鈥淭he Climate Book,鈥� by Greta Thunberg (Penguin Press)
Skipping school to sit outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018 with a sign reading 鈥淪chool Strike for Climate鈥� at the age of 15, Greta Thunberg promised she would never stop calling out leaders and governments for refusing to take strong enough actions to mitigate climate change.
Fast forward five years and while Thunberg is no longer a teenager, she is as blunt as ever. 鈥淟eaving capitalist consumerism and market economics as the dominant stewards of the only known civilization in the universe will most likely seem, in retrospect, to have been a terrible idea,鈥� she writes in 鈥淭he Climate Book.鈥�
Divided into five parts 鈥� How Climate Works, How Our Planet is Changing, How It Affects Us, What We鈥檝e Done About It and What We Must Do Now 鈥� the book features 105 guest essays covering everything from 鈥渋ce shelves to economics, from fast fashion to the loss of species鈥� from water shortages to Indigenous sovereignty, from future food production to carbon budgets.鈥� Thunberg鈥檚 goal is to raise public awareness by sharing the best available science to shine a spotlight on what we鈥檝e done to the Earth and what we must do to keep it habitable by humanity.
Stuffed with charts and graphs and photos spread across two pages (all in black and white, a curious design choice), the book is sure to educate anyone who gives it an honest reading. Yet it鈥檚 difficult to shake a feeling of doom as you turn the pages. The current way of life in the 鈥淕lobal North,鈥� as Thunberg calls the leading Western democracies responsible for most of the world鈥檚 carbon emissions, is not sustainable. If we continue to insist on flying around the world, eating authentic Japanese sushi in New York, driving our SUVs, and on and on, we will eventually change planetary systems to such a degree that life as we know it won鈥檛 be possible.
Some of the book鈥檚 contributors manage to balance the gloom with glimmers of hope. Writing about the remarkable events of the last few years, Canadian public policy researcher Seth Klein finds comfort in the global response to COVID-19: 鈥淲e witnessed governments鈥� creating audacious new economic support programs with a speed that few would have predicted.鈥� If governments would take a similar approach to electrifying everything with green power, he argues, Homo sapiens might survive. As other essayists point out, however, it鈥檚 impossible until the largest governments in the world start treating the climate crisis like a true crisis.
And so hopefully billions of people read 鈥淭he Climate Book鈥� and enough of them rise up to demand change. 3.5%. That鈥檚 the magic number mentioned by Harvard political science professor Erica Chenoweth in her essay, 鈥淧eople Power鈥�: 鈥淎mong non-violent movements attempting to overthrow their own governments, none has failed after mobilizing 3.5% of their population to engage in mass demonstrations.鈥� And in the end, that鈥檚 Thunberg鈥檚 ultimate prescription, too: 鈥淚 would strongly suggest that those of us who have not yet been greenwashed out of our senses stand our ground.鈥�
Rob Merrill, The Associated Press
