Each week, a journalist brings you a recently published essay.
“To solve this problem, we must first understand it”, writes the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who, after the publication of scenes from the heart and Join usgot down to directing the Climate ledger (The Climate Book). Different from the previous ones, this book stands out as a reference book for understanding the causes and grasping the many issues of the ecological crisis.
Convinced that to avoid the most serious consequences of this crisis, a critical mass of people must demand a change and that, to do this, it is necessary to raise awareness among the greatest number, she offers a work for a fairly general audience which brings together, in a single reading (but not least, the book is over 400 pages), the keys to understanding and acting.
Greta Thunberg signs a few texts there, but most were written by a hundred experts from various disciplines (climatologists, geologists, economists, biologists, psychologists, doctors, etc.) as well as writers, journalists and activists. Thus, the writings of Naomi Klein and Margaret Atwood rub shoulders with those of the economist Thomas Piketty and the renowned climatologist Michael E. Mann.
This multidisciplinary approach makes all the richness of this book which results in a very successful popularization and pedagogical exercise, although a little repetitive.
When science journalist Peter Brannen recounts the carbon cycle and when atmospheric and climate impact scientist Michael Oppenheimer explains the physical principles behind the greenhouse effect, it seems like everything understand.
And we also realize that science does not understand everything, that there are still many unknowns, including tipping points and the effects of positive feedback loops that could amplify the anticipated warming.
The essay also takes us to the Sahel, to Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who tells how, over there, “the rain is everything” and how, more and more, the rain is no longer. Or in Lapland at Elin Anna Labba, where the Sami are trying to save skeletal reindeer, and in the Amazon at Sônia Guajajara, who recently became Brazilian Minister for Indigenous Peoples.
Despite its digestible content sprinkled with stories, it is also a boring work that undermines morale at times. And this, even if the word “hope” comes up many times and after the chapter “What have we done so far?” (disclosure: not much), we make room for solutions by putting forward “What we need to do now”: turn away from consumerism, rewild, transform our economic institutions, put in place a just transition, among others.
This is a book that has the power to enlighten us and mobilize us, but to be consumed in small doses to better digest it.
Extract
“We have lost an essential race – the one that was supposed to prevent harmful impacts – but today, in the face of accelerating global warming, we find ourselves on the starting line of a second race: it aims to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis and to maintain a habitable planet. Adapting to this new stage will require emerging leaders to stand up to the interests of fossil fuel giants and popular myopia – something my generation has never achieved. »
Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Earth Sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University
Who is Greta Thunberg?
20-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg rose to prominence in 2018 after she launched a school climate strike that spanned several countries. An activist for Fridays For Future, she has spoken at several events around the world, including in Montreal in 2019, as well as at the World Economic Forum in Davos and at the United Nations.
The big climate book
Edited by Greta Thunberg
Kero
441 pages