in his projects that run throughout the book. The world has known about human-caused climate change for a decade, and yet about half of human-related carbon dioxide emissions have ever been released since 1990. This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report, and only two before the world. Leaders met in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to sign the first international treaty to control emissions (SN: 6/23/90).

Perversely, the people who will endure extreme weather events, tidal waves, rising seas, and other impacts of climate change are the ones who are least to blame. The richest 10 percent of the world’s population account for half of all carbon dioxide emissions, while the top 1 percent emit more than twice as much as the bottom half. But because of the lack of resources, the poor population is not at all ready to cheat. “Human race did not create this crisis”, writes Thunberg, “it was created by those in power”.

That injustice must be confronted and appreciated as the world addresses climate change, perhaps even through reparations, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, a philosopher at Georgetown University, argues in one essay.

So what is the way forward? Thunberg and many of her co-authors are generally skeptical that the new technology will be our only savior. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, for example, is one way to control emissions. However, less than a third of the approximately 150 CCS projects that were supposed to be completed by 2020 are up and running.

Progress has been hampered by costs and failing technology, explains science writer Ketan Joshi. Or it can be a “thing” to restore damaged primary forests, seagrass meadows and other ecosystems that naturally absorb CO.₂ out of the air (SN: 9/14/22) activists George Monbiot and Rebecca Wrigley suggest.

Defining the climate problem not only requires transforming our energy and transportation systems, which usually get the most attention, but also our economy (unsustainable unlimited growth), political systems and connection to nature and to each other, the book’s authors argue.

The last part of the fifth book suggests how we might meet this challenging challenge. What is needed is a critical mass of individuals who want to make lifestyle changes and be heard. This could trigger a social movement to force politicians to listen and implement systemic and structural change. In other words, it is time to start acting on the crisis. Thunberg’s book does not end by offering hope. But each of us argues that we should make our own hope.

“For me, hope is not something that is given to you, it is something that you have to earn, to create,” he writes. “But it cannot be acquired passively, while standing and waiting for someone else to do something.” Hope is action. “

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