Created by Greta Thunberg
Allen Lane (out 27 October)
IT FEELS like Greta Thunberg has been around for ages 鈥� I guess if you are in the fossil fuel business it feels like even longer. Yet it was only in 2018 that she first sat down outside the Swedish parliament and started the School Strike for Climate movement. What has happened since isn鈥檛 just a testament to her personally 鈥� then a bullied teenager with selective mutism, now a globally important figure and icon 鈥� but also proof that the change we need to happen can happen. With The Climate Book, a stunning and essential new work, she takes her mission to the next level.
Thunberg has used her status to entice more than 100 experts from around the world to write about some aspect of the crisis we face. I can鈥檛 think of anyone else who would have the clout to do this, and the result is an incredible and moving resource. There are chapters on almost everything you might need to know about, from climate feedback loops to permafrost instability, from tackling consumerism to ecosystem collapse, from managing the transition over to renewable energy to environmental racism, where communities of colour are disproportionately affected by climate change.
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The book is divided into five parts: how climate works, how our planet is changing, how it affects us, what we have done about it, and what we must do now. Each section is introduced and rounded off by an essay from Thunberg. What I like about this approach is that it forces each author to distil their expertise into a few pages. Thunberg still gets a pulpit, but the book is a curated, portable library of knowledge, full of classics.
Everyone will get something different from reading this book. The first half covers the science of the unfolding crisis, laying a solid and detailed foundation for the rest of the book to build on. at Imperial College London explains the science of attribution 鈥� determining how we can link heatwaves, droughts and hurricanes to climate change. She reveals the financial cost of extreme weather events that can be attributed to climate change, showing that of the $90 billion of damage done to Houston by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, $67 billion was down to global warming.
In an incredibly powerful (and frankly terrifying) chapter, , director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, shows the danger of crossing so-called tipping points 鈥� processes like ice loss that are irreversible and self-reinforcing 鈥� and destabilising the entire Earth system. He writes: 鈥淲e are determining whether we leave to our children and their children a planet that will continue drifting towards less and less inhabitable states.鈥�
In the chapter by , the novelist describes how people in lower-income countries see attempts by those in higher-income nations to impose carbon emissions limits as just another form of colonialism, 鈥渁 covert means of preserving the economic and geopolitical disparities of the last 200 years鈥�. He says it is no surprise that writing on climate change, 鈥渨hich is overwhelmingly produced by western universities and think tanks, is also largely centred on technical and economic issues鈥�. (This is a line that hit me, as the author of a book on saving the world called How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, quite hard.)
Ghosh says that adequate action on climate change hasn鈥檛 happened because there is a clash between multinational agencies and the reality of geopolitics, where higher-income countries want to remain dominant over lower-income ones. It is why, as , director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, points out, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is only allowed to use the euphemism 鈥渓oss and damage鈥� instead of what it means, and what lower-income countries need, 鈥渓iability and compensation鈥�.
There are other reasons for inaction, too. The Norwegian psychologist and politician Per Espen Stoknes identifies five, which he calls the 5 Ds: Distancing, Doom, Dissonance, Denial and iDentity. We see climate change as something in the distance, we fear the doom and disaster, which leads to guilt and makes us avoid the issue. We try to justify what we do because of cognitive dissonance between our actions and their effects (carbon emissions), and we deny ourselves understanding so that we can carry on with daily life. And iDentity is the feeling that changes to lifestyle threaten our freedom and sense of self.
Reading this, you are left in no doubt about the scale of the task we face. It isn鈥檛 鈥渏ust鈥� the climate crisis, but also the related crises of sustainability and biodiversity, and of equality and justice. All Thunberg鈥檚 authors make suggestions for what needs to be done for their part of the problem, and Stoknes shows us ways to address and counter the 5 Ds.
In her chapter, economist lays out her vision on how to escape and recover from consumerism, the driver of economic growth for a century or more. Policy-makers can 鈥渆dit out鈥� lifestyle options that are unsustainable and 鈥渆dit in鈥� better alternatives. In France, for example, the government banned short-haul domestic flights, promoting train travel instead.
It is daunting. We might feel that changes to our individual lifestyles are mere drops in the bucket, especially when we learn that the idea of the personal carbon footprint, ostensibly a way we can take responsibility for our greenhouse gas emissions, was dreamed up by BP as an attempt to shift responsibility from profit-chasing Big Oil to us, the consumer. But as we see in the chapter by environmental social scientists and , it is vital we make changes, and talk about them. Look at how fast vegan options have become available in restaurants and supermarkets in many countries, for example. 鈥淭he potential exists for domino effects,鈥� Capstick and Whitmarsh write. 鈥淢any separate actions can lead to the overturning of social conventions through disruptive and rapidly spreading tipping points.鈥� This is the kind of tipping point we need.
鈥淚nstead of asking others if there is still hope,鈥� writes Thunberg, 鈥渁sk yourself, are you prepared to change?鈥� Change creates hope, and hope creates change, she writes 鈥� but it needs to be worked at. Thunberg ends with a list of things we could do, starting with treating the crisis as a crisis. As political scientist writes, only massive collective action will embolden decision-makers to take the actions required for climate justice, so that those least responsible for climate change aren鈥檛 the most affected.
This book is an extraordinary body of work and I can鈥檛 recommend it highly enough. You听feel the passion as well as the intellectual heft of the authors and that is what is so moving about it. It is time for all of us to rise up.
听
Expert opinion: Key quotes from some of Greta Thunberg鈥檚 contributors
, managing director for Africa at the World Resources Institute
鈥淲hen women possess land, and the seeds and tools to work it, they possess听agency to adapt to听climate change.鈥�
, environmental biologist, State University of New York
鈥淓veryone must become a听humble student and learn to live as if they were native to place, as if the Earth were One Bowl and One Spoon, to live as if the future were in听our hands. Because it is.鈥�
, author and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia
鈥淭he bottomless quest for profits that forces so many to work upwards of fifty hours a week with no security, fuelling an epidemic of isolation and despair, is听the same quest for bottomless profits that has pushed our planet into peril.鈥�
, director of the Global Policy Laboratory at听the University of California, Berkeley
鈥淥ne additional degree of听warming does not have听the same effect everywhere, and this has听profound implications for global inequality.鈥�
, journalist and author of Fire and Flood
鈥淭he message that should lodge with politicians and the public is that climate change must be averted at听any price because its ultimate cost can be neither imagined nor calculated.鈥�
