Sunday, January 31, 2010

Climate Change Concerns: ‘Climate Wars’ is a book for everyone Pt 1

The book Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer is already listed in the right margin under the heading ‘Read This’, along with a lot of other excellent books, even though I’ve only read 98 of the 244 pages.

I’m confident the entire book will be easily understood and provoke thought and discussion no matter where one stands on the subject of climate change.

Climate change deniers or skeptics may not appreciate all this is written between the two covers but it will certainly raise the level of discussion and argument.


In an earlier post I mentioned the following thought by Mr. Dyer:

The potential cost of doing too little, too late is vastly greater than the cost that might be incurred by doing more to fight global warming than turns out, at some later date, to have been strictly necessary.

We could argue about that for a month but I’d rather you first read the book.

The book consists of seven chapters, and scenarios precede each of them that are not intended to be predictions about what is to come but are ‘only examples of the kinds of political crisis that could be caused by climate change.’

Mr. Dyer also writes a lengthy introduction, well worth the time spent reading it, in which he states four important conclusions he has reached ‘after a year of trailing around the world of climate change - four important things that I did not fully understand when I started this trip.’

I thought I’d mention the four things in this space because they serve as short, critical points that together act as a dramatic springboard into the next 244 pages.

Dyer says:

First, this thing is coming at us a whole lot faster that the publicly acknowledged wisdom has it. When you talk to people at the sharp end of the climate business, scientists and policy-makers alike, there is an air of suppressed panic in many of the conversations.

The book is filled with many of the aforementioned conversations with scientists, etc.

Click here to read Part 2.

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Click here now for more information about Climate Wars and CBC Radio One audio files related to the author and text.

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