Berger's new book on understanding the climate crisis now out
Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis, by John Berger
The world is experiencing accelerating global climate change. The planet is at increasing risk of triggering strong amplifying positive feedback processes inherent in the climate system. Once initiated, no conceivable human action can arrest these processes, no matter how devastating the consequences become, and no matter how earnestly we may wish to do so, or how desperately we may try. Time is running out to protect the equable though altered climate we still have and to avoid further climate disruption.
The central questions of our time are how long it will take before humanity is able to revolutionize its energy production systems to slow the pace of climate change, and whether we can we do so before we have irrevocably consigned the Earth to radical climate change. Such change could commit half the species on the Earth to extinction, destroy major ecosystems like the Amazon rain forest, degrade the oceans, and subject vast areas of the Earth to drought and intolerable heat, not to mention more frequent extreme weather events.
Climate Peril documents the causes and consequences of rapid climate change in a short, authoritative presentation that ordinary readers can understand. It examines how and why the climate normally functions, and it warns of the perilous economic, national security, environmental, public health, and oceanic consequences of destabilizing the climate.
Climate Peril also identifies the main obstacles to climate protection and describes strategies for overcoming them. The book is the second of a three-book series. Volume 1, Climate Myths, focused on the political campaign waged against climate science. Volume 3, Climate Solutions, shows how to create a climate-safe world by radically transforming global energy, transportation, and land use practices.
