YOUNG, impatient and green in both senses of the word: that鈥檚 the popular image of environmental activists. But some are well-informed and in for the long haul.

Greenpeace was fortunate to have two people of this kind working on its global warming project, Bill Hare and Jeremy Leggett. The Carbon War is Leggett鈥檚 racy account of a key time for the environmental movement, when the battle between big-time, carbon-belching corporations and adamant greens was at its hottest.

He joined Greenpeace in 1989 from Imperial College, London. As a lecturer there he had helped to turn out geologists and petroleum engineers for the oil industry but, unlike most of his colleagues, Leggett had become intrigued by the industry鈥檚 contribution to global warming. He began to include environmental science lectures in the courses he taught. To his disappointment, his colleagues dismissed these as mere liberal studies. He decided to move on (accomplishing this through the jobs pages of New 杏吧原创).

Ten years and a number of grey hairs later, Leggett has become a businessman and campaigner for solar energy. He is still optimistic and passionate about climate change. But The Carbon War is no mere personal odyssey. It鈥檚 an intriguing spotlight on the turbulent early years of the 1990s, when environmentalists fought to get governments and industry to recognise not just that global warming had begun, but also that they needed to take immediate action to slow it down.

The disappointments were many: the Greenpeace campaign failed to convince American politicians of the dangers of global warming and persuade them to back legally binding targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another blow was the decision by Australia鈥檚 politicians to back the US, despite earlier support for the environmentalist position.

A change of focus in Leggett鈥檚 own campaigning-switching from politicians to the insurance industry and financial institutions-also failed to bring about significant changes. Few insurance executives were willing to commit the necessary effort to persuading their clients that, unless global warming was slowed down, there could be huge, massively destabilising climate-related insurance claims.

I have a lot of sympathy and admiration for Leggett鈥檚 idealism and hard work. His besieging of businesses, initially seeming so futile, bore fruit in the end. A significant number of industry representatives broadly agreed with him. Most environmentalists still do not trust the corporate world, but in a break with the past, more and more people from both sides are keen to work together for common goals.

This is not to say that there aren鈥檛 people in both groups with their heads in the sand. Leggett describes his bruising experiences with aggressive industry lobbyists from Washington DC who would stop at almost nothing to get their way, which was to deny that fossil fuels could be causing global warming. This is Leggett鈥檚 鈥渃arbon war鈥�, the apparently implacable force that propelled him into the trenches.

Leggett was appalled to discover what these industry lobbying organisations got up to. It鈥檚 a dismay I shared, as did many others involved in the IPCC*, the international scientific panel assessing the world鈥檚 climate. Surprisingly, one of the lobbyists, the Climate Council has long advised the scientific delegations of oil-producing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Another US lobbying organisation, the Global Climate Coalition, tried to embarrass the IPCC by accusing one of its scientists of 鈥渃leansing鈥� the panel鈥檚 final report by deleting paragraphs that did not support the final conclusion: that human activities are warming the planet. The Climate Council was often supported by the Global Climate Coalition, an organisation representing a collection of US coal, oil and automobile companies and vice versa.

This didn鈥檛 infuriate only environmental groups. It damaged the public image of many of us who represented industry and anyone else seeking to be objective about the threat of global warming. Happily, the claims of the Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council to represent the world鈥檚 industry were soon challenged.

A few minor quibbles aside, this is a powerful and highly readable book. Those who want an entertaining crash course on the nature of today鈥檚 environmental movement and the politics of climate change negotiations can be assured of an excellent, reliable read.

* The IPCC鈥檚 special report on emissions scenarios is expected to be be published in March 2000 (New 杏吧原创, 18 September, p 5).