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Climate Generation: Awakening to Our Children’s Future
In Climate Awakening to Our Children’s Future, environmentalist Lorna Gold issues a clarion call to readers to take immediate action on climate change or risk bequeathing a stark legacy to future generations. Lorna shares her personal journey in coming to understand what ‘climate change’ means to her, both as an activist and as a mother who is fearful for her children’s prospects in a world that hovers on the brink of destruction. Climate Generation explains how our reliance on fossil fuels, intensive farming and unchecked consumerism have all left the global natural environment in a parlous state.
Rather than simply lament the grave situation facing our planet, however, Climate Generation offers the reader hope and a manifesto for change. Lorna shows readers how, by making comparatively modest adjustments in our day-to-day lives, we can play our part in transforming the world around us, while also explaining how we can call on the political elite to embrace policies that will bring about real and meaningful reforms.
Climate Generation is an impassioned plea to parents, grandparents and all who care about our planet to act now in creating a world where children come first.
Rather than simply lament the grave situation facing our planet, however, Climate Generation offers the reader hope and a manifesto for change. Lorna shows readers how, by making comparatively modest adjustments in our day-to-day lives, we can play our part in transforming the world around us, while also explaining how we can call on the political elite to embrace policies that will bring about real and meaningful reforms.
Climate Generation is an impassioned plea to parents, grandparents and all who care about our planet to act now in creating a world where children come first.
128 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 5, 2018
5 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 22, 2019
Part climate science explanation, part memoir, this book could be subtitled "How I sleepwalked into the climate crisis." The author, whom I met while I was observing a Dublin climate change protest as a journalist, tells us she loved nature as a child, and saw her mother work hard with very few resources after the loss of her father. She grew up to work with other less fortunate people and took a PhD in the topics she needed to work for Trocaire, a charity working in the developing world.
Yet Trocaire and the other charities were all about encouraging local populations to get up and exploit the natural resources around and under them, the author says, to take their place as wealthy nations with lots of goods and use their mineral wealth. I've paraphrased. Only in 2007 did Trocaire carry out an informal survey on whether the people their staff worked with were suffering from the effects of climate change. The answer was yes.
I'm baffled by how this educated lady tells us twice (P59) that much of the carbon emissions are caused by combustible engines. I did once see a car engine go on fire, so I can't say she's entirely wrong; however far more cars use ICEs or internal combustion engines without going on fire.
Gold continues to detail how she drove the kids around left, right and centre - I cycled almost everywhere - and bought endless amounts of baby and child goods that weren't used - families had tighter budgets when I was small and everything was passed on to others, as Gold did - and bought everything they wanted - I bought and buy as much as possible secondhand and from charity shops, and drive my vans until they cannot be driven any more - until hearing another speaker explain climate change made her wake up to reality. She took walks in nature with the kids, but this doesn't explain why they weren't enrolled in Guides or Scouts.
After reading this book you still need to read Naomi Klein, and Chip Jacobs, because we are told about rampant consumerism but no more than you see in the film 'The Story Of Stuff' so you don't understand the full externalised cost of cheap goods. We are told that two men have challenged why banks and pension funds invest in oil firms, as Ireland is about to divest its national funds. Decades ago the Bank of Ireland tried to sell me a pension as I was self employed, but I asked the man and woman if they had an ethical fund which did not invest in oil, coal, arms, slavery, furs or testing on animals. They said no. Therefore I do not have a pension. I don't know, but I expect, that Lorna Gold has a pension through Trocaire. Entrepreneurs are the people who lead different lives and pare budgets where they see change needs to be made. But people employed by big firms or organisations do not necessarily think in this fashion.
Why did Trocaire's staff and many other people only start thinking of nature, biodiversity loss, climate change and what will follow each added degree of heat in the atmosphere relatively recently, when I've known all about it since reading 'Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare' by Paul Colinvaux as a young teen? I don't know, but I suspect a cushioned life (by salary and a good job) and the obvious deprivation of the people they were helping went a long way to creating that mindset.
I did find this book highly interesting and I commend it as a good starter read for people who want to know what the climate march fuss is about, why the Paris Agreement isn't enough and what they need to do next. Including using a carbon budget tool on the internet to see how, as Gold did, they can make changes at home to reduce their carbon use. Note: the text could perhaps be supported by some graphs, charts, photos, but you can find them on Google.
I accepted a download of an e-ARC from the author. This is an unbiased review.
Yet Trocaire and the other charities were all about encouraging local populations to get up and exploit the natural resources around and under them, the author says, to take their place as wealthy nations with lots of goods and use their mineral wealth. I've paraphrased. Only in 2007 did Trocaire carry out an informal survey on whether the people their staff worked with were suffering from the effects of climate change. The answer was yes.
I'm baffled by how this educated lady tells us twice (P59) that much of the carbon emissions are caused by combustible engines. I did once see a car engine go on fire, so I can't say she's entirely wrong; however far more cars use ICEs or internal combustion engines without going on fire.
Gold continues to detail how she drove the kids around left, right and centre - I cycled almost everywhere - and bought endless amounts of baby and child goods that weren't used - families had tighter budgets when I was small and everything was passed on to others, as Gold did - and bought everything they wanted - I bought and buy as much as possible secondhand and from charity shops, and drive my vans until they cannot be driven any more - until hearing another speaker explain climate change made her wake up to reality. She took walks in nature with the kids, but this doesn't explain why they weren't enrolled in Guides or Scouts.
After reading this book you still need to read Naomi Klein, and Chip Jacobs, because we are told about rampant consumerism but no more than you see in the film 'The Story Of Stuff' so you don't understand the full externalised cost of cheap goods. We are told that two men have challenged why banks and pension funds invest in oil firms, as Ireland is about to divest its national funds. Decades ago the Bank of Ireland tried to sell me a pension as I was self employed, but I asked the man and woman if they had an ethical fund which did not invest in oil, coal, arms, slavery, furs or testing on animals. They said no. Therefore I do not have a pension. I don't know, but I expect, that Lorna Gold has a pension through Trocaire. Entrepreneurs are the people who lead different lives and pare budgets where they see change needs to be made. But people employed by big firms or organisations do not necessarily think in this fashion.
Why did Trocaire's staff and many other people only start thinking of nature, biodiversity loss, climate change and what will follow each added degree of heat in the atmosphere relatively recently, when I've known all about it since reading 'Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare' by Paul Colinvaux as a young teen? I don't know, but I suspect a cushioned life (by salary and a good job) and the obvious deprivation of the people they were helping went a long way to creating that mindset.
I did find this book highly interesting and I commend it as a good starter read for people who want to know what the climate march fuss is about, why the Paris Agreement isn't enough and what they need to do next. Including using a carbon budget tool on the internet to see how, as Gold did, they can make changes at home to reduce their carbon use. Note: the text could perhaps be supported by some graphs, charts, photos, but you can find them on Google.
I accepted a download of an e-ARC from the author. This is an unbiased review.
May 28, 2019
I loved this book. I completely recognised the urgency and desperation as a mother to a generation facing the consequences of our delayed and totally inadequate reaction to climate change. I love how Lorna pieces together her life experience as a child with the journey through to motherhood in a climate crisis. Reading it brought me back to my awakening to the stark realities about 12 years ago.
October 31, 2019
Lorna talks about how, as a mother with all the daily chores and work, she can play her part in tacking climate change. It's all very well saying we must do this and we must do that but it's not going to be easy. it was very refreshing to read this.
September 23, 2018
Unfortunately there is nothing new in this one....
November 10, 2020
Experiential, simple, straightforward and inspiring. Easy to read despite the hard mission ahead to make sense of the world we want to live in, and leave to future generations.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews