Book Review: The Heat Will Kill You First. Jeff Goodell (2023).

I read this climate change non-fiction book some months ago, and it’s taken me a while to get around to writing a review of it, but I believe it's still an important review to write and share. The author, Jeff Goodell, is an editor for Rolling Stone magazine who has written several environmental “travelogues” of sorts, which combine accounts of his eco-tourism trips (for journalistic research purposes) with focused discussions of specific elements or results of the climate change phenomenon, the effects of which he observes and recounts from his travels.

In one of his other books, for example, he did a global review of the impact of rising seas from melting ice on Earth’s geography, mankind and our technological civilizations. In this one, he looks at the impacts and feedback loops of rising atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.

 

He begins with an introduction and an overview about a fact which most of us already know and acknowledge is happening: the earth is warming rapidly due to our reliance on burning fossil fuels for much of the energy that powers our societies. He then gives some well-chosen examples of calamitous effects of heat which we are already seeing around us.

 

Next, he moves on to the topic of the effects of heat on the human body. He begins with the particularly grisly and heartbreaking story of a young California couple a few years ago who died with their infant child on a backpacking trip when they failed to plan for the dangers of heat exposure during a family day hike. From this, he moves on to clinical descriptions of how rising heat affects the human body, and how it will soon make increasing numbers of currently-inhabited places around the world no longer fit for habitation, particularly during the warmer months of the year.    

 

From there, the author provides well-researched and organized chapters on a number of other aspects of the effect of rising temperatures on the world. In one chapter, he explores the threat to crops and global food supplies. In another, he discusses the increasingly dangerous effects of heat on outdoors workers, including how extreme heat might prevent the delivery of crucial services in the future. He also explains why we need to develop new work health and safety standards to protect our essential workers who must work outside in hot weather from the extreme heat conditions of the near future.

 

Another chapter provides a close-up look at Antarctica, and the particular dangers to the planet from melting ice there, especially including the potential for sea level rise. He also reviews some of the scientific and engineering ideas that have been proposed to try to slow down and minimize the damage from warming on the polar ice fields and glaciers.

 

Goodell then proceeds on to hotter climes, and raises the problem of tropical insects like mosquitoes and ticks now on the move into many warming temperate zones. He analyzes the extent to which those insect migrations to new ranges will likely spread tropical diseases and epidemics into new regions and human populations, ones which haven’t previously been affected by these problems.

 

In another interesting chapter, he provides a description of how air conditioning works, and how current air conditioning technology actually makes the heat situation worse, both from burning fossil fuels to power them, and because of the heat released in the air conditioning process, but is still necessary to make many parts of the world habitable during the warm season of the year.

 

Toward the end of the book, he moves more toward creative problem-solving, by attempting to identify ways we can adapt to and survive the ongoing rising heat which seems inevitable. For instance, he talks about large-scale “heat events”, like the high pressure “heat dome” that has been over much of the country this summer, and asks whether we should start naming and tracking these high-heat extreme weather events the way we do tropical storms and hurricanes. He goes on to propose some possible approaches and ideas about what it would take to retrofit our modern urban areas for heat survivability in the near future.

 

Much of what is in this book has been in the news in various forms for years for those who are paying attention, as the age of human-caused climate change has settled upon us. However, the author has done a very nice job of focusing the conversation on the heat-related elements of the problem. He does it by taking us on a world tour to see some of the areas where rising temperatures are having early effects, analyzing how the various elements and impacts of rising temperatures fit together, and reporting on some of the means by which we humans may try to mitigate and adapt to the worst environmental effects of rising temperatures around the globe.

 

This is an excellent primer on the coming crisis of heat, and rising air temperatures around the world. Recommended.

Book Review: The Overstory (2018). Richard Powers.

I previously reviewed three books by Richard Powers, including his most recent novel, Bewilderment, and two older ones, The Echo Maker and Orfeo, each of which were powerful tales of well-drawn characters struggling with individual personal crises in the midst of the larger calamities of planetary environmental decline and threats.

Powers’ 2018 novel The Overstory is very much in the same vein as these other works, but is perhaps the most remarkable of all of them, in that the central figure in the story is not the humans, but the ancient trees that surround them and sustain them. The dramatic tension at the heart of the story is the conflict between the humans who would destroy the trees, whose very existence supports their own lives, and a small group of humans who dedicate themselves to trying to save the trees and the forests, by whatever means they can devise.

Powers creates a powerful narrative story line about the trees themselves: he vividly describes their incomprehensibly long lives, their astonishing forms of communication and mutual support, and the complex planetary ecosystem which they have created over vast periods of time. In doing so, he provides a fascinating lesson in the contemporary scientific understanding of trees, and reveals many remarkable aspects of this ubiquitous ancient life form that is all around us, yet so often taken for granted.

However, there are important human characters in the story too. And here Powers uses a narrative device that is at first frustrating, which is that he slowly develops the backstories for a number of these characters in isolation from the others, one chapter at a time, so that deep into the book, it still seems that all we have is a series of short biographies of different people in different places, each in some way tied to a story of trees. 

Eventually, though, Powers brilliantly weaves all the threads together, as the characters meet each other, and begin to take individual and collective action, to fight for the trees, and to seek solutions to the environmental crisis they recognize. 

It was at this point, late in the book, that I began to recognize similarities to the real life story of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in the American West in the 1990s and early 2000s, whose idealistic young members’ first non-violent tree-sitting actions eventually led to the formation of an eco-terrorist group.  

This book is fictional, and not in any sense a historical account, but the group's development within the novel, the psychological evolution of the members within the group as they become increasingly desperate to stop the logging of old growth forests, and many other aspects of the story seem reminiscent of what is known of the ELF, as well perhaps as that of many other small militant groups of young idealists throughout history.

The Overstory is simply a stunningly powerful novel about trees, our dependence on them, and the increasing urgency and desperation of sensitive souls among us who recognize the destruction we have wrought as a species on the trees and the planet, and try to take collective action to stop the devastation and save the forests. In the process, they run into the limitations of individual and small-group solutions, and are forced to face their own powerlessness to compel the outcomes they believe are necessary to save the world.

Although his most recent novel Bewilderment is also outstanding, and has very similar themes, I believe The Overstory is Powers’ greatest novel thus far, a marvelous book which has forever changed my own understanding of trees, their lives and the essential role they play in the environment of our world. Very highly recommended.

Book Review: How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going (2022). Vaclav Smil.

This latest book by Vaclav Smil, a distinguished Canadian emeritus scientist at the University of Manitoba, and author of over forty books, is a stern warning and wake-up call to both extreme climate disaster predictors and optimistic climate change remediation advocates. Its main message is that we need to truly understand the extent to which modern life and all of its benefits are predicated on complex systems and materials that are currently impossible to have or maintain without the use and consumption of fossil fuels, in order to have a realistic view of what it will take to solve the problem of human-caused climate change.

It would be easy to misinterpret Smil’s objections to many of the common beliefs about climate change (both fearful and optimistic) held by most of us, based largely on the political statements and mass media reports we all read and hear constantly, as being signs that he is a fossil fuel apologist. That would be a big mistake, because a careful reading of this dense and data-filled book reveals no such thing.

It’s not that he doesn’t agree that we need to act, to try to save the world and its climate from the consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. Instead, he is arguing strongly that we need to understand just how extraordinarily difficult that process will be in order to have reasonable expectations, and that no outcomes – either extremely positive or negative – can be assumed or confidently predicted based on our current state of knowledge and the existing global political and economic situations.

His chapters lay out his logical and fact-based arguments in a steady, relentless fashion. In chapter 1, he begins with a deep discussion of the history and nature of our energy systems, and how important energy conversion and supplies (from whatever sources) are to the existence of modern society. 

In chapter 2, he focuses on explaining food production: both the extent to which modern industrial farming and its output that feeds the world depend on mechanization that currently requires massive fossil fuel inputs, and the additional role of fossil fuel by-products in fertilizer production which makes current global crop yields possible.

In chapter 3, Understanding Our Material World, he suggests that there are four pillars of modern life, supporting the 7+ billion people alive today. In his view, unfortunately well-supported by the facts he presents and by our own knowledge of the world around us, they are: cement, steel, plastics and ammonia. He then explains in detail why these four materials are essential to sustaining life in our advanced economies, and why at this time it is impossible to jump quickly and fully to alternative materials and products derived from non-fossil fuels and carbon-free processes.  Moreover, he explores how even trying to move to sustainable energy sources like wind and solar, and producing electric cars, will require massive inputs of these fossil fuel derived materials to get there.

Again, he’s not saying we shouldn’t be trying to do so, and he even explores possible alternatives that have been proposed, or ones that could be envisioned. His point is that it is futile to hope that solutions to replacing all the key requirements for supporting modern life can be imagined, designed and implemented on the massive scale necessary to quickly replace today's sources of these materials – certainly not in the short time frame suggested by those who say “we need to get to net zero carbon by” some near future year ending in a 0 or a 5, as he puts it.

In the remaining four chapters, he tackles and explains other key elements of the climate crisis puzzle that we need to understand: globalization, actual versus perceived risks, what is and is not at risk in the planet's environment, and the difficult nature of attempts to predict and control the future. In each case, he carefully demolishes simplistic popular notions, establishes logical inter-dependencies between important factors and considerations, and provides needed rational perspectives on the complexity of the many challenges to be confronted.

At the end of the book there is a References and Notes section, which contains 70 pages of exhaustive footnotes and citations for each of the chapters and topics covered. These notes alone would be a gold mine for serious climate policy analysts, historians, social theorists and others who want to do a deeper dive into the question of how we got ourselves into this climate change situation as a species.

This book provides much needed history of the fossil fuel era, a sober, clear-eyed and data-based analysis of our modern economy and technology, and a rational discussion of what we can and can’t do to solve the climate crisis, within what likely time periods. It’s not surprising that Bill Gates, whose results-based approach to global health and philanthropy is well-known, cites Smil as his favorite author. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2020). Bill McGibben.

This is another in the genre of books about the accelerating global climate crisis, written by the noted environmental and climate change writer and activist Bill McGibben.  However, in addition to considering the existential peril of climate change, McGibben also looks at a couple of other looming threats to human survival and identity:  genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. 

In the course of a very thoughtful and philosophical analysis, he suggests that we need to look critically at these technological marvels we are being offered, and think about what their adoption will do to the human story, and what it means to be a human on this planet.  

He asks, do we want to live in a totally human-managed environment, given how little we really know about how nature works, and how badly many of our attempts to manage the environment have turned out?   Do we want every person (or at least every child of the most wealthy among us) to be an engineered product, who will inevitably be followed by newer and "better" versions?  What about the ethics and good sense of trying to create artificial "intelligence" to replace our own human minds and activities -- is this either desirable, or moral?   

These are all very urgent questions, well considered.  It’s an interesting and in some respects more hopeful treatise than we might expect, given the dire nature of our current technological times and problems.  Recommended.

Book Review: Eager: The Surprising, Secret Lives of Beavers, and Why They Matter (2018). Ben Goldfarb.

One of the best full-length books about nature and ecology that I've read recently, this book by writer and "Beaver Believer" Goldfarb explains how the beaver, that funny-looking rodent with the big tail that chops down trees to make ponds, is actually one of the most important mammalian species for restoring natural environments and landscapes.  

In the course of the book, we learn about how beavers, who Goldfarb describes as “nature’s engineers”, shaped the earlier natural environment of America before the European settlers arrived, with its endless marshes, swamps and wetlands full of life, but how that rich and boggy terrain was transformed and damaged by the wholesale slaughter of beavers during the fur-trading era of North American exploration and European settlement.  

We also find out about the modern naturalists who have figured out how brilliantly these little nuisances can design and build dams and ponds, to great effect in restoring and reclaiming damaged landscapes, and how the more annoying results of their work (as they affect farmers and cattle ranchers) can be successfully managed and mitigated.  

A wonderful story of wild animals, their complex roles and inter-dependencies in the natural world and our ongoing human attempts to understand and interact with them.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer (2019). Bren Smith.

This fascinating autobiography recounts the unusual path by which the son of American ex-pat refugees from the Vietnam war draft, growing up rough on the coast of Newfoundland, became a wild and rebellious commercial fisherman at an early age, but then slowly matured into a thoughtful, educated pioneer in the new world of modern ocean farming.  

Along the way, he coined the phrase "Kelp is the new Kale", formed alliances with high-end gourmet chefs, rediscovered the history and methods of aquaculture in human societies, and became a leading advocate for using ocean farming in distributed small farms to meet resource needs, while helping to keep the oceans healthy in the face of climate change and other forms of pollution.     

An inspiring personal story, with important information and background on the recent rise of aquaculture and kelp farming here in the United States and elsewhere, as a new set of solutions to help feed us, improve the quality and health of the oceans, and create other positive effects in support of our efforts to slow the pace of climate change.  Recommended.

Book Review: The Ministry of the Future (2020). Kim Stanley Robinson.

The New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein (in one of his  excellent podcasts on The Ezra Klein Show) called this "the most important book of 2020".  I can see why he reached this conclusion.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a famous contemporary science-fiction writer, who is best known for his novels about the colonization of Mars.  However, in this one, he takes on the climate crisis, with a small cast of characters, but as told through many different voices around the world. 

Set in the 2030s and 2040s, it tries to imagine what a quasi-worldwide "Ministry of the Future" would have to do in order to save the world, and in telling that story, looks at a variety of climate-related crises and challenges that seem all too plausible in our current political and economic situation.  

I'm not sure the author’s "many voices" story approach makes for the best novel, literarily speaking.  But he does discuss and illuminate many of the ethical, financial, political and practical hurdles we will face in the coming years, if we are to find global solutions to the crisis of human-caused climate change.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Rewiring America Handbook (2020). Saul Griffith.

This valuable work is only available (to my knowledge) as an e-book, in .pdf format.  Despite that minor accessibility limitation, the contents are very useful, well-presented and thought-provoking.  This is also the first major publication (it's really the introductory manifesto) of an organization (Rewiring America, at https://www.rewiringamerica.org ) which in the past several years has become an important advocacy group in the United States for finding practical solutions to the climate crisis.

The author is an Australian-American MIT-trained engineer, who (with a group of collaborators) has done detailed studies on what it will take to try to keep the world (and the United States) at a low-enough carbon level to avoid the worst effects of climate change.  His proposals are based on science- and engineering-based analyses of current conditions and problems.  He and his team of researchers are also well-versed in many of the economic issues and challenges related to climate and environmental policy, another crucial part of the story which he weaves into his prescriptions for averting the worst of the climate crisis.

There are a few key arguments made, mixed in with many sub-topics, graphs and studies:  first, meeting climate objectives will require a World-War II-scale industrial program, to build and deploy the technical infrastructure for power generation and the new grid;  second, we can all contribute significantly as individuals, without lowering our standards of living, by simply replacing or adding any personal infrastructure (cars, furnaces, stoves, solar panels) with new-tech all-electric versions;  third, an all-electric economy is cheaper in the long run, but requires heavy up-front investment, requiring inexpensive financing, which should be made widely available to consumers;  and fourth, building the all-electric economy will create on the order of 25 million good new jobs throughout all of American's zip codes, urban and rural.  

It is a very exciting and uplifting vision, with an abundance of supportive technical and financial detail included -- now all we have to do is figure out how to do it politically.  The .pdf of the book can be downloaded from Rewiring America’s site on the web, where you can now find other more specific and detailed reports and white papers on climate issues.  Highly recommended.