Tag: Book reviews

Now Or Never

“It is all too possible that we will fail to achieve sustainability, and that the blind watchmaker will once again…reset the balance of a severely diminished living Earth.” That’s the possibility that Tim Flannery hopes we can yet avoid. He makes the statement early in his essay Now Or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future, in the course of setting out his view of Earth as a living whole, where he follows James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. The evolutionary process has arrived at a system in which humanity can contribute intelligence and self-awareness to the functioning of Earth – or set the process at naught and turn back the evolutionary clock.

Flannery’s earlier book The Weather Makers, reviewed here, was his major contribution to advancing public awareness of climate change.  Now or Never echoes and updates the urgency of the earlier book.  His regard for Lovelock’s thinking remains high, in terms both of the Gaia metaphor and of the extremity to which we have come, but he resists Lovelock’s conclusion that the damage already done is too great for amendment.

After his initia Gaia musings Flannery has an illuminating chapter on how we are shuffling matter among Earth’s three great organs – crust, air and water – and thereby creating an imbalance. He writes of Earth’s contrast with the planets without life, such as Mars and Venus, where the great bulk of the atmosphere is made up of CO2. On our living planet the difference is that over aeons enormous quantities of carbon have been drawn into Earth’s crust in the form of coal, oil, natural gas and limestone. Our bringing to the surface and burning these stored sources, combined with the destruction of forests and the degradation of soils, has created an imbalance whereby the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a level not seen for 55 million years.

The impacts are already alarming. Flannery confesses to find it increasingly difficult over the past two years to read the scientific findings on climate change without despairing. Most dispiriting are the changes occurring in the Arctic, which render hopelessly inadequate much of the human response to the crisis so far.  Flannery has an excursion into the possibility of oceanic death, concluding with the fearful vision of Peter Ward in Under a Green Sky.  He turns then to the work of James Hansen and colleagues in their 2008 paper and concludes that humanity is now between a tipping point (where greenhouse gas concentration reaches a level sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change) and the point of no return (when that concentration has been in place sufficiently long to give rise to an irreversible process). We still have a few years before we reach the point of no return, but there is not a second to waste.  Energy use must change drastically and we must also draw CO2 out of the air. Otherwise we enter Lovelock’s new dark age.

Turning to solutions Flannery spends time on clean coal technology, not because he is enamoured of it but because the world, and China in particular, has gone so far down the road of using coal as an energy source that he sees little choice but to pursue a solution that involves coal.  Not instead of renewables, but along with them.  Resignation rather than enthusiasm marks his treatment of the subject.

On renewables he notes the US government clean energy initiatives and the development of trading schemes to put a price on carbon, adding that regulation will also have to be part of the strategy. Not having the space to review all the means of generating electricity without carbon emissions, he selects one hopeful example from plans in Denmark to ally electric cars to wind energy which is currently under-utilised at night. He sees it as a sign that wind energy can compete directly with big oil.

CO2 must be drawn down from the atmosphere. High-tech methods remain on the drawing boards for now, but  tropical forests are “prodigious engines of atmospheric sanitation”, and Flannery surveys ways of supporting tropical reforestation, preferably under local management. Funding reforestation is in all our interests, and is also a way of repaying a debt we owe to the poor who are disproprtionately affected by the global warming we have caused. Flannery is an advocate of charcoal made by pyrolysis being ploughed back into the soil as a form of carbon sequestration and soil improvement.  Vigorously pursued on a global scale it could pull 5 percent of global CO2 per year.

He takes a look at ways in which farming management processes may enhance soil carbon significantly, mentioning a number of new practices worth pursuing, including holistic management and nitrification inhibitors.  Farm-based ecological efficiency is described in Polyface Farm in Virginia, a mixed-farming undertaking which has integrated a wide variety of plants and animals into productive and sustainable enterprise.

Before concluding Flannery acknowledges that desperate measures may be called for to avert disastrous melting of the Greenland ice cap in coming years, and believes that a measured dose of sulfur to the stratosphere to cause global dimming may yet be something we have to consider “if all else fails”.

“If we are successful in finding a sustainable way of living in the twenty-first century…”  It’s a much bigger “if” in the author’s mind than he or any of us would wish, but there’s no escaping the reality.  Gaia has brought us to a unique position and role on planet Earth.  That’s the philosophical understanding from which Flannery operates, and he warns that if we don’t that exercise that role responsibly and maturely we will bring disaster on ourselves.  The carbon we have freed, “like a malign genie, threatens the entire world.”

The book includes a number of interesting invited responses to the essay.  Among them Bill McKibben endorses the seriousness of the situation and urges 350.org activism as a way of acting. Richard Branson imagines a world where the best scientists collaborate with the best entrepeneurs and finds ground for optimism. Peter Singer welcomes Flannery’s impact on public and political awareness and agrees that there is no time to waste, but takes issue over the implications of eating beef.  Gwynne Dyer notes that whether we talk of human beings becoming the consciousness of Gaia, or just see us as the same old self-serving species we always were, we are taking control of the planet’s climate, and we may need stop-gap geoengineering measures to win extra time to get emissions down before we hit runaway warming.

Tim Flannery’s informed intelligence, ranging thoughtfulness and humanity is as apparent as ever in this essay. Short and accessible, its urgent message could not be plainer.  One hopes its readers include any policy makers who still need a wake-up call as to the reality of what we are doing to the planet.

Climate Change in Africa

Climate Change in Africa

We need to have it spelt out. Africa will be hit hard as the effects of climate change fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest people and countries. Camilla Toulmin’s book Climate Change in Africa surveys those effects and focuses on the adaptation measures needed to lessen the impact of what lies ahead. She endorses the notion that rich countries’ funding for adaptation in the least developed countries is not aid but compensation owing for the danger caused by those responsible for emissions. She also states early on that the choice of priorities is whether we will put our efforts into preserving the way of life of the rich, or addressing the urgent needs of the poor. But the book doesn’t dwell on ethics. Most of it is nuts and bolts analysis of what African countries will need to do to develop the resilience required to best manage the threats posed by global warming.

Toulmin acknowledges that there is some continuity between the development tasks already confronting African countries and the additional measures needed to cope with climate change. That doesn’t make the extra effort any less demanding. Indeed it is harder because it is required from communities already stretched for resources.

The effects of climate change are likely to vary greatly in the different regions of Africa. Water is a clear example. Some regions will suffer major shortfalls in water supply while others risk increased floods. Toulmin’s division of water into two categories – green (rainfall going into the soil and supporting plant life) and blue (rivers and aquifers) – provides a useful way of thinking about its availability. Her wide-ranging consideration of adaptation measures includes the more effective use of available water by investment in micro-level water supplies, and the need for agreement between countries on sharing large river basins.

In discussing how food production is likely to be affected Toulmin incidentally provides an interesting sketch of the great variety of food and farming systems in Africa.  She points to the adaptability of African farmers over many generations, including the adoption of new crops and livestock.  An example is the way simple improved soil and water conservation activities on the central plateau of Burkina Faso over the past 20 years have resulted in remarkable improvements in crop yields, tree cover, and rising groundwater tables, turning around the life of a declining area.  But the vulnerability of farming to climate change is serious and the need to build more resilient systems is pressing.

Forests figure largely in much African life.  The continent hosts 16% of the world’s forests, from the lowland forests of the Congo basin which is the second largest expanse of of rainforest in the world after the Amazon, to the forest land in the extensive drylands of the savannah and Sahel which cover approximately 40% of the continent. Deforestation is a serious issue and the point at which Africa’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 becomes significant. In the course of her discussion Toulmin makes a case for forest dwellers to have more say in the management of forests, arguing that their involvement in long-term management often has better results than that of the state alone.  The importance of mechanisms post-Kyoto to compensate countries for avoided deforestation is discussed at some length, with acknowledgement of the complexities involved.

Africa, like the rest of the world, is experiencing a growth in urbanisation, often in the form of fragile informal squatter settlements. Toulmin lists many of the risks to cities from climate change, including heat waves, flooding, pollution and sea level rise. A mere half metre rise will drastically affect Alexandria, and settlements on the west coast and elsewhere are also vulnerable. She stresses the need for adaptation plans in the continent’s cities, while acknowledging that their responsibilities far outweigh their resources. Durban is one of the few cities to take adaptation seriously, and its measures are described.

Climate change may increase the likelihood of conflict in Africa, as basic human security is put at risk.  Toulmin is cautious of ascribing particular conflicts such as Darfur to climate change, seeing the causes as complex, but she recognises that population movement driven by climate change may lead to land ownership disputes. The size of military budgets shows that lack of money is not the main problem in addressing security and she uges that the security agenda be reframed to focus on technical, institutional and economic measures to build resilience for the changes ahead.

Toulmin fears that in spite of all its problems Africa will be marginalised in the global carbon economy. It is hard for the countries of the continent to speak with one voice given their diverse set of interests and needs and consequently all too easy to leave them on the edge of the big global negotiations. Nor are the African poor as well represented by their governments as they should be, making it doubly difficult for their voices to be heard where global decisions are made.

This short but painstaking book packs in a good deal of patient explanation over a very wide range of issues. Sometimes one wonders whether there is any realistic way through the thicket of concerns about what climate change means for many African populations, particularly the poorest among them. But Toulmin maintains a steady focus on the policies required and how they can best be implemented. Such careful attention hopefully improves the chances that African peoples will receive some of the assistance they deserve in coping with what climate change threatens.

Afterword:

Shortly after writing this review I found myself watching a BBC programme about climate change refugees in Bangladesh who are thronging into the already overcrowded city of Dhaka.  A different country, but horrifying evidence that the effects of global warming are already having a profound impact on the poor. Floods, storms and inundation from the sea are literally sweeping homes and livelihoods away. Some adaptation measures are being worked out in some villages, but others have no choice but to leave and live in the slums of the city, where again flooding is endemic and accompanying health problems overwhelming. The programme was a startling reminder that the measured words of the book I had just read were about real human lives and predicaments. These people bear little or no responsibility for global warming.  It will be terrible dereliction if the developed world does not lend strong support to the adaptation effort which such countries must now attempt. On the mitigation front the urgency is made only more overwhelming by these early signs of what climate change is capable of doing to human society.

Plan B (not from outer space)

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

I hadn’t expected to be doing a Hot Topic review of Lester Brown’s book Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, since he writes about a variety of sustainability issues. However the 90 pages or so he devotes to climate change were irresistible for their sensible optimism and I report them here.

The Plan B books have been appearing in updated form since 2003. They are no light undertaking. Intended to influence, they have translators into 22 languages and achieve worldwide circulation. Several thousand individuals purchase five or more copies for distribution to friends, colleagues and opinion leaders. Ted Turner does so on a large scale, distributing copies of each Plan B to heads of state and their key cabinet ministers, the Fortune 500 CEOs, and members of Congress. A film version of Plan B 4.0 is in progress.

Brown is a generalist. His work is to pull together scattered information and communicate it to the public. The results are scary on the reality of the problems and upbeat on the solutions. On climate change he is unflinching. He reports recent studies projecting a sea level rise of up to two metres by the end of the century. Up to a third of all plant and animal species could be lost. The chorus of urgency from the scientific community intensifies by the year. Higher temperatures diminish crop yields, increase the severity of storms, flooding, drought and wildfires, and alter eco-systems everywhere. The effects of melting glaciers on irrigation is a massive threat to food production.

Selecting items like this doesn’t do justice to the overall organisation of the chapter in which he sets out the threat. In 20 pages he presents a valuable summary reminder of what a continuance of anthropogenic global warming will result in for human life. It’s chapter 3 of the book, which by the way is available for free download here on the Earth Policy Institute website. The chapter can be recommended for anyone who wants to know in short compass what it all adds up to and why it matters supremely.

Always positive in the face of threat, Brown sets out his Plan B response. He stands with James Hansen and others on the necessity to reduce CO2 levels to 350 parts per million concentration. Plan B envisages cutting emissions 80 percent by 2020 in order to keep levels from exceeding 400 ppm before starting to reduce them. This will be challenging, “but how can we face the next generation if we do not try?” And it’s feasible.

Two steps are needed. The first is an energy efficiency revolution, the beginnings of which are already under way. The revolution in lighting technology is a good start, and one which many countries are joining (while New Zealand is pulling back by decision of our benighted Minister of Energy). Compact fluorescents (CFLs), using 75 percent less electricity than incandescents are the first step. The light-emitting diode (LED), using up to 85 percent less is the ultimate. Lighting is not a small matter. It currently uses 19 percent of the world share of electricity. This would be cut to 7 percent with a move to CFLs in homes, advanced linear fluorescents in offices, shops and factories, and LEDs in traffic lights.  The lighting efficiency gains would be even greater if LEDs reduce in cost and can be used more widely.

Energy-efficient appliances are already lowering considerably their electricity requirement. A worldwide set of appliance efficiency standards keyed to the most efficient models on the market would offer as much or more than the 12 percent of world electricity savings from more efficient lighting.

Low energy use buildings are already being built in some countries.  There is enormous potential for reducing energy use in buildings. Even energy retrofits on older inefficient buildings can cut usage by 20-50 percent.  Brown discusses the LEED certification offered by the US Green Building Council in interesting detail. New buildings can easily be designed with half the energy requirements of existing ones.

The overall electrification of transport will mean much greater energy efficiency, especially as the power comes increasingly from renewable sources. New technologies have opened the way for hybrid plug-ins and all-electric cars and all major car makers have plans, as Brown details, to bring them to market. The future of intercity travel lies with high-speed trains, which under Plan B will be powered almost entirely by renewable electricity. Japan has set the standard, but many countries are now participating. Public transport has a significant role to play; shifting public funds from highway construction to public transport would reduce the number of cars needed. (A point lost on our Transport Minister, who shares the Energy Minister’s preference for outdated practice.)

A striking section on metal recycling demonstrates that it requires only a fraction of the energy needed to produce the metals from virgin ore. Design of products so that they can be easily disassembled for reuse or recycling carries economic benefit, as do reusable containers. Waste reduction is central. In summary, there is a vast worldwide potential for cutting carbon emissions by reducing materials use, and beginnings have been made.

There follows an illuminating account of what a smart grid combined with smart meters can add to energy efficiency and how moves in that direction are already under way in various parts of the world. He concludes the chapter (4) by expressing his confidence that the energy-saving measures identified and proposed will more than offset the nearly 30 percent growth in global energy demand projected by the IEA between 2006 and 2020.

The second major step is the shift to renewable energy.

“…this energy transition [to wind, solar and geothermal energy] is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even two years ago. And it is a worldwide phenomenon.”

He instances Texas which is looking to have 53,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity, which will more than satisfy the state’s residential needs and enable it to export electricity, just as it has long exported oil.  Some 70 countries are now using wind power. A Stanford University study concluded that harnessing one fifth of the world’s available wind energy would provide seven times as much electricity as the world currently uses. Plan B involves a crash programme to develop 3000 gigawatts (3 million megawatts) of wind generating capacity by 2020, enough to satisfy 40 percent of world electricity needs. That’s 1.5 million 2-megawatt wind turbines over the period. Intimidating? Compare it with 70 million cars per year.

Solar energy is the second source undergoing dramatic expansion. Photovoltaic installations are increasing rapidly, by 45 percent annually, and production costs are falling fast. Solar thermal electricity, which uses reflectors to concentrate sunlight on a closed vessel containing water or some other liquid, is on the move, with big plans mooted for the southwest US and Algeria and the Indian Desert. Solar water heating, now seen in many countries, is another obvious benefit.

There is more. Geothermal energy in a variety of forms is a barely tapped source, with very large  potential.  Hydro power from the movement of tides and waves is starting to be developed. Biomass offers a small but worthwhile contribution. Brown doesn’t rule out nuclear, but thinks it is expensive by comparison and unlikely to reach a level of new development which would do much more than replace current aging plants.  Carbon capture and storage doesn’t figure, at least at this stage, for reasons of expense and lack of investor interest.

The chapter (5) is full of facts and figures to support his sense that movement on renewable energy is strongly under way and that the resource is more than adequate to our need to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2020. It won’t just happen. Strategic government intervention is needed to put a price on carbon, to offer appropriate assistance to desirable developments, sometimes to mandate changes. He frequently turns to the analogy of wartime mobilisation. But he clearly looks to the vigour of enterprise and innovation in business and industry to see the job through. Indeed there is a strong sense of that vigour already present and poised like a wave ready to be caught. If we do catch it it will take us safely to shore.

[Dexys Midnight Runners]

What’s the worst that could happen?

What's the Worst That Could Happen?: Cutting Through the Hubbub Over Global Warming

Greg Craven has been a YouTube phenomenon. Seven million people have viewed his short climate change video posted in 2007, The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See. It was followed up with a number of others. Now he’s produced a lively and engaging book What’s The Worst That Could Happen?  A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate which may not reach quite as many people, but certainly deserves a wide readership.

Craven is a high school science teacher in Oregon. He is open about the deep alarm he feels about climate change. But he’s not a climate scientist. He doesn’t set out to convince  readers of the reality of global warming. Instead he offers what he calls some thinking tools, not for working out whether climate change is true or not, but for working out whether we should be taking action or not. The decision grid “allows you to stop focusing on who’s right and instead ask, what’s the wisest thing to do, given the risks and consequences?“ Risk management, he calls it. The grid is a simple 2×2 affair, which compares and considers the consequences of action or inaction if global warming turns out to be either true or false. He’s aware that when he talks about a debate between “warmers” and “sceptics” he’s describing popular perception, not what goes on in climate science circles, but popular perception is what he is concerned to address.

The book was honed in the classroom. He found there’s no better way to refine a thought than to toss it out in front of a roomful of critical teenagers. The writing is crisp, quirky, often humorous, never ponderous. An active reader is presupposed, with pages set aside for participatory jottings. It’s hard to avoid engagement. Yet there’s an unmistakable drive and underlying seriousness to the vigorous text.

Craven offers useful observations about how science works, as a preliminary to embarking on the decision quest. Some examples: science is about pursuing the truth, but it never claims to actually get there. Its statements are usually very conservative. The presence of differing views doesn’t mean that something is controversial. Peer-reviewed papers are the basic currency of science. Science often runs counter to common sense, which would still have us thinking the sun goes round the earth.

The next preliminary step is to examine the ways our brains work (defectively). Confirmation bias is the main problem for us to be alert to, and he provides many suggestions as to how to manage that. Another feature important in the global warming debate is that the human brain’s alarm system has been conditioned over time to respond to threats that are immediate and visible.

Then it’s on to a tool he developed himself, the credibility spectrum. This is a ranking of sources by such factors as expertise, bias, track record, authority within the scientific community, reputation. Readers are invited to make up their own spectrum, but Craven shares his, which puts statements from professional societies at the top, along with statements from organizations that contradict their normal bias. Next down are government reports. In the middle come university research programmes, appropriately sourced petitions, think tanks and advocacy organisations. Down then to individual professionals, book writers, and finally individual lay people.  He chooses and identifies sources for each of those categories from both sides, warmers and sceptics.

There follows an excellent 30-page summary of what it is that the warmers are saying we should be concerned about and the doomsday they see ahead if we carry on as we are. The point of this chapter is simply to establish that their concern is not unreasonable and warrants at least the amount of attention needed to decide whether we should do anything about it or not. But the striking clarity of his account gives the chapter an importance well beyond that limited intention.

He then returns to his own credibility spectrum, warmers to the left, sceptics to the right, and explains why it could only lead him to the conclusion it did:

“When I look at the stunningly strident statements from all those calm professional sources at the top left, and I think, What are the chances they’re all out to lunch? and then I add my observations that the predictions have only been getting more dire and more immediate as time goes on, it scares the willies out of me. So I vote for slamming on the brakes. Hard. I can recover from any hot coffee that I spill on my lap.  But I can’t put myself and my car back together again if I drive confidently off a cliff, kids in the back.”

After that he sends his readers off with step by step instructions to build their own credibility spectrum and use the decision grid to produce their own conclusion.

For those readers who come to the same conclusion as he does, the appendix offers a strong recommendation. Craven stands with Hansen, because he has the best track record for predictions which mainstream science eventually catches up with. 350 ppm has to be the target for CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This will require an effort similar to that which the US put into World War II when massive government action accomplished the seemingly impossible in an amazingly short passage of time. In perhaps the greatest economic mobilisation in the history of the world people invested an average of 25 percent of household income in War Bonds. And far from dooming the economy the collected effort of the citizenry brought the US out of the Great Depression and produced the world’s strongest economy.

Personal action to reduce our carbon footprint is fine, but it won’t get us to where we need to be. Only government action can do that. We need a collective determination, and the most significant contribution the individual can make is to spread the word, activate the interconnected web of communication that permeates our society.  Go viral. “Focus on burning the number 350 into the collective consciousness.” Over to the reader.

This is a most welcome book. It has proved astonishingly difficult for the findings of climate science to be communicated to the public. In part this is due to the success of the organised denialist campaign, in part to the cautious language of science itself, in part to the difficulty of comprehending how our apparently secure world can possibly be under the threat of such an enormous peril. Craven doesn’t try to fill the comprehension gap with information –- though what information he does provide along the way is mainstream and persuasive –- but invites his readers to give serious scientists the attention and respect their work demands. And he tries to do it not by telling, but by showing how they can get to the position where they find their own realisation that the science must be heeded.

Down to the Wire

Down to the Wire Confronting Climate Collapse

“My subject is hope of the millennial kind.” So writes David Orr in his new book Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse. The challenges ahead are more difficult than the public is led to believe and than most leadership apparently understands.  There is a long emergency for us to get through -– E.O.Wilson’s “bottleneck” –- and the hope that he discerns is at a farther horizon.

Which doesn’t mean that action can be delayed. Orr, professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, is himself a strong proponent of action. He was part of the team who over a period of two years prepared recommendations for climate change action in the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration in a plan describing over 300 actions the president could take and including a legal analysis of the executive authority at his disposal. He describes this book as a companion of sorts to that project.

However, much in the book focuses on the longer haul and includes the wider environmental degradation of which climate change is the most important part.  One striking chapter describes his shocked viewing of the devastation wrought by coal-mining in the Appalachian mountains. It’s a sickening picture: “…mountaintop removal is destroying one of the most diverse and beautiful ecosystems in the world, rendering it uninhabitable forever.” It’s not surprising that this chapter includes a plug for what Spanish philosopher Unamuno called “the tragic sense of life”, a sober philosophy which among other things is free from the delusion that humans should be about “the effecting of all things possible” or that science should “put nature on the rack and torture secrets out of her”.

Sustainability will need to be built on something deeper than the application of more technology and smarter economics.  They may only compound our tribulations. He considers that the effort to secure a decent human future will need awareness of the connections that bind us to each other, to all life, and to all life to come. What is given must be passed on.  Every culture that approaches sustainability grasps the truth that nothing can be held or possessed. Substantial sections of the book explore such ideas thoughtfully and in highly readable prose. Philosophy, ethics, and to some extent religion underlie the diagnoses and prescriptions proposed.

What constitutes the long emergency? Orr’s book focuses on the U.S. but has high relevance for the rest of us. He names five converging challenges.  First, climate change driven by the combustion of fossil fuels and land management changes. Second, nasty surprises caused by the breakdown of ecosystems and the ecological services they provide. Third, peak oil and the failure to move to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Fourth, exorbitant military expenditure which buys little safety or security. Fifth, the necessity to reform an economy built on excess, debt, and dishonest bookkeeping. He notes that to these can be added continued population growth, emerging diseases amplified by warming temperatures, and the arcane complexities of global economic and financial interdependence.

The implications for the U.S. are becoming clear.  The top priority is to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by 90% by 2050 and lead the global effort to hold the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees. Energy efficiency measures and a strong move to renewable sources are the pathway to this.  A second implication is that governments must learn to handle an economy in which quantitative growth will slow and eventually stop. Orr frequently refers to the work of ecological economists such as Herman Daly.  A limited growth economy will require more attention to the challenge of distributing wealth fairly. He points to two further implications which may  startle American readers: preparing measures to relocate internally displaced people as the effects of warming and sea level rise begin to bite; and preparing, even in the US “to deal with the ancient scourge of famine.” All these measures point to the need for a coalition to change US politics, economy, and manner of living to fit bio-physical realities.

It is not surprising that Orr advocates transformational leadership. That is, leadership which will prepare the public to understand the scale and duration of climate destabilisation and to grasp that it is a challenge to the US system of politics and governance; leadership which will help people understand the connections between energy choices and ecological consequences; leadership which will be honest in the vision of the future and lay the foundation for authentic hope.  His indictment of the leadership of the Bush-Cheney administration, which did none of those things, is succinct, comprehensive and damning.

Orr doesn’t buy the idea that the public can handle only happy news. The public should be treated as intelligent adults who are capable of understanding the truth and acting creatively and courageously in the face of necessity. Wise transformational leadership will summon the people with all of their flaws to a level of extraordinary achievement appropriate to an extraordinarily dangerous time. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Churchill figure in his discussions.

The grounds for hope are not strong right now but he’s prepared to discern them a century or more ahead. The immediate steps are clear: preserve soil and forests, save species, use less, deploy solar technologies; on the political side, “throw the rascals out”, demand accountability, elect leaders with courage and intelligence to lead in the right direction. Might we still avert catastrophe?  In a sea of wishful thinking, evasion and half measures it’s not easy to be confident. In an extended passage he discusses what in us might enhance our long-term prospects. After looking at our limitations, at the risk of sounding naïve he lists examples of not uncommon traits of character, like sociability and kindness, which will serve us, as also will our affinity for life – what E.O. Wilson calls “biophilia”.  If public awareness of the crisis really is dawning, as he hopes, much will depend on how we make four fundamental changes:  the improvement of societal resilience by reshaping the way we provision ourselves with food, energy, water, and economic support; a shift in education methods so that learning is relative to the biosphere and ecological awareness; the recalibration of governance to the way the world works as a physical system; finally, and perhaps oddly to some readers, a revolution in kindness and generosity of spirit that allows us to gracefully forgive and be forgiven. It is worth noting here that Orr is very committed to the Gandhian principle of non-violence.

Although Orr has many excursions into reflections on what makes us human and how we fit into the web of life there is no mistaking the urgency of his practical advocacy.  He knows the times are critical. Throughout the book he displays full and detailed awareness of the danger in which we already stand.  But climate change, he says, is not so much a problem to be fixed but rather a steadily worsening condition with which we must contend for a long time to come.  Improved technology may buy us time, but what we most need is a more durable and decent civilisation.