Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South

by Rick Van Noy

The results of climate change make the headlines almost daily. All across America and the globe, communities have to adapt to rising sea levels, intensified storms, and warmer temperatures. One way or another, climate change will be a proving ground. We will either sink, in cases where the land is subsiding, or swim, finding ways to address these challenges.While temperatures and seas are rising slowly, we have some immediate choices to make. If we act quickly and boldly, there is a small window of opportunity to prevent the worst. We can prepare for the changes by understanding what is happening and taking specific measures. There is “commitment” already in the climate change system. To minimize those effects will require another kind of commitment, the kind Rick Van Noy illustrates in these stories about a climate-distressed South.Like Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking work Silent Spring, Rick Van Noy’s Sudden Spring is a call to action to mitigate the current trends in our environmental degradation. By highlighting stories of people and places adapting to the impacts of a warmer climate, Van Noy shows us what communities in the South are doing to become more climate resilient and to survive a slow deluge of environmental challenges.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

234 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2019

About the author

I grew up in Titusville, New Jersey, just up river from where Washington crossed on Christmas Eve. I went to college in Colorado (The Colorado College) and graduate schools in Bellingham, Washington (Western), and Cleveland, Ohio (Case Western). I worked for a time as a technical writer where I met the proprietor and sole-owner of A/E Marketeers, Catherine Copich. We moved to Radford, Virginia, for a position in the English Department at Radford University and have stayed for the clean waterways and lovely mountains, though I often wish they were the kind that held more snow. Telemark skiing is among my more feverish pursuits, but I also enjoy biking, canoeing and growing tomatoes. We live in an old farmhouse of revived lath and plaster and odd angles with two children, Sam and Elliot, and a menagerie of animal dependents. from http://rickvannoy.blogspot.com/

Reviews

[Brack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays and travelogue up and down the eastern seaboard documents the efforts of communities and individuals against the impact of rising seas on their communities. It is important for localities to recognize the looming impact climate change or what I like to call global boiling is having and will ultimately become the final word on seaside communities. The fact that Rick Van Noy is an English professor gives heart to the struggles against the inevitable results of the building data of increasing disasters looming on the horizon.

His closing chapter, traveling to West Virginia, where the origin of much of the causes of the fix we find ourselves in, is equally telling of the monumentous strides we will have to take once our policy makers are convinced of the errors in their thinking.

[D.J. Mathews · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sudden Spring" is a play on Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring, " the latter the idea that we are hurting the environment, and birds prominently, with our pesticides and chemicals. But Van Noy, canoeing and exploring the U. S. Southeast with his son, is addressing the more immediate issue of what the immediate of the effects of climate change on the region are and how people are addressing it. Are they in denial even as they have to put the roads higher and deal with flooding and stronger hurricanes and eroded, ghost forests?
He visits some interesting places and his information is more in the popular than scholarly vein. He wants people thinking about helping the environment. It's still possible to make a difference. Learn more.

[Douglas Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sudden Spring is an exploration of Southern coastal and mountain communities adjusting and preparing for what might be considered ‘the new abnormal’—shifting and unexpected weather patterns resulting from a changing climate and rising sea levels.

An investigative travelogue, Van Noy’s 200 pages recount climate research and scientific models. But that and our overly politicized context are just a background for his primary subject: what forward-looking individuals, organizations, and communities are doing to adapt.

Read more in a BOOK CITY ★ Roanoke Q&A with the author: https://wp.me/p8fK7m-2hN

[Ed Kohinke sr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wherever you are on the matter of climate change, if you only had the time for one book on the subject, this is the one to read.

[Noah Isherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

stylistic quibbles aside, this is a well-researched introduction to the current state of coastal adaptation to climate change in the US south