Tag: Book reviews

Greed to Green

greed to green

We can’t successfully tackle climate change without changes to the corporate regime which has been in place in America since the Reagan presidency. That’s the underlying message of  Charles Derber in his latest book Greed to Green: Solving Global Warming and Remaking the Economy. It’s a message he delivers with directness in a book much more readable than I expected from an academic sociologist.

He accepts the position of scientists like Hansen and others who point to the ominous dangers of tipping points in climate and conclude that we are already above a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which they consider no more than 350 parts per million.  It’s not a happy acceptance. “No sane person would wish it to be the scientific truth.” He recounts the terrible difficulty he had, after realising with despair the seriousness of climate change, in dealing emotionally with the prospect of mass, collective death – “more difficult than dealing with my own personal death”.

The only good news he discerns is that the scientific truth may be spreading and leading to a tipping point in the world’s social and political awareness. But any realisation of the scientific truth by a majority of the community has not passed beyond cognition to what he calls gut acceptance. He acknowledges the difficulties of such acceptance, drawing on his own experience. The reality is so serious it intensifies the psychological pressure to deny.

Nevertheless he identifies some factors that make gut acceptance of climate change tolerable: we have the power to stop or mitigate it, tackling it can also contribute to solving more immediate social problems, and there are benefits in the green lifestyle. Meanwhile the denial industry has been powerfully influential, though he notes that it is now moving from Stage 1 denial, that global warming is a hoax,  to Stage 2, that human-caused global warming exists but must be solved gradually with a slow phasing out of fossil fuels. “If the new denial succeeds, civilisation will be destroyed in the name of green incremental reform.”

In sectors of America greening is partly under way thanks to the actions of long-term thinkers. However the frontal long-term attack is insufficient to gather wide enough public support. It needs to be accompanied by a second path – what he calls a “time-tricking” strategy that seeks to solve the long-term crisis by hitching a ride on the back of short term issues worrying the majority of Americans. He sees this as a key strategy for the Obama administration – and one which Obama himself understands and is already employing.

But there has to be a systemic shift in power. A change from the current corporate regime, in place since the Reagan presidency, is essential if climate change is to be tackled. Unrestrained capitalism creates climate change. It externalises environmental and social costs. It is destructive of the commons. Derber urges a new green regime, which he describes as the best blend of different economic models with surviving corporations restructured and subject to greater public accountability.

Socialism by stealth I can hear the denialists proclaiming. Certainly Derber associates himself with the welfare of working people and sees the necessity for organised labour to play a significant part in a green regime. He laments the way American jobs have been degraded under the corporate regime, many outsourced and others casualised. One of the important  attractions of a green regime is that it will be rich in secure jobs, many of them associated with renewable energy. He also proposes pragmatic temporary nationalisation of some banks and of giant dysfunctional oil and coal companies.  But not  on the basis of any socialist ideology. The banks have already required enormous injections of public money to keep them afloat. The fossil fuel energy giants such as Exxon are already effectively on the public dole.

Essentially Derber is urging a transformation of America away from an increasingly unstable economy based on ever-growing consumption of unnecessary goods and ever-expanding suburban housing. Coerced consumerism he calls it, which has locked Americans into a pattern of insecurity and overwork. In its place he urges an economy solidly based on the production of green energy and its efficient use. Those jobs stay local and secure. And there’s plenty of room for market-inspired innovation within such an economy. The transformation is necessary to fight climate change, and at the same time it works to alleviate America’s current social justice crises.

Derber’s book is focused on the US “because a green revolution here will be a shot heard around the world.”  In discussing the ways in which the green revolution becomes global he points to “a new posthegemonic order of green security and globalisation”.  He’s firm on the need for the West to take responsibility for the poverty and environmental degradation it has foisted on the rest of the world. The West must finance massive aid and technology transfers that allow the remaining nations to develop a green strategy without giving up their rights to achieve a decent standard of life.  He offers several suggestions for finding the money for this purpose: cut the bloated American military budget; implement a green Tobin tax on currency movements; cancel dirty debt in exchange for green development; create a new “commons” of clean energy technology.  The importance of a global carbon tax is explained.  An interesting take on going local, not to abolish globalisation but to reduce its space, sees Derber use the term glocalism, favouring local economies wherever possible and reserving global production only for those areas where local production cannot work.

Derber is impressed by much that Obama has said about climate change and much that he has set in place. He particularly welcomes the respect he has accorded to science and scientists who understand the reality of global warming.  But it would be a mistake to think he won’t need a big push from social movements.  Derber himself is a lifelong social activist. He considers that today’s social and environmental movements are the best last hope for solving global warming on the urgent time scale required. It has always been social movements  which have awakened America to urgent systemic crises such as slavery, women’s disenfranchisement, or the capitalist exploitation of workers.  Derber discusses the ways in which movements can face up to the existential truth of the emergency of climate change and take swift radical action to mobilize the largest number of people including the president.

Derber is a lively writer. He has a go at a short Greek drama in the course of his book, with the Oracle reminding foolish people that time is running out.  He also provides the text of several fireside chats for Obama to have with the American people, in the fashion of Franklin Roosevelt. In an engaging short personal account he answers any who wonder whether he walks his talk – a mixed case, he reports, not a couch potato but not a hero-activist either.  His talk made good sense to me, whether he walks it assiduously or not.

The Rising Sea

“All indications are that we should be alarmed about the future of sea level rise and should be doing something about it now.”  Orrin Pilkey and Rob Young, eminent coastal scientists, wrote their book The Rising Sea to provide substance for that alarm and to offer suggestions as to how we can plan ahead to reduce the severity of the impact of the rising sea.

The authors begin by reminding us that it’s not a distant prospect. They describe what is happening to Alaskan shoreline villages such as Kivalina and Shishmaref, atoll nations such as Kiribati, the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu, and the city of Venice, places already grappling with rising sea level.

Rising tide gauge data and an increase in coastal erosion along many of the planet’s shorelines provide clear evidence of the rising sea and of the warming of the planet. Not that the authors are simplistic about this. They recognise and discuss the function of tectonic changes and additions to or subtractions from the weight of the crust.  But there is plenty of evidence of an increase in the volume of water in the oceans, accelerating in response to global warming. Easier evidence to assemble, they note, than the measurement of global temperature trends.

Predictions of rise in the 21st century are dependent on what happens in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, an area which the IPCC 2007 report felt unable to take into its compass, other than by commenting that the contribution from both of these ice sheets may be much larger than previously assumed.  Pilkey and Young do not offer predictions, but they note that some organisations in the US have begun to make their own, quoting for example a committee in one of Florida’s counties which speaks of a minimum of 1 to 1.5 metres. They further note the work of University of Colorado scientist Tad Pfeffer and colleagues who argued in a 2008 paper in Science for a range between 0.9 and 2.0 metres, and they describe Hansen’s understanding that the non-linear response of the ice sheets could mean a level higher than that, possibly even as much as 5 metres. Shoreline retreat, of great importance to human society, is difficult to predict.  It’s not a simple or uniform matter and they discuss some of the variable regional factors which have to be taken into consideration in any assessments.   Their conclusion is that coastal management and planning should assume ice sheet disintegration will continue and a 2 metre sea level rise by 2100 should be reckoned with. They describe this as a cautious and conservative approach.  All rubbish, of course, to the noisy minority of opinion they address in a chapter on what they call the sea of denial.

The later sections of the book are concerned with the impacts of rising sea level.  First on natural ecosystems. The coastal wetlands and coral reef ecosystems have long migrated back and forth along with changing sea level and attendant shoreline movement. But they haven’t before had to simultaneously cope with massive changes in the physical environment cause by human activities.  Their future is unprecedented. The biggest global obstacle to salt marsh movement, for instance, is shoreline development and agriculture. There is often little room for them to expand inland.  Many will disappear, a loss both environmental and economic as yet recognised by few governments.  Mangrove areas have already been significantly reduced globally, most recently by clearing for agriculture and aquaculture. Poverty in the developing world leveraged by greed in the developed world is the driver of their destruction. Coral reefs are threatened by more factors than sea level rise, but their need for sunlight means that they must either grow upwards or migrate to shallower water to survive rising seas.

The authors then turn to the impact of sea level rise on humans.  The principal nation-scale impacts are likely to include loss of land, flooding, increased storm surge vulnerability, accelerated erosion, increased salinization, loss of biodiversity, loss of aquaculture and fishery, damage to marine infrastructure, and tourist decline.  The countries with the biggest problems are the atoll nations; deltaic countries such as Egypt, the Nethlerlands, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Myanmar; and countries with large low-lying, heavily developed coastal plains such as the US, Brazil and China. (As an aside I note that the severe effects of climate change on the US and China may be our best hope that they will act decisively to reduce emissions, once, that is, denialism loses its remaining traction among their lawmakers.) The book details the specifics faced by some of those countries.  In Vietnam, for example, a one metre sea level rise will displace more than a tenth of the nation’s people, gobble up 12 percent of its land area, and reduce food output by 12 percent.  Turning to cities the book notes an OECD study ranking the most vulnerable cities in the world as measured by susceptibility of property to flooding.  Half of the top ten are American, headed by Miami.

A closer look at the Mississippi delta forms the substance of a chapter.  The authors describe  various proposals to restore and protect the Louisiana coast and are sympathetic to some of them, such as wetland restoration.  But the vast and costly restoration effort now being sold to the residents of Louisiana and the rest of the US they consider misleading and dangerous.  Conditions in southern Louisiana are likely only to get worse no matter how much money is spent. Global sea level rise is coming. Coastal managers need to begin developing a plan to relocate towns in the lower delta, in ways which will keep the communities together. The delta culture may be preserved, but not in place.

The final chapter is titled Sounding Retreat.  It focuses on how Western countries need to respond to the landward movement of the shoreline.  The authors identify three responses: abandonment of the beachfront and relocation of all buildings and infrastructure away from the retreating shoreline; protection of the shoreline with seawalls, groins, and suchlike; formation of an artificial beach by bringing in new sand. All are expensive, but the latter two are temporary and suitable only for small rises in sea level. (No problem for Bjorn Lomborg who estimates a 30 centimetre rise.) The implications of each of these approaches are discussed in some detail with reference to specific examples. Opposition to relocation often comes from those with vested interests, and Florida extraordinarily still permits the construction of high rise shoreline buildings, taking over the financial obligation since insurance companies have backed away from insuring coastal properties. But the authors consider that in many cases relocation of beachfront communities will be the most effective solution, especially in view of the tremendous effort that will be needed to protect exposed cities.

We’re for it, the authors warn. Reduction of emissions will not halt sea level rise in the short term.  If we’re wise we’ll plan ahead. The constructive discussions and examples in their easily understood book will assist those who want to get an initial understanding both of the possible magnitude of what faces us and of the kind of measures we will need to take to manage it with the least distress. The book is well worth attention.

Whole Earth Discipline

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

When James Lovelock, Edward O. Wilson and Ian McEwan jostle to praise a book I assume it will be worth attention.  Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto doesn’t disappoint. The title echoes the Whole Earth Catalogue which he founded over forty years ago as an ambitious reference aid for skills, tools and products useful to a self-sustainable lifestyle.

Times have changed and Brand has changed with them. Climate change has become a clear and present danger. He has become more of a pragmatist, though no less of an environmentalist. His pragmatism leads him to regard with favour three factors which put him to some extent at odds with others in the environmental movement. The three are urbanisation, nuclear power and genetic engineering, and part of the purpose of the book is to urge the Green-inclined to consider how the three may now be considered significant contributions to facing up to climate change.

There’s no questioning the seriousness of climate change. James Lovelock is frequently Brand’s point of reference in this regard. He hopes that things won’t get as bad as Lovelock’s prediction that we are in the process of moving to a stable hot state 5 degrees warmer than now, but recognises that even the 2 degree rise which politicians seem to be regarding as an acceptable limit will mean large species loss, more severe storms, floods and droughts, refugees from sea level rise, and other expensive and inhumane consequences. It’s against the background of this concern that he sets his case.

Urbanisation is proceeding apace, and is to be welcomed. Brand takes a positive view of what cities mean for the people who are now flooding into them, even if they begin in the squatter settlements which can look so dismal to outside observers. He points to on-the-spot slum researcher reports which observe that cities are very successful in promoting new forms of income generation, that it is much cheaper to provide services in urban areas and that getting people to move to the city may be the most realistic poverty reduction strategy. From the environmental perspective, natural systems in the countryside fare better with fewer inhabitants. Subsistence farming on marginal land can give way to more concentrated cash-crop agriculture on prime land. Aquifers recover. Forests recover. Birth rates drop when people move to cities. Women play a more powerful role in city society. Urban societies become greener in their sensibilities, which can lead to increasing protection for the countryside.

This is only a sample of the wide-ranging survey Brand offers of the positives in growing urbanisation. He acknowledges the negative actualities as well. Cities are far from an unmitigated good. But he is firm that the prospect of 80 percent of humanity living on 3 percent of the land will be a net good for the planet. Infrastructure efficiency, energy use reduction, less pressure on rural natural systems, and the like, are adduced to support this conclusion.

Brand’s section on nuclear power is prefaced with a variously attributed quote: “With climate change, those who know the most are the most frightened. With nuclear power, those who know the most are the least frightened.” His own stance on nuclear power has flipped from anti to pro for two reasons. First, he gradually realised that nuclear waste disposal no longer looked like a cosmic-level problem. Second, nuclear power looked like a major solution in the light of growing worries about climate change. Coal is the enemy. He endorses Hansen’s statement in his open letter to President Obama, “Coal plants are factories of death”, and the accompanying observation “One of the greatest dangers the world faces is the possibility that a vocal minority of anti-nuclear activists could prevent phase-out of coal emissions.”

Brand is all for energy efficiency and for renewables, but impressed by the claim that renewables cannot be relied on for the baseload electricity currently provided by coal in many countries. The dangers supposed attendant on nuclear power generation are not now serious.  Much work has gone into minimizing the risk of accidents. The accumulated effects of low-dose radiation are no longer thought significant for human health. Waste storage arrangements are not as hazardous as once thought. There is every reason for it to be part of the energy portfolio we will need to replace fossil fuel sources.

Brand reserves his strongest accusation of the environmental movement for its opposition to genetic engineering (GE). “We’ve starved people, hindered science, hurt the natural environment, and denied our own practitioners a crucial tool.”  Noting the lack of alarm about genetic engineering among biologists he comments that “they know what a minor event it is amid the standard chaos of evolution and the just-barely-organised chaos of agricultural breeding.” Taking the example of GE herbicide-tolerant crops he points to the great ecological win they represent in that they encourage no-till agriculture. This offers major climate benefits along with improvements to soil structure because tillage releases carbon from the soil, which holds more carbon than all the living vegetation and the atmosphere put together. He regrets that organic farmers, whose work he values highly, can’t use GE but must continue to plough. Some of those farmers also regret it.

There is a great deal more than this example in the chapters which proclaim the green possibilities of GE and his hope that the organic farming and food industries will come to terms with the technologies of “ecology in the seed”.

Having dealt with the three developments which he considers need to be embraced, not rejected, by the environmental movement, Brand moves on to some general considerations as to how not to repeat the mistakes made in those areas. Greens need to be less romantic and more scientific.  “Environmentalists do best when they follow where the science leads, as they did with climate change. They do worst when they get nervous about where science leads, as they did with genetic engineering.”

Ecosystem engineering and niche construction are part of what humans have always done. Brand makes an emphatic case for tending the wild, for people being densely involved with nature. “It’s all gardening” is the chapter heading. Restoration is part of it, but so is agriculture which merges with the practices of tending the wild.

Humanity is now stuck with a planet stewardship role. The trend of the changes we have made lately indicates we are doing a poor job of it.  “We are forced to learn planet craft – in both sense of the word: craft as skill and craft as cunning.” For that we need a better knowledge of how the Earth system works. “We are model-rich and data poor.”

Brand writes with clarity and verve. He grips reader attention. Whatever one thinks of the positions he holds there is high interest in his explanations of them and no denying their importance in relation to the seriousness of the challenge of climate change. How in fact the balance between nuclear power and renewables will be worked out remains to be seen, and the whole question of non-fossil fuel energy sources seems still very open. Some who have no objection to nuclear power on principle still consider it unlikely to play a major role. But Brand’s concern is to establish that there is no reason to exclude it from consideration, or indeed to exclude anything else which science affirms as useful to ecological balance.

The Climate Crisis

The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change

David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf are notable climate scientists. They are also excellent communicators of the science to the general reader, as is apparent in their new book The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change. My review of Archer’s previous book The Long Thaw remarked on his ability to illuminate topics for the non-scientist. In this book the authors seek to provide an accessible and readable account of the “treasure trove” of the IPCC reports. They distinguish their work sharply from the Summaries for Policy Makers officially provided by the IPCC, which are negotiated between government representatives and exclude much of what scientists think and write in the full report. But while they draw heavily on the latest IPCC report and feature many of its informative graphs and tables, they also refer to new findings since the 2006 cut-off date for the report, and draw attention to weaknesses they sometimes see in the report.

Most of the book deals with global climate science, the focus of IPCC Working Group I, with subsequent brief attention given to the impacts of climate change (Working Group II) and to mitigation (Working Group III).

After looking back over the development of the science from its slow beginnings in the 19th century with the discoveries of Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius to the explosion of research in more recent years, the authors carefully explain the way in which the global temperature responds to the forcings of the various agents, warming in the case of the greenhouse gases, offset by some cooling through the effect of aerosols. There are no natural forcings, such as solar irradiance, that can explain the warming of the past five decades.

The global average warming of 0.8 degrees since the late nineteenth century and 0.6 degrees since the 1970s is unequivocally shown by measurements.  Other observed changes include significant changes in rainfall, both increases and decreases, and some changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

A chapter on ice and snow acknowledges the uncertain scientific understanding of the behaviour of melting ice on the ice sheets of Greenland and the West Antarctic and the unpredictability of ice sheet flow. The faster than expected sea ice melting in the Arctic carries profound climatic implications.  Overall observations of snow and ice provide powerful support for the warming trend.

The oceans receive attention as a major player in the climate pattern. We know that they are heating up, to some degree lessening the warmth in the atmosphere – the authors calculate a temporary effect of 0.4 degrees.  Salinity is being affected – increasing in sub-tropical regions and declining in higher latitudes.  Sea level is rising steadily, albeit with regional natural oscillations. The speed with which the ocean is taking up large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere is making the water more acidic, a worrying trend likely to cause a severe threat to marine life if it continues.

Paleoclimatology studies support a key role for CO2 in regulating climate. They also tell us that Earth’s climate has the potential to flip abruptly from one mode of operation to another. They serve as a reality check for the climate models used to forecast Earth’s response to our CO2 release. The past strengthens the forecast.

The forecast is for warming somewhere between 2 degrees and 7 degrees depending on the IPCC scenario.  The authors regard it as unfortunate that all the IPCC scenarios are non-mitigation scenarios, intended to tell us what might happen if we do not take action to reduce emissions. They consider it a serious shortcoming that mitigation scenarios have not also been systematically assessed, though they are likely to be part of the next IPCC report. Other forecasts include changes in precipitation, which they note will probably have a bigger impact on human society and ecosystems than temperature changes. Sea level rise is likely to be higher than the limited forecast of the IPCC report, and the authors don’t rule out a rise by over one metre by the end of the century, noting that Hansen fears two metres by that date. Changes in ocean currents are uncertain and the authors at this point comment on the limitations of the use of climate models, also apparent in relation to ice sheet behaviour.  The low probability-high impact risks are difficult to assess. There may be a less than 10% risk of a shut-down of the Atlantic overturning circulation, but it would result in a massive change in the operation of the planet’s climate system. Ocean acidification will continue and worsen.

Against the accusation that the outlooks are alarmist they point to earlier IPCC projections which have turned out to be correct in the subsequent 18 years. In fact the faster than expected sea level rise and arctic sea-ice shrinking suggests that the IPCC in the past may have underestimated rather than exaggerated climate change, though they advance that possibility with caution.

In the last third of the book the authors move to discuss the impacts of climate change and how we might avoid it.  The expected impact on the world’s ecosystems is dire. Human society will suffer from water stress, from food insecurity, from coastal zone hazards due to rising sea level and from threats to health.  Adaptation will be necessary and can be very effective, but has no hope of coping with all the projected effects, especially over the long term. Mitigation is essential.  The book runs through some of the mitigation options offered by Working Group III.  However, noting that the consensus view the IPCC represents is regarded by some energy experts and engineers as too limited and conservative, the authors depart from the IPCC material for a time to provide a somewhat more visionary perspective, based on renewables, cogeneration, smart grids, heat pumps and electromobility. They refer to the surprise success story of wind power and look to a time later in the century when solar power could easily provide most of our energy needs.

In a final brief section the authors leave the IPCC to discuss policy matters.  In the course of the discussion they comment on the persistence of arguments against anthropogenic global warming which float around the internet and are repeated by gullible newspaper editors and systematically promoted by lobbyist organisations.

“We would personally be very relieved if anthropogenic global warming were to be disproven by some new scientific findings – we certainly do not “like” global warming. But at this point, the body of scientific evidence is so strong that the hope that this problem will go away by itself looks exceedingly remote…The good news is: we have the technological and economic capacity to meet this challenge.”

My background is teaching English and I appreciated seeing the book end with a lengthy quote from novelist Ian McEwan, known for his concern over climate change. He concludes:

“Are we at the beginning of an unprecedented sera of international cooperation, or are we living in an Edwardian summer of reckless denial? Is this the beginning, or the beginning of the end?”

One hopes for a wide readership for this measured book which clearly and thoughtfully sets out the results of the work of a great many scientists. I’m not sure that rationality stands much of a chance in a world which gives high popularity ranking to the denialism of authors like Booker and Plimer and Singer, but for those readers who retain a desire to understand real science Archer and Rahmstorf are reliable and helpful guides.

Gaia in turmoil

Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis

The title attracted my attention: Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. Plus the fact that it was a collection of writings, not another hammer blow from the father of Gaian science James Lovelock. The comforting name of Bill McKibben was there as writer of the foreword. I don’t mean to disparage Lovelock, whose early book on the Gaia understanding of Earth I read with appreciation a good many years ago. But his more recent climate-focused books, The Revenge of Gaia and The Vanishing Face of Gaia , the latter reviewed here, have been relentless in conclusions which I find hard to bear.

Not that this book, edited by Eileen Crist and Bruce Rinker, is soothing, but its warnings are not quite so inexorable.  Also it has a wider focus that takes in more than the global warming issue.  Wide enough to make me wonder whether it was really suited for review on a climate change website, but I have persevered because it contains some climate change messages which I’ll concentrate on.

The Gaian perspective, which if you don’t respond to literary metaphor can be described as viewing Earth as a single organism, has been helpful in underscoring how the actions of humans in releasing the stored carbon of fossil fuels have caused a disturbance of the Earth system far greater than can easily be comprehended.  In the chapter on global warming Donald Aitken stresses that slight mismatches in the balance of energy flows can cause great destabilisation effects. Unbalanced flows occur naturally from time to time and are averaged out. But not in the case of the human burning of fossil fuels, which has gone out of bounds and is now leading to increasing destabilisation of the planet’s energy, temperature and climate systems. Evidence is seen in such phenomena as increased hurricane intensity, melting Arctic summer ice, reduced Greenland and West Antarctic ice,  a reduction in primary ocean productivity and ocean acidifcation – the usual suspects.  Aitken is an interrnational expert on renewable energy and considers that a combination of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency, the latter particularly in buildings, may well be enough to avoid the dangerous climate thresholds provided leaps in policies are taken by all nations. He contrasts the inertia of Earth’s physical processes with the capacity of humans to elect to change their social structures and adopt new global responsibilities on much shorter time scales. That’s in our favour, assuming we rise to the responsibility.

Biodiversity depletion figures strongly throughout the book, particularly in a chapter by Stephan Harding.  We are in the throes of a mass extinction entirely due to the economic activities of modern industrial societies.  Species are disappearing at a rate up to 10,000 times the natural rate. This is not all down to global warming, by any means, but it is part of the same heedlessness which treats the natural world as ours to do with as we will. Climate change is exacerbating the biodepletion, with the capacity to transform the Earth into a biological wasteland. It works both ways, for biodiversity also affects the climate.  Harding identifies some of the intricate ways in which this happens. Diverse ecological communities on land can increase the absorption of carbon dioxide. It is almost certain that biodiversity in the ocean also enhances this effect, through the presence of larger phytoplankton more often found in diverse communities.  Transpiration and evaporation are greater when there is diversity of land plants and can enhance cloud-making and energy distribution.  The roughness of mixed vegetation increases air turbulence which may well influence weather patterns. Harding rounds off his biodiversity chapter with the challenging observation that ultimately we may not be able to save what we do not love.

Lovelock himself makes a brief appearance in the book, in which he asks why the science of Gaia is still regarded by many as New Age mysticism and not part of science. He puts it down mainly to the stunning success of the reductionist approach to science, examplified in such triumphs as those in molecular biology and the deconvolution of the code of life.  The slow change to Earth system thinking would not matter so much if we humans had secure tenure on the Earth, but the climate changes we have set in motion appear to be changing the planet radically to one of its hot states. He ponders how Darwinian evolution might have been shaped had Darwin been aware that much of the environment, especially the atmosphere, was the product of living organisms. With such awareness he thinks Darwin would have realised that organisms and their environment form a coupled system and that what evolved was this system. Had Gaia been part of Darwin’s concept of evolution we might have realised sooner the consequences of deforestation and of adding greenhouse gases to the air.

Lovelock cops some criticism from Karen Liftinin her rough sketch of the principles of Gaian government. She acknowledges his great service in sounding the alarm on global warming but finds his policy prescriptions insensitive to social, ethical, psychological, and smaller scale ecological questions. One-sided engineering panaceas and technocratic elitism won’t do.

Mitchell Thomashow proposes curriculum development in schools which will train a generation of students who see the biosphere in every habitat and organism, who are equipped to interpret environmental change, who are keen to observe the natural world, and who know that their very survival may depend on it. I thought while reading his chapter of the Enviroschool programme open to New Zealand schools, for which the Minister of Education has unbelievably stoppped funding, but which appears likely to be rescued by funds from other government sources. I have seen the programme in action at a grandchild’s primary school and appreciated its potential for informing the full range of a child’s education. I recall the very sensible call in David Orr’s book Down to the Wire for a shift in education methods so that learning is relative to the biosphere and ecological awareness.

The various contributions to the book cover a wide range Gaian science, ethics and philosophy.  One Grand Organic Whole is the title of the editors’ opening chapter. They acknowledge that the early strong Gaia hypothesis that the biota controls the global environment in an almost purposeful fashion will not stand. The weak hypothesis that life physically and chemically influences the environment is too self-evident. They see the studies in this book as exploring the mid terrain between these two positions. When it comes to action enlightened realism acknowledges the need for preservation and restoration of Gaia’s natural systems. This requires sustainable retreat -– scaling down our consumption, shrinking our ecological footprint, and generously sharing the biosphere with all living beings.