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Fire and Flood: A People's History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present
The definitive history of the modern climate change era, from an award-winning writer who has been at the centre of the fight for more than thirty yearsIn 1979, President Jimmy Carter was presented with the findings of scientists who had been investigating whether human activities might change the climate in harmful ways. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," their report said. They were right -- but no one was listening. Four decades later, we are haunted by the consequences of this inattention, and the years of complacency, obfuscation and denialism that followed. Today, the staggering scale and scope of what we have done to the planet is impossible to the seasons of fire and flood have crossed into plain view.Fire and Flood is a comprehensive, compulsively readable history of climate change from veteran environmental journalist Eugene Linden. Linden retells the story of the modern climate change era decade by decade, tracking the progress of four ticking first, the reality of climate change itself; second, advances in scientific understanding; third, the spread of public awareness; and fourth, the business and finance response. Like no previous writer, Linden has drawn together the elements of the biggest story in the world, in a book that it is gripping as history, as economic investigation, and as scientific thriller.
336 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2022
36 people are currently reading
788 people want to read
About the author
Eugene Linden
30 books119 followersI've spent my entire writing career exploring various aspects of one question: Why is it that after hundreds of thousands of years one relatively small subset of our species has reached a point where its fears, appetites, and spending habits control the destiny of every culture, every major ecosystem, and virtually every creature on earth? What happened that enabled us to seize control in a blink of an eye?
I began scratching at this question in my first book, Apes, Men and Language, published over 40 years ago. In that book I explored the implications of some experiments from the 1960s that showed that chimpanzees could use sign language in ways similar to the way we use words - to express opinions and feelings, to make specific requests, and to comment on the events of their day. Since the moral basis of our rights to use nature as so much raw material is deeply entangled with the belief that we are the lone sentient beings on the planet, I wondered what it would mean if it turned out that other animals possessed higher mental abilities and consciousness? I never expected that the scientific establishment and society would say "oops, sorry," but I also never imagined that the issue would turn out to be as fraught and contentious as it has.
That first book was the result of a curious turn of events. My first major journalistic assignment was an investigation of fragging (attacks by enlisted men on their officers) in Vietnam. That article, "The Demoralization of an Army: Fragging and Other Withdrawal Symptoms," was published as a cover story in Saturday Review in 1971. It got a good deal of attention, and a few publishers contacted me about possibly writing a book. I was eager to do that, but a few publishers lost interest when they learned that I wanted to write about experiments teaching sign language to apes and not Vietnam. Dutton gamely stayed on, however, and "Apes" is still in print in some parts of the world.
Since that first book, I've revisited and explored animal thinking in several books and many articles. In Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments, I looked at what happened to the animals themselves in the aftermath of the experiments as the chimps were whipsawed by a society that shifted back and forth between treating them as personalities and commodities. I wrote articles for National Geographic, TIME, and Parade, among other publications about animal intelligence as the debate progressed at its glacial pace.
Then, in the 1990s, I had an epiphany of sorts. I'd heard a story about an orangutan that got hold of a piece of wire and used it to pick the lock on his cage, all the while hiding his efforts from the zookeepers. Here seemed to be a panoply of higher mental abilities on display, unprompted by any rewards from humans, and it occurred to me that, if animals could think, maybe they did their best thinking when it served their purposes, and not some human in a lab coat. Out of this flash came two more books, The Parrot's Lament: Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity, and, The Octopus and the Orangutan: More Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity, as well as a few more articles for TIME, Parade, and Oprah among other publications. I've found this approach to thinking about animal intelligence both liberating and fun, and I intend to explore this a good deal more.
The question of what makes us different than other creatures was but one aspect of my career-long efforts to understand how we have come to rule the planet. At the same time that I was exploring the question of higher mental abilities in animals I also began to think about how our notions our notions of our own specialness related to the consumer society. If intelligence, language and consciousness gave us dominion, it was the consumer society that gave us the tools to exploit nature for our own benefit. I've developed my thoughts on the nature and origins of consumer societies in four b
I began scratching at this question in my first book, Apes, Men and Language, published over 40 years ago. In that book I explored the implications of some experiments from the 1960s that showed that chimpanzees could use sign language in ways similar to the way we use words - to express opinions and feelings, to make specific requests, and to comment on the events of their day. Since the moral basis of our rights to use nature as so much raw material is deeply entangled with the belief that we are the lone sentient beings on the planet, I wondered what it would mean if it turned out that other animals possessed higher mental abilities and consciousness? I never expected that the scientific establishment and society would say "oops, sorry," but I also never imagined that the issue would turn out to be as fraught and contentious as it has.
That first book was the result of a curious turn of events. My first major journalistic assignment was an investigation of fragging (attacks by enlisted men on their officers) in Vietnam. That article, "The Demoralization of an Army: Fragging and Other Withdrawal Symptoms," was published as a cover story in Saturday Review in 1971. It got a good deal of attention, and a few publishers contacted me about possibly writing a book. I was eager to do that, but a few publishers lost interest when they learned that I wanted to write about experiments teaching sign language to apes and not Vietnam. Dutton gamely stayed on, however, and "Apes" is still in print in some parts of the world.
Since that first book, I've revisited and explored animal thinking in several books and many articles. In Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments, I looked at what happened to the animals themselves in the aftermath of the experiments as the chimps were whipsawed by a society that shifted back and forth between treating them as personalities and commodities. I wrote articles for National Geographic, TIME, and Parade, among other publications about animal intelligence as the debate progressed at its glacial pace.
Then, in the 1990s, I had an epiphany of sorts. I'd heard a story about an orangutan that got hold of a piece of wire and used it to pick the lock on his cage, all the while hiding his efforts from the zookeepers. Here seemed to be a panoply of higher mental abilities on display, unprompted by any rewards from humans, and it occurred to me that, if animals could think, maybe they did their best thinking when it served their purposes, and not some human in a lab coat. Out of this flash came two more books, The Parrot's Lament: Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity, and, The Octopus and the Orangutan: More Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity, as well as a few more articles for TIME, Parade, and Oprah among other publications. I've found this approach to thinking about animal intelligence both liberating and fun, and I intend to explore this a good deal more.
The question of what makes us different than other creatures was but one aspect of my career-long efforts to understand how we have come to rule the planet. At the same time that I was exploring the question of higher mental abilities in animals I also began to think about how our notions our notions of our own specialness related to the consumer society. If intelligence, language and consciousness gave us dominion, it was the consumer society that gave us the tools to exploit nature for our own benefit. I've developed my thoughts on the nature and origins of consumer societies in four b
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April 13, 2022
Imagine four clocks bearing an asymmetric relationship to each other. The first clock represents the ‘reality’ of climate change. In other words, this clock is Mother Nature herself. The second clock is the barometer for the state of Science. Whether we like it or not, Science will always lag behind reality in decoding, deciphering and deciding on the occurrence, impact and consequences of reality in the form of climate change. The penultimate clock is public awareness. This is the most ‘malleable’ of the four clocks, susceptible to contradictory messages fusillading out the chambers of various vested interests. The final clock is made up by the world of finance and industry. An unrelenting machine of capitalism who levers are greased in perpetuity by the ever improving lubricants of profits, growth and earnings. The clocks of Science, public awareness and business always lag behind (invariably and at times conveniently) vis-à-vis the clock of reality.
Eugene Linden has been covering seminal issues dealing with global warming, climate change and its attendant environmental impacts for the Time magazine since the 1980s. In what arguably has to be his most hard hitting work till date, Linden in “Fire and Flood” lambasts the head in the sand approach that seems to be adopted by a majority of stakeholders in combating the pernicious evil of climate change, an evil which to a large and unfortunate extent, has been birthed by man himself.
As Linden illustrates, climate change is not a novel concept that has reared its ugly head in the new millennium. In the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to investigate The Carbon Dioxide Problem. Even before such a study was commissioned, committed environmentalists of the likes of the immortal Rachel Carson had spawned a veritable movement/awakening on the evils of climate change. Carson’s “A Silent Spring” a work that laid out in eviscerating terms the impact of the chemical DDT on sentient beings.
The report presented to Carter by renowned scientists Roger Revelle and George Woodwell warned about induced climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions. This alarm was followed up by James Hansen’s passionate testimony in 1988 to a US Senate committee. However, both these reports represented a mere blip on the horizon of consciousness and conscientiousness. The Reagan administration that stood for furthering the interests of business, cut back on funding for climate management as industry and commerce ran amok to obfuscate all potential moves to battle global warming.
Linden takes his readers decade by decade beginning with the late 1970s to illustrate both awareness on rampant climate change, as well as concerted attempts to sabotage such awareness. For example, Charles Keeling, an American scientist who assiduously recorded carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory thereby confirming the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming saw a cut in funding because his painstaking method of observation could not be classified as ‘research’.
The 2000s, represented the zenith of climate denialism. As Linden writes, merchants of doubt peddled and triggered heated deliberations over the ‘hockey stick’ graph (showing an abrupt rise in temperatures over time) and whether global warming had ‘stalled’ after the powerful 1997–98 El Niño event. These purveyors even fueled the 2009 Climategate scandal over scientists’ internal discussions.
As linden illustrates in chilling terms, it is not that the industry is unaware of the ramifications of climate change. An insurance broker’s honest assessment observed that weather-related disasters cost the world US$1.8 trillion between 2000 and 2010, and $3 trillion between 2010 and 2019. In 2021, according to the insurance giant Swiss Re, natural disasters around the world cost insurers $111 billion, on overall economic losses of $270 billion. Wildfires in Australia in the years 2019 and 2021 resulted in close to 2 billion animals being killed.
Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina warned the world about the untrammeled release of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the ozone layer. While this finding resulted in the duo bagging the Nobel Prize, it took a lackadaisical world almost two decades after the finding to take some form of concrete action. Renewable energies are still in an exploratory phase despite solar power being the cheapest in terms of cost, as fossil fuel subsidies reach a burgeoning $400 billion, in the United States alone.
But as Linden tries to assure us, it is not all doom and gloom, and it need not be either. Using a mix of innovative technologies and designs, we can still save the only inhabitable Planet – yet. For example, taking advantage of satellite based remote sensing technologies, green house gases can be monitored at the point of their origin. This can pave the path for establishing a baseline and tariffs adjusted based on success or failure in adhering to such baselines.
Introduction of a Carbon Tax regime and simply curbing illegal deforestation are two other areas that are ripe for ecological reform.
Fire & Flood – An urgent choice to either preserve or perish.
Eugene Linden has been covering seminal issues dealing with global warming, climate change and its attendant environmental impacts for the Time magazine since the 1980s. In what arguably has to be his most hard hitting work till date, Linden in “Fire and Flood” lambasts the head in the sand approach that seems to be adopted by a majority of stakeholders in combating the pernicious evil of climate change, an evil which to a large and unfortunate extent, has been birthed by man himself.
As Linden illustrates, climate change is not a novel concept that has reared its ugly head in the new millennium. In the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to investigate The Carbon Dioxide Problem. Even before such a study was commissioned, committed environmentalists of the likes of the immortal Rachel Carson had spawned a veritable movement/awakening on the evils of climate change. Carson’s “A Silent Spring” a work that laid out in eviscerating terms the impact of the chemical DDT on sentient beings.
The report presented to Carter by renowned scientists Roger Revelle and George Woodwell warned about induced climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions. This alarm was followed up by James Hansen’s passionate testimony in 1988 to a US Senate committee. However, both these reports represented a mere blip on the horizon of consciousness and conscientiousness. The Reagan administration that stood for furthering the interests of business, cut back on funding for climate management as industry and commerce ran amok to obfuscate all potential moves to battle global warming.
Linden takes his readers decade by decade beginning with the late 1970s to illustrate both awareness on rampant climate change, as well as concerted attempts to sabotage such awareness. For example, Charles Keeling, an American scientist who assiduously recorded carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory thereby confirming the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming saw a cut in funding because his painstaking method of observation could not be classified as ‘research’.
The 2000s, represented the zenith of climate denialism. As Linden writes, merchants of doubt peddled and triggered heated deliberations over the ‘hockey stick’ graph (showing an abrupt rise in temperatures over time) and whether global warming had ‘stalled’ after the powerful 1997–98 El Niño event. These purveyors even fueled the 2009 Climategate scandal over scientists’ internal discussions.
As linden illustrates in chilling terms, it is not that the industry is unaware of the ramifications of climate change. An insurance broker’s honest assessment observed that weather-related disasters cost the world US$1.8 trillion between 2000 and 2010, and $3 trillion between 2010 and 2019. In 2021, according to the insurance giant Swiss Re, natural disasters around the world cost insurers $111 billion, on overall economic losses of $270 billion. Wildfires in Australia in the years 2019 and 2021 resulted in close to 2 billion animals being killed.
Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina warned the world about the untrammeled release of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the ozone layer. While this finding resulted in the duo bagging the Nobel Prize, it took a lackadaisical world almost two decades after the finding to take some form of concrete action. Renewable energies are still in an exploratory phase despite solar power being the cheapest in terms of cost, as fossil fuel subsidies reach a burgeoning $400 billion, in the United States alone.
But as Linden tries to assure us, it is not all doom and gloom, and it need not be either. Using a mix of innovative technologies and designs, we can still save the only inhabitable Planet – yet. For example, taking advantage of satellite based remote sensing technologies, green house gases can be monitored at the point of their origin. This can pave the path for establishing a baseline and tariffs adjusted based on success or failure in adhering to such baselines.
Introduction of a Carbon Tax regime and simply curbing illegal deforestation are two other areas that are ripe for ecological reform.
Fire & Flood – An urgent choice to either preserve or perish.
June 1, 2023
Can I tell two stories that reflect my attitude and experience of climate change? In 1988 I wrote a study unit on weather and climate; it was then that I first came across the concept of global warming. This term was first used in 1975, a few years later the term ‘climate change’ began to be used. The difference is that the first causes the second. I can remember wrapping a blanket around a globe to illustrate the concept to my students.
Recently, I was teaching a Shakespeare HSC unit when one of my less studious students told me that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. I asked, “How many Shakespearean plays have you read?” His answer, “None.” If I meet a climate change denier (and that is a rare occasion) I always ask for them to tell me the science articles that led to their beliefs. Again, the answer is, “None.”
Flood’s initial chapters give an historical account of the early discovery made by scientists and the reaction of politicians and business/finance, especially the petroleum industries. He discusses the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and the role of fluorocarbons and how businesses and governments acted rationally to fix the problem. Some expected that when scientists started researching and developing theories of climate change that these agencies would act similarly. The opposite was the case.
The book takes you on a chronological journey stepping onto each decade stone to exam the progress and failures of the human species dealing with this phenomenon.
Flood writes about the various research being done in the various areas of climate change, ice melts, ocean temperatures, ice cores, vegetation and animal changes, increase in air temperatures, storm severity, bushfires, droughts and floods. The author discusses all these indicators of climate change at length. Some of the newly discovered aspects of climate change interested me. The reliance of the Sequoia sempervirens, the coastal redwood of California, on the coastal fog that rolls in off the Pacific Ocean. Because of changes in sea temperatures the amount of fog is decreasing, so depleting the amount of moisture the trees can collect.
He then ventures into the depressing part of the story, the continued denial of the science of climate change by powerful industrial and business sources, the deliberate denial of climate change and the implementation of anti-climate change policies by conservative and right-wing politicians. Finally, the apparent ambivalence to the problem by a significant proportion of each country’s population. This is, I believe the most serious issue of the debate, why are so many people deaf and blind to the issue, and in fact why are so many people determinedly opposed to the whole idea of climate change. Why hasn’t climate change been an issue in any American presidential election?
Naturally Flood focuses on the role of the United States but he does justifiably mention Australia and how in tune our own right-wing politicians are to the GOP’s view of climate change.
The book is more of a history of climate change than a polemic about the issue. We have memorials to our war heroes we should have Climate Change memorials, on one side a list those who did the research and based their utterances on science and on the other side, the deniers who were usually in the pay of the polluters or were just fools. It would be an interesting exercise for future generations to discover who contributed to the climate catastrophe that will undoubtedly eventuate.
One area where climate scientists have been wrong and where they’re working to correct their inaccuracies is the speed at which change is taking place.
My own prediction is that in the immediate future storms will become more severe, unforeseen changes in animal life and changes in oceans will be the biggest indicators of climate change.
Flood tries to be optimistic. I cannot agree. I don’t think the human species is as intelligent as we think. Those children who I see as bumps in their mother’s stomach, in prams, and at pre-schools are going to face a difficult time dealing with a problem that their grand parent generation failed to deal with.
Recently, I was teaching a Shakespeare HSC unit when one of my less studious students told me that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. I asked, “How many Shakespearean plays have you read?” His answer, “None.” If I meet a climate change denier (and that is a rare occasion) I always ask for them to tell me the science articles that led to their beliefs. Again, the answer is, “None.”
Flood’s initial chapters give an historical account of the early discovery made by scientists and the reaction of politicians and business/finance, especially the petroleum industries. He discusses the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and the role of fluorocarbons and how businesses and governments acted rationally to fix the problem. Some expected that when scientists started researching and developing theories of climate change that these agencies would act similarly. The opposite was the case.
The book takes you on a chronological journey stepping onto each decade stone to exam the progress and failures of the human species dealing with this phenomenon.
Flood writes about the various research being done in the various areas of climate change, ice melts, ocean temperatures, ice cores, vegetation and animal changes, increase in air temperatures, storm severity, bushfires, droughts and floods. The author discusses all these indicators of climate change at length. Some of the newly discovered aspects of climate change interested me. The reliance of the Sequoia sempervirens, the coastal redwood of California, on the coastal fog that rolls in off the Pacific Ocean. Because of changes in sea temperatures the amount of fog is decreasing, so depleting the amount of moisture the trees can collect.
He then ventures into the depressing part of the story, the continued denial of the science of climate change by powerful industrial and business sources, the deliberate denial of climate change and the implementation of anti-climate change policies by conservative and right-wing politicians. Finally, the apparent ambivalence to the problem by a significant proportion of each country’s population. This is, I believe the most serious issue of the debate, why are so many people deaf and blind to the issue, and in fact why are so many people determinedly opposed to the whole idea of climate change. Why hasn’t climate change been an issue in any American presidential election?
Naturally Flood focuses on the role of the United States but he does justifiably mention Australia and how in tune our own right-wing politicians are to the GOP’s view of climate change.
The book is more of a history of climate change than a polemic about the issue. We have memorials to our war heroes we should have Climate Change memorials, on one side a list those who did the research and based their utterances on science and on the other side, the deniers who were usually in the pay of the polluters or were just fools. It would be an interesting exercise for future generations to discover who contributed to the climate catastrophe that will undoubtedly eventuate.
One area where climate scientists have been wrong and where they’re working to correct their inaccuracies is the speed at which change is taking place.
My own prediction is that in the immediate future storms will become more severe, unforeseen changes in animal life and changes in oceans will be the biggest indicators of climate change.
Flood tries to be optimistic. I cannot agree. I don’t think the human species is as intelligent as we think. Those children who I see as bumps in their mother’s stomach, in prams, and at pre-schools are going to face a difficult time dealing with a problem that their grand parent generation failed to deal with.
June 28, 2022
One of the best historical environmental books I have read yet. The history of denial is, well, undeniable. This book lays it all out there as it explores the devastating events that have happened over 40 years that have neutered scientists attempts at warning the world about climate change. By comparing reality, science, politics, and business, the reader gets a full view of the impediments to fighting climate change. It is poignant, frustrating, disappointing, incredulous, and scary. The best part: no pandering to the "we still have time to change" crowd. In fact, we are out of time. The best we can do now is adapt. Even that must happen much quicker than anyone realizes. Great book.
October 18, 2024
This is not a “people’s history” by any stretch of the imagination. It cannot be when the author is so deeply invested in American exceptionalism and the redemptive potential of (American) capitalism. Linden desperately wants us to know that he told us so in his journalistic years (which, meh, he was no more prescient than other journalists, and certainly much less inquisitive than many others) and because of that record we should listen to the wisdom he acquired in his “years as chief investment strategist of a hedge fund specializing in investing in distressed companies.”
OK, Boomer.
OK, Boomer.
July 30, 2025
This is a well researched book that gives a comprehensive narrative on the climate change form science to politics. Just a couple of things I would like to add. Author does talk about consumption based emission but did not place it at center of the conversation as I think he should. Developed world having accumulated vast amount of carbon emission in the Industrial Revolution starting in england has progressively outsourced the dirtiest, most labor intensive, and least environmentally friendly industries to third world countries. Author like many repeatedly pointed fingers at China India Brazil for being the largest emitter, he doesn’t often qualify that the citizens of these countries actually don’t consume much of any resources when compared to developed world. The goods they produced got shipped to G7 to consume who enjoy cheap products with clear skies. Secondly author likes to compare energy and resources intensity between us and other developing countries without accounting for the difference in economic structuress w consumption makes up 80% for the U.S. and 50% for China. Despite supposedly lllower intensity economy in energy is per capita consumption of resources still outpace others by wide margin. I don’t mean all countries can hide behind statistics. But proper framing can help people see where the problem is
April 10, 2022
I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
This book traces the current climate crisis through the last four decades of history. For each decade, the author looks closely into four areas - the FACTS of climate change, the SCIENCE of climate change, POPULAR OPINION towards climate change and the sometimes reactionary responses of BUSINESS and GOVERNMENT towards climate change.
By doing this, Linden makes it clear how many chances we have already passed up and how much harder our desire to ignore climate change has made our future.
The book isn't entirely without hope, but it's a very narrow hope.
Ultimately, this book is terrifying and disturbing. It's also important, since climate deniers still exist and companies all over the world are still trying to push forward on fossil fuels even though renewable fuels are just as easy and just as cheap.
I learned a lot from this book, and I recommend it to anyone who lives on this planet and cares about the future.
This book traces the current climate crisis through the last four decades of history. For each decade, the author looks closely into four areas - the FACTS of climate change, the SCIENCE of climate change, POPULAR OPINION towards climate change and the sometimes reactionary responses of BUSINESS and GOVERNMENT towards climate change.
By doing this, Linden makes it clear how many chances we have already passed up and how much harder our desire to ignore climate change has made our future.
The book isn't entirely without hope, but it's a very narrow hope.
Ultimately, this book is terrifying and disturbing. It's also important, since climate deniers still exist and companies all over the world are still trying to push forward on fossil fuels even though renewable fuels are just as easy and just as cheap.
I learned a lot from this book, and I recommend it to anyone who lives on this planet and cares about the future.
April 23, 2024
If you asked me to find a book that sums up by and large most of what I studied for my masters degree, it would be this. I didn’t know that going in but it was a pleasant surprise and refresher to journey chronologically through the story of climate change with regards to business & the economy, though naturally this book is very America-focused. Highly recommend this to anyone looking for an intro to climate nonfiction.
I enjoyed this metaphor from the conclusion, but I think I’m more pessimistic than the author — if you ask me, it’s almost certainly a certainty:
”At the moment, the possibility of a climate catastrophe might be likened to two express trains racing toward each other on the same track. One train is propelled by our politics and economy, which gives business as usual powerful momentum. The other train is the momentum of climate change itself, which intensified and accelerated as we pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As the metaphor suggests, the time during which we might avert this train wreck shortens rapidly as these two trains accelerate and converge. Still, the train wreck is a probability, not a certainty.”
I enjoyed this metaphor from the conclusion, but I think I’m more pessimistic than the author — if you ask me, it’s almost certainly a certainty:
”At the moment, the possibility of a climate catastrophe might be likened to two express trains racing toward each other on the same track. One train is propelled by our politics and economy, which gives business as usual powerful momentum. The other train is the momentum of climate change itself, which intensified and accelerated as we pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As the metaphor suggests, the time during which we might avert this train wreck shortens rapidly as these two trains accelerate and converge. Still, the train wreck is a probability, not a certainty.”
June 26, 2024
This guy is PISSED. His solution is tariffs, which I can get behind.
June 21, 2022
A fascinating, infuriating, but occasionally hopeful work.
November 26, 2022
Linden writes about the period of environmental awareness best known to me, 1976 through 2022. His policy discussions focus on events in the Carter, Reagan, Clinton, G. W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. While my own baptism into the world of environmental awareness was earlier, I feel like he and I marched down this same path. He addresses each decade in terms of four points: reality, that is, what actually happened; the state of science; public awareness; and the world of finance and industry.
Fascinating points made by Linden on the fact that industry so often takes both sides on an issue. Dupont’s work in the 1980s on the issue of CFCs is a perfect example. While industry was pushing back aggressively against scientists and lobbyists demanded proof that the chemicals were actually harming the ozone layer, DuPont was both joining those efforts AND doing research to develop a substitute for CFCs. They had a financial stake in both camps.
I absolutely disagree with Linden‘s hypothesis that Carter would have won if he had not faced the hostage crisis or Ted Kennedy‘s challenge. Reagan had a boy-next-door quality that would easily have defeated an unpopular president like Jimmy Carter. The last straw was the prediction by the networks of a Reagan victory right after the East Coast polls closed. That’s why so many West Coast congressmen lost and why they changed the rules to prevent that happening again.
Carter was unpopular almost from the time he took office. The people of America did not react well to his calls for austerity, his speeches while wearing a sweater, and his reliance on Georgia cronies as White House advisers. Despite the rejection of Nixon’s criminality, they truly wanted Carter still to be a regular politician. It was a very peculiar presidency and I remember not liking him at all. I wasn’t aware of all of the positive things he did to combat climate change and I regret that. I’m glad he tried. He deserves a good legacy, even if it was undone by his successor.
Very interesting description of the inter-governmental panel on climate change. Linden contrasts the actual conclusions of the scientists authoring the individual chapters with the summaries for policy makers that are attached as the introductions to the reports. The IPCC was he says “a gift from God” and “it’s own worst enemy.”
Even as the summary for policymakers offered bland statements on the issues, the scientists themselves were finding evidence that the threat was far more imminent and dangerous than the indicated by the headlines extracted from the summary. For example in his 1998 testimony before the Senate, James Hansen of NASA said it was 99% certain that the observed warming was caused by humans, not natural. Two years later, the IPCC summary held that the “observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability.”
The year 1993 might be described as the time everything changed scientifically. This was the year that the coordinated efforts of the European and American ice core projects published their findings in Nature magazine, confirming that the cooling of the last ice age, the Younger Dryas started and ended far more abruptly than any model of past climate might have predicted, in as little as three years. How abrupt was the discovery of abrupt climate change, asked physicist and science historian Spencer Weart? “Many climate experts would put their finger on one moment: the day they read the 1993 report of the analysis of the Greenland ice cores. Before that, almost nobody confidently believed that the climate could change massively within a decade or two; after the report, almost nobody felt sure that it could not.”
The biggest issue with climate change that Linden highlights is the use of coal. We had an opportunity when developing nations were moving into their own industrial phases to leapfrog over the use of coal and adopt other, cleaner technologies. But the big industrial nations in the Third World did not choose to do that. China and India are notable examples that went the route of coal as opposed to choosing cleaner options. China had vast reserves of coal in 1990, the fourth largest in the world. China produced and consumed about 1.2 billion tons of coal in 1990, toward the beginning of its massive push to become an industrial power. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s China steadily increased its production and consumption of coal, with consumption peaking in 2018 at about 4.6 billion tons or nearly 4 times its consumption in 1990. The coal consumption of the world’s biggest economy, the United States, in 1990 was 896,000,000 tons of coal at a time when the US economy was between 5.5 (purchasing power parity) and 16 (on the basis of GDP) times the size of China’s. In 2018, with the US economy still about 40% larger than China’s in terms of GDP, the United States burned 688,000,000 tons of coal, or 15% of the amount burned by China. India, another prime candidate for the adoption of leapfrogging technologies, also chose coal and its leapfrogging involves jumping over Germany, Japan, and Russia to become the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Even the US went back to using more coal when Trump decided to walk back some of the regulations that had been implemented as part of the Clean Air Act.
Now a group of financial institutions, including Citi, HSBC and Blackrock, are proposing to buy Asian coal-fired plants and retire them ahead of their normal schedules to reduce future emissions.
In environmental terms, the impact of coal-related emissions comes from their accumulation over time. The oceans and the land seem to be able to absorb roughly 5,000,000,000 tons of CO2 a year. Since 1990, China has averaged that amount of CO2 emissions just from coal alone, with total annual GHG emissions soaring to 270% of the earths annual absorptive capacity by the late 2010s. To put this another way, China’s choice of fuels for development has overburdened the globe’s capacity to absorb CO2 by increasing amounts every year since 1990, meaning that even if the entire rest of the world had reached net-zero CO2 emissions 30 years ago, greenhouse gas concentrations would still have grown and temperatures would have continued to rise.
Interesting description of the Clinton administration’s climate change debacle. I didn’t realize that it was a debate over an energy tax BTU tax that swept Newt Gingrich to power. (We were overseas at the time and my whole focus was on El Salvador’s economy.) Apparently it was in that era that the Koch brothers and other manufacturing entities returned to the tools they had used to combat the debate on the ozone hole. While they had lost on that issue they had established a grounding for future political action. Around the time that Vice President Gore went to Japan in 1997 to negotiate the Kyoto protocol, President Clinton convened a White House conference on global climate change. At the end of it he famously remarked that he wanted to take action on climate change, but that he could not get ahead of the public on the issue. He was echoing a famous FDR quotation, who remarked to a group of activists, “you’ve convinced me, now go out and make me do it.”
So, the 1990s ended with the scientific clock still trailing reality but rapidly catching up, while the clock of public opinion had barely started ticking. Most of the developed world thought the problem was way off in the future, while those in emerging nations were largely unaware that climate change was even an issue.
Insurance proved an additional complication. When a homeowner buys an insurance policy, the agent who sells the policy gets a commission. The company that underwrites the policy will backstop the loss is up to a certain point and other companies will join in to pick up the next tranche of losses. Most of the last tranche of losses, those that come from true catastrophes, will be picked up by the reinsurance industry.
At all levels, from retail to reinsurance, insurers have an ace in the hole. Most policies have to be renewed yearly, which gives an insurer some comfort. Instead of having to consider a vastly increased likelihood that a major hurricane or wildfire will hit a specific area at some point in the future, they can limit their worry to whether a catastrophe will hit a certain property in the next year. A house that has 100% chance of being flooded in the next hundred years has only a one percent chance of being inundated in the next year. And if because of climate change such floods become twice as likely, that risk doubles - but it still is only two percent.
Even with these odds reinsurers have become increasingly reluctant to take on catastrophe-related risk. After hurricane Andrew in Miami in 1992, a German mathematician came up with the idea of a security, which became known as CAT bonds, that allowed outside investors to get paid generous interest rates to take part of the risk. It allowed reinsurers to offload some of their risk so that they could continue to underwrite lucrative policies in at-risk areas. It also gave reinsurers access to the vastly larger financial resources of world markets. For investors – usually hedge funds and institutional investors – it offered tempting returns that were uncorrelated to other markets, in the sense that the risks of these bonds had nothing to do with market movements or the economy. It allowed them to diversify their portfolios. Not only did these bonds spread the risk, in a world awash with negative interest rates, the bonds offer institutions and hedge funds fat returns. Finally after yet another round of hurricanes and floods risks insurers and reinsurers decided in some cases to leave the coastal areas of Florida. Under those circumstances the state of Florida stepped in to offer relief to homeowners and business owners affected by storms. In other words, the risk was socialized and now is paid by all Americans. California runs a similar backstop policy program for building in fire zones.
I remember studying climate and environmental issues in college. One of the key issues was pricing in risks and impacts. And that discussion took place in 1972. If the CFC business is a molehill in the global economy, the fossil fuels complex is Everest. Oil, coal, and natural gas are entrenched throughout the modern economy, with trillions invested in infrastructure, supporting millions of jobs, and protected by a massive network of lobbyists and politicians. Fossil fuels power and persistence is evident in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s vehicles still rely on an engine that was invented before the Civil War. To the degree to which spreading risk to the taxpayers underprices insurance for homes and businesses in fire, flood, and other zones vulnerable to the changes brought by climate change, the current system allows people to be blind to the risk of global warming and guarantees that these risks will become systemic.
The failure of both the public and the business community to take notice of the impact of climate change has not stopped reality from moving forward. By the new millennium, many of these scientific fuzzy areas had come into sharper focus. The melting of midlatitude and tropical glaciers, for example, was well underway and well documented. In 1991, retreating Swiss glaciers uncovered the preserved mummy of a Copper Age European hunter who died 5,300 years previously. Andean glacial melting uncovered plants that have been frozen for several thousand years and tropical glaciers were well on their way to disappearing. Those atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya shrank by 26% in the years between 2000 and 2007.
One of Linden’s most intriguing explanations is of the shift in how weather is working around the globe. The new disquieting factor with these climate change-affected storms is the way they park in a given area and just dump rain, day after day. The key to the slow-down in these tropical storms may live far to the north in the Arctic and in the perturbations of the jetstream that have resulted from global warming. The warming in the Arctic, accelerated by the reduction in the ice sheet’s size, has reduced the contrast between Arctic air masses and temperate air to the south. This contrast invigorates the jetstream; the stronger the contrast or temperature gradient, the faster the jet stream. As the temperature gradient decreases, atmospheric waves get larger but also slow down, making weather patterns more persistent. In other cases, the jetstream retreats northward, leaving storms stranded with no upper level winds to steer them on their way. The series of record-setting rainfalls in the 2010s were the result of a cascade of repercussions related to the warming of the globe. Another was the hellish proliferation of wildfires in recent recent years. In California, five of the 10 largest wildfires in the states history occurred in 2020 alone, and all but two have taken place since 2010. The largest wildfire in Australian history torched the country in the Australian summer of 2019 to 2020. Truly massive fires also have swept through Siberia and the Russian far East.
Why? With the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, the normal weather pattern for the West Coast is for the jetstream to veer northward as it near North America bringing warmer air south of the jet stream to California, Oregon, and Washington. Typically, the upper atmosphere winds then travel over Northern Canada, steered into the continent near Southern Alaska by the counter clockwise flow of the Aleutian Low, which strengthens over winter. Once over north central Canada, the normal year jet stream then starts south, bringing cooler air to the central and eastern states of the United States. This flow gets interrupted by Pacific storms and other factors, but then reestablishes itself.
After 1980, the Aleutian Low started to become more erratic in terms of when and even whether it would appear, while the more southerly high-pressure ridge, which usually lasts a matter of days before being disrupted has been extending northward and becoming so pronounced that it actually blocks Pacific storms from hitting the West Coast by diverting the jetstream storm track much farther north than usual. This causes the jetstream to pick up much colder air in its transit through the Arctic and deliver it to the mid continent and east, leading to the series of protracted cold spells and “Snowmageddons” we’ve experienced in recent years.
Moreover, the ridge started to persist long beyond the usual lifespan of such systems. Typically, a high-pressure ridge might last for a matter of days before being disrupted by storms or other events. Beginning in the 2010, these ridges would form and persist for weeks, even months. Indeed, in 2013, a ridge formed and lasted the entire winter. This was repeated in the following winter, and in the winter after that. The phenomenon was so extreme that in December 2013, a Stanford grad student labeled it the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.” Linden doesn’t mention the huge island of garbage in the Pacific, in 2022 measured at 1.6 million square kilometers, twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. No question something like that has a profound effect on the environmental balance of the ocean.
By diverting the storms away from the coast, the ridge had other impacts. Protected by the calm air under the high-pressure dome, a blob of warm water surfaced and also persisted. Over 700 days it grew to gigantic proportions, ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 mi.² of ocean – nearly 4 times the size of Texas – and extending down to 400 feet. Dubbed the blob by research meteorologist Nicklaus Bond, this enormous mass of warm water enhanced West Coast droughts and murdered marine life from California to Alaska. A similar blob in the southern hemisphere has been a factor in the decades long drought afflicting parts of Chile and Argentina. Not surprisingly there has been no stirring of nutrient rich colder water is to the surface, with a consequent die-off of krill – one of the essential food stuffs for key elements of the food chain like whales. We have seen a massive die-off of grey whales, petrels, salmon, and other fish and mammals like sea lions that eat krill. This marine heat wave is also responsible for the increasing number of coral die-offs, including the massive one imperiling the great barrier reef. Algae is a secondary problem that has grown to be a pernicious issue throughout the oceans of our planet. And even people who don’t care about climate change care about increased insurance rates and whether their beach-front property is sliding into the ocean. Cliffs along California’s 1,023 coast eroded an average of two inches between 2009-2011 and 2016. Apartments in the videos are literally right across a street from the precipice.
In terms of the effects on people Linden cites the refugee flows in Europe in the 2010s, and people fleeing flooding and heat in Pakistan and Iran. In the Pacific, entire island nations, such as Kiribati, are slowly submerging as seas rise.
In 2017, 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced according to the World Bank, and an estimated 1/3 of these displacements were caused by sudden-onset weather related events. More pernicious and even less noticed were migrations caused by weather that was not sudden-onset but rather an inexorable rise in temperatures and/or a drop in precipitation. At the rate we’re going, there will be areas of the planet that become uninhabitable.
Linden recommends two solutions: one, an immediate economic solution of a tariff and two, a possible economic reform. An across-the-board tariff creates an incentive within a country for competing interests to police bad actors. We now have the ability to monitor emissions through a satellite network. It would be possible to set a percentage for the reduction of emissions. It would be fair. Both the U. S. and Mali could meet the goal of a three percent reduction.
His proposal for systemic reform is a bigger reach. Linden advocates a brand of Socialism much like that prevalent in European countries. He contends that in the absence of these reforms there is a darker path, one already evident in Trump’s legions, who deny the reality of the 2020 election and proved willing to violently overthrow the will of the people and more than 200 years of precedent. There are of course anti-democratic powers in other countries in the world, such as Orbon in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, and Bolsonaro in Brazil. History has shown us how societies react to unstable times. The diamond magnate Harry Oppenheim once remarked, “If they don’t eat, we can’t sleep.” While I don’t personally believe that Socialism is necessarily the solution, we need to explore all options for quick action. As Linden says, our consumer society “[is hurtling] to meet its appointment with its own contradictions. A movement toward Democratic Socialism offers a plausible offramp. There may be others, but time is not our friend.”
Fascinating points made by Linden on the fact that industry so often takes both sides on an issue. Dupont’s work in the 1980s on the issue of CFCs is a perfect example. While industry was pushing back aggressively against scientists and lobbyists demanded proof that the chemicals were actually harming the ozone layer, DuPont was both joining those efforts AND doing research to develop a substitute for CFCs. They had a financial stake in both camps.
I absolutely disagree with Linden‘s hypothesis that Carter would have won if he had not faced the hostage crisis or Ted Kennedy‘s challenge. Reagan had a boy-next-door quality that would easily have defeated an unpopular president like Jimmy Carter. The last straw was the prediction by the networks of a Reagan victory right after the East Coast polls closed. That’s why so many West Coast congressmen lost and why they changed the rules to prevent that happening again.
Carter was unpopular almost from the time he took office. The people of America did not react well to his calls for austerity, his speeches while wearing a sweater, and his reliance on Georgia cronies as White House advisers. Despite the rejection of Nixon’s criminality, they truly wanted Carter still to be a regular politician. It was a very peculiar presidency and I remember not liking him at all. I wasn’t aware of all of the positive things he did to combat climate change and I regret that. I’m glad he tried. He deserves a good legacy, even if it was undone by his successor.
Very interesting description of the inter-governmental panel on climate change. Linden contrasts the actual conclusions of the scientists authoring the individual chapters with the summaries for policy makers that are attached as the introductions to the reports. The IPCC was he says “a gift from God” and “it’s own worst enemy.”
Even as the summary for policymakers offered bland statements on the issues, the scientists themselves were finding evidence that the threat was far more imminent and dangerous than the indicated by the headlines extracted from the summary. For example in his 1998 testimony before the Senate, James Hansen of NASA said it was 99% certain that the observed warming was caused by humans, not natural. Two years later, the IPCC summary held that the “observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability.”
The year 1993 might be described as the time everything changed scientifically. This was the year that the coordinated efforts of the European and American ice core projects published their findings in Nature magazine, confirming that the cooling of the last ice age, the Younger Dryas started and ended far more abruptly than any model of past climate might have predicted, in as little as three years. How abrupt was the discovery of abrupt climate change, asked physicist and science historian Spencer Weart? “Many climate experts would put their finger on one moment: the day they read the 1993 report of the analysis of the Greenland ice cores. Before that, almost nobody confidently believed that the climate could change massively within a decade or two; after the report, almost nobody felt sure that it could not.”
The biggest issue with climate change that Linden highlights is the use of coal. We had an opportunity when developing nations were moving into their own industrial phases to leapfrog over the use of coal and adopt other, cleaner technologies. But the big industrial nations in the Third World did not choose to do that. China and India are notable examples that went the route of coal as opposed to choosing cleaner options. China had vast reserves of coal in 1990, the fourth largest in the world. China produced and consumed about 1.2 billion tons of coal in 1990, toward the beginning of its massive push to become an industrial power. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s China steadily increased its production and consumption of coal, with consumption peaking in 2018 at about 4.6 billion tons or nearly 4 times its consumption in 1990. The coal consumption of the world’s biggest economy, the United States, in 1990 was 896,000,000 tons of coal at a time when the US economy was between 5.5 (purchasing power parity) and 16 (on the basis of GDP) times the size of China’s. In 2018, with the US economy still about 40% larger than China’s in terms of GDP, the United States burned 688,000,000 tons of coal, or 15% of the amount burned by China. India, another prime candidate for the adoption of leapfrogging technologies, also chose coal and its leapfrogging involves jumping over Germany, Japan, and Russia to become the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Even the US went back to using more coal when Trump decided to walk back some of the regulations that had been implemented as part of the Clean Air Act.
Now a group of financial institutions, including Citi, HSBC and Blackrock, are proposing to buy Asian coal-fired plants and retire them ahead of their normal schedules to reduce future emissions.
In environmental terms, the impact of coal-related emissions comes from their accumulation over time. The oceans and the land seem to be able to absorb roughly 5,000,000,000 tons of CO2 a year. Since 1990, China has averaged that amount of CO2 emissions just from coal alone, with total annual GHG emissions soaring to 270% of the earths annual absorptive capacity by the late 2010s. To put this another way, China’s choice of fuels for development has overburdened the globe’s capacity to absorb CO2 by increasing amounts every year since 1990, meaning that even if the entire rest of the world had reached net-zero CO2 emissions 30 years ago, greenhouse gas concentrations would still have grown and temperatures would have continued to rise.
Interesting description of the Clinton administration’s climate change debacle. I didn’t realize that it was a debate over an energy tax BTU tax that swept Newt Gingrich to power. (We were overseas at the time and my whole focus was on El Salvador’s economy.) Apparently it was in that era that the Koch brothers and other manufacturing entities returned to the tools they had used to combat the debate on the ozone hole. While they had lost on that issue they had established a grounding for future political action. Around the time that Vice President Gore went to Japan in 1997 to negotiate the Kyoto protocol, President Clinton convened a White House conference on global climate change. At the end of it he famously remarked that he wanted to take action on climate change, but that he could not get ahead of the public on the issue. He was echoing a famous FDR quotation, who remarked to a group of activists, “you’ve convinced me, now go out and make me do it.”
So, the 1990s ended with the scientific clock still trailing reality but rapidly catching up, while the clock of public opinion had barely started ticking. Most of the developed world thought the problem was way off in the future, while those in emerging nations were largely unaware that climate change was even an issue.
Insurance proved an additional complication. When a homeowner buys an insurance policy, the agent who sells the policy gets a commission. The company that underwrites the policy will backstop the loss is up to a certain point and other companies will join in to pick up the next tranche of losses. Most of the last tranche of losses, those that come from true catastrophes, will be picked up by the reinsurance industry.
At all levels, from retail to reinsurance, insurers have an ace in the hole. Most policies have to be renewed yearly, which gives an insurer some comfort. Instead of having to consider a vastly increased likelihood that a major hurricane or wildfire will hit a specific area at some point in the future, they can limit their worry to whether a catastrophe will hit a certain property in the next year. A house that has 100% chance of being flooded in the next hundred years has only a one percent chance of being inundated in the next year. And if because of climate change such floods become twice as likely, that risk doubles - but it still is only two percent.
Even with these odds reinsurers have become increasingly reluctant to take on catastrophe-related risk. After hurricane Andrew in Miami in 1992, a German mathematician came up with the idea of a security, which became known as CAT bonds, that allowed outside investors to get paid generous interest rates to take part of the risk. It allowed reinsurers to offload some of their risk so that they could continue to underwrite lucrative policies in at-risk areas. It also gave reinsurers access to the vastly larger financial resources of world markets. For investors – usually hedge funds and institutional investors – it offered tempting returns that were uncorrelated to other markets, in the sense that the risks of these bonds had nothing to do with market movements or the economy. It allowed them to diversify their portfolios. Not only did these bonds spread the risk, in a world awash with negative interest rates, the bonds offer institutions and hedge funds fat returns. Finally after yet another round of hurricanes and floods risks insurers and reinsurers decided in some cases to leave the coastal areas of Florida. Under those circumstances the state of Florida stepped in to offer relief to homeowners and business owners affected by storms. In other words, the risk was socialized and now is paid by all Americans. California runs a similar backstop policy program for building in fire zones.
I remember studying climate and environmental issues in college. One of the key issues was pricing in risks and impacts. And that discussion took place in 1972. If the CFC business is a molehill in the global economy, the fossil fuels complex is Everest. Oil, coal, and natural gas are entrenched throughout the modern economy, with trillions invested in infrastructure, supporting millions of jobs, and protected by a massive network of lobbyists and politicians. Fossil fuels power and persistence is evident in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s vehicles still rely on an engine that was invented before the Civil War. To the degree to which spreading risk to the taxpayers underprices insurance for homes and businesses in fire, flood, and other zones vulnerable to the changes brought by climate change, the current system allows people to be blind to the risk of global warming and guarantees that these risks will become systemic.
The failure of both the public and the business community to take notice of the impact of climate change has not stopped reality from moving forward. By the new millennium, many of these scientific fuzzy areas had come into sharper focus. The melting of midlatitude and tropical glaciers, for example, was well underway and well documented. In 1991, retreating Swiss glaciers uncovered the preserved mummy of a Copper Age European hunter who died 5,300 years previously. Andean glacial melting uncovered plants that have been frozen for several thousand years and tropical glaciers were well on their way to disappearing. Those atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya shrank by 26% in the years between 2000 and 2007.
One of Linden’s most intriguing explanations is of the shift in how weather is working around the globe. The new disquieting factor with these climate change-affected storms is the way they park in a given area and just dump rain, day after day. The key to the slow-down in these tropical storms may live far to the north in the Arctic and in the perturbations of the jetstream that have resulted from global warming. The warming in the Arctic, accelerated by the reduction in the ice sheet’s size, has reduced the contrast between Arctic air masses and temperate air to the south. This contrast invigorates the jetstream; the stronger the contrast or temperature gradient, the faster the jet stream. As the temperature gradient decreases, atmospheric waves get larger but also slow down, making weather patterns more persistent. In other cases, the jetstream retreats northward, leaving storms stranded with no upper level winds to steer them on their way. The series of record-setting rainfalls in the 2010s were the result of a cascade of repercussions related to the warming of the globe. Another was the hellish proliferation of wildfires in recent recent years. In California, five of the 10 largest wildfires in the states history occurred in 2020 alone, and all but two have taken place since 2010. The largest wildfire in Australian history torched the country in the Australian summer of 2019 to 2020. Truly massive fires also have swept through Siberia and the Russian far East.
Why? With the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, the normal weather pattern for the West Coast is for the jetstream to veer northward as it near North America bringing warmer air south of the jet stream to California, Oregon, and Washington. Typically, the upper atmosphere winds then travel over Northern Canada, steered into the continent near Southern Alaska by the counter clockwise flow of the Aleutian Low, which strengthens over winter. Once over north central Canada, the normal year jet stream then starts south, bringing cooler air to the central and eastern states of the United States. This flow gets interrupted by Pacific storms and other factors, but then reestablishes itself.
After 1980, the Aleutian Low started to become more erratic in terms of when and even whether it would appear, while the more southerly high-pressure ridge, which usually lasts a matter of days before being disrupted has been extending northward and becoming so pronounced that it actually blocks Pacific storms from hitting the West Coast by diverting the jetstream storm track much farther north than usual. This causes the jetstream to pick up much colder air in its transit through the Arctic and deliver it to the mid continent and east, leading to the series of protracted cold spells and “Snowmageddons” we’ve experienced in recent years.
Moreover, the ridge started to persist long beyond the usual lifespan of such systems. Typically, a high-pressure ridge might last for a matter of days before being disrupted by storms or other events. Beginning in the 2010, these ridges would form and persist for weeks, even months. Indeed, in 2013, a ridge formed and lasted the entire winter. This was repeated in the following winter, and in the winter after that. The phenomenon was so extreme that in December 2013, a Stanford grad student labeled it the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.” Linden doesn’t mention the huge island of garbage in the Pacific, in 2022 measured at 1.6 million square kilometers, twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. No question something like that has a profound effect on the environmental balance of the ocean.
By diverting the storms away from the coast, the ridge had other impacts. Protected by the calm air under the high-pressure dome, a blob of warm water surfaced and also persisted. Over 700 days it grew to gigantic proportions, ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 mi.² of ocean – nearly 4 times the size of Texas – and extending down to 400 feet. Dubbed the blob by research meteorologist Nicklaus Bond, this enormous mass of warm water enhanced West Coast droughts and murdered marine life from California to Alaska. A similar blob in the southern hemisphere has been a factor in the decades long drought afflicting parts of Chile and Argentina. Not surprisingly there has been no stirring of nutrient rich colder water is to the surface, with a consequent die-off of krill – one of the essential food stuffs for key elements of the food chain like whales. We have seen a massive die-off of grey whales, petrels, salmon, and other fish and mammals like sea lions that eat krill. This marine heat wave is also responsible for the increasing number of coral die-offs, including the massive one imperiling the great barrier reef. Algae is a secondary problem that has grown to be a pernicious issue throughout the oceans of our planet. And even people who don’t care about climate change care about increased insurance rates and whether their beach-front property is sliding into the ocean. Cliffs along California’s 1,023 coast eroded an average of two inches between 2009-2011 and 2016. Apartments in the videos are literally right across a street from the precipice.
In terms of the effects on people Linden cites the refugee flows in Europe in the 2010s, and people fleeing flooding and heat in Pakistan and Iran. In the Pacific, entire island nations, such as Kiribati, are slowly submerging as seas rise.
In 2017, 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced according to the World Bank, and an estimated 1/3 of these displacements were caused by sudden-onset weather related events. More pernicious and even less noticed were migrations caused by weather that was not sudden-onset but rather an inexorable rise in temperatures and/or a drop in precipitation. At the rate we’re going, there will be areas of the planet that become uninhabitable.
Linden recommends two solutions: one, an immediate economic solution of a tariff and two, a possible economic reform. An across-the-board tariff creates an incentive within a country for competing interests to police bad actors. We now have the ability to monitor emissions through a satellite network. It would be possible to set a percentage for the reduction of emissions. It would be fair. Both the U. S. and Mali could meet the goal of a three percent reduction.
His proposal for systemic reform is a bigger reach. Linden advocates a brand of Socialism much like that prevalent in European countries. He contends that in the absence of these reforms there is a darker path, one already evident in Trump’s legions, who deny the reality of the 2020 election and proved willing to violently overthrow the will of the people and more than 200 years of precedent. There are of course anti-democratic powers in other countries in the world, such as Orbon in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, and Bolsonaro in Brazil. History has shown us how societies react to unstable times. The diamond magnate Harry Oppenheim once remarked, “If they don’t eat, we can’t sleep.” While I don’t personally believe that Socialism is necessarily the solution, we need to explore all options for quick action. As Linden says, our consumer society “[is hurtling] to meet its appointment with its own contradictions. A movement toward Democratic Socialism offers a plausible offramp. There may be others, but time is not our friend.”
March 1, 2023
Science writer Eugene Linden addresses a real and credible threat to humanity that has been ignored too long and is alarmingly close to the tipping point of irreversibility. My early reaction was Yes! Everyone needs to read this! But the more he delves into how we got to this point, the more his political bias rears its ugly head, especially when he compares the climate crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic. In both cases, it would seem that Republicans can do no right and Democrats can do no wrong — or if they do, it's only for fear of losing votes. I'm no Trump fan, but Linden's bias is so blatant and repetitive that it will only offend and alienate a large segment of the very people who urgently need to read and heed his warning. He cites startling statistics with no source notes. His sweeping accusations and glaring omissions tend to undermine his credibility even with regard to facts he is surely right about. So then: Be concerned, read science, support candidates you trust will take action, invest wisely, and start living greener yourself. But take Linden's statistics and political bias with a grain of salt. As better reads on the subject for the general public, I recommend Hope Jahren's The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here and David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future.
December 8, 2022
Good analysis of climate change, albeit with two critiques.
One, I feel as if Linden falls into a pretty classic environmentalism problem where he puts a disproportionate amount of the blame of climate change upon China and India. Although he does address flaws with this position at some points, he also reinforces it. It does not feel as if he as a consistent approach to China and India.
Second, this book REALLY needs a proper citation setup. All of the writing is good, but having to track down his sources from the vague way he refers to them limits his writing. There is no reason to write a nonfiction work of this quality without an effective citation setup.
One, I feel as if Linden falls into a pretty classic environmentalism problem where he puts a disproportionate amount of the blame of climate change upon China and India. Although he does address flaws with this position at some points, he also reinforces it. It does not feel as if he as a consistent approach to China and India.
Second, this book REALLY needs a proper citation setup. All of the writing is good, but having to track down his sources from the vague way he refers to them limits his writing. There is no reason to write a nonfiction work of this quality without an effective citation setup.
July 10, 2022
This is a book that speaks to the heart of the issue of climate change and offers the unvarnished truth underpinning our glacially slow progress in tackling this existential threat.
If you seek to understand the warped logic that underpins the last forty year's lack of timely action on climate change then I urge you to absorb the content of this excellent and very readable book.
The author, who knows more than a thing or two about his subject here, concisely summarises the backstory to the climate change 'debate' since the mid 80s - examining it through the lenses of public and scientific opinion as well as the perspective of self-serving big businesses with vested interests. The inherent inertia of politicians the world over is also laid bare, together with the factors that policymakers have to struggle with in constructing any sort of national or super-national unifying coherent trajectory that can address this urgent issue.
As well as dealing with the science, the book exposes the public's lack of attention to, and appetite for, grappling with what, until recently, seems to them to have been a vague future threat that was weakly articulated. The author conjectures that this general malaise could well persist until we are burned, drowned or displaced in sufficient numbers that notice has to be taken. By this time, of course, it will likely be too late.
Fire & Flood also describes the historical mischief-making by those with vested interests in maintaining the commercial business-as-usual, and describes the national political processes that are slow, never proactive, and too nationalistic to benefit from any truly coordinated, global strategic thinking.
For me, most strikingly, the author's view of the reasons why the insurance/reinsurance sector has not brought about a faster shift in pricing up realistic risk assessments - be those flood, fire or threat of stranded assets – has made things much clearer. I thought the likes of Swiss Re and Munich Re would have ridden to our rescue in the 2000s – they didn’t.
The book also explains how our unsustainable capitalist models both encourage the gaming of risk and reward hedging. All this provides, in part, a clear insight into how we have ended up facing the dangerous peril that confronts us.
This excellent book will leave you angered, disappointed and frustrated in equal measure.
In the last chapter there’s the obligatory note of optimism; continuing improvements in technology, a genuine spread in social democracy and tariffs are advocated as our possible saviours, and who could disagree? That, I would add, along with a healthy dose of public enlightenment, critical thinking and smelling of the coffee.
This book provides the reader with a significant spur to confront the issue that will, inevitably, have to be squared up to very much sooner rather than later.
Many thanks to NetGalley and to the book’s author & publishers for access to this e-ARC in exchange for my review. All opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
If you seek to understand the warped logic that underpins the last forty year's lack of timely action on climate change then I urge you to absorb the content of this excellent and very readable book.
The author, who knows more than a thing or two about his subject here, concisely summarises the backstory to the climate change 'debate' since the mid 80s - examining it through the lenses of public and scientific opinion as well as the perspective of self-serving big businesses with vested interests. The inherent inertia of politicians the world over is also laid bare, together with the factors that policymakers have to struggle with in constructing any sort of national or super-national unifying coherent trajectory that can address this urgent issue.
As well as dealing with the science, the book exposes the public's lack of attention to, and appetite for, grappling with what, until recently, seems to them to have been a vague future threat that was weakly articulated. The author conjectures that this general malaise could well persist until we are burned, drowned or displaced in sufficient numbers that notice has to be taken. By this time, of course, it will likely be too late.
Fire & Flood also describes the historical mischief-making by those with vested interests in maintaining the commercial business-as-usual, and describes the national political processes that are slow, never proactive, and too nationalistic to benefit from any truly coordinated, global strategic thinking.
For me, most strikingly, the author's view of the reasons why the insurance/reinsurance sector has not brought about a faster shift in pricing up realistic risk assessments - be those flood, fire or threat of stranded assets – has made things much clearer. I thought the likes of Swiss Re and Munich Re would have ridden to our rescue in the 2000s – they didn’t.
The book also explains how our unsustainable capitalist models both encourage the gaming of risk and reward hedging. All this provides, in part, a clear insight into how we have ended up facing the dangerous peril that confronts us.
This excellent book will leave you angered, disappointed and frustrated in equal measure.
In the last chapter there’s the obligatory note of optimism; continuing improvements in technology, a genuine spread in social democracy and tariffs are advocated as our possible saviours, and who could disagree? That, I would add, along with a healthy dose of public enlightenment, critical thinking and smelling of the coffee.
This book provides the reader with a significant spur to confront the issue that will, inevitably, have to be squared up to very much sooner rather than later.
Many thanks to NetGalley and to the book’s author & publishers for access to this e-ARC in exchange for my review. All opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
June 21, 2022
4.5 stars but I'm rounding up because this is a book that should be read. I thought I'd been following this issue, the awareness of which is relatively coterminous with my own life, pretty closely, but I admire the way that Linden was able to connect so many dots and explore aspects of the politics and economics of climate change I hadn't considered before. Don't be fooled by the title - this is not a Howard Zinn style Manichaen populist paean (whether you like such a thing or not). Certainly there are villains and even some heroes, but it's mostly a terrifying grey area whose changing contours Linden tracks from the past 50 years. What you get from this book is an intriguing and immensely frustrating parable of how the very institutions and ideological systems that underpin our modern world - science, democracy, and capitalism - have not only precipitated the climate crisis but made its resolution difficult in ways that reveal the paradoxical nature and the limitations of each of these pillars of our world. It is a story of how the complexity and slowness of scientific research, the short-term interests of global capitalists, the pandering of politicians and the short-term interest of a public often confused by the rapidly changing state of the science and outright misled by disinformation have so far thwarted all efforts to understand and cope with climate crisis. To me, the most fascinating aspect of Linden's story was the key role he gives to the insurance industry - an industry that should have - and, indeed, to some degree *did* - take the financial consequences of future crisis to heart from the start but how the very genius of the financial industry in displacing and commodifying the risks inherent in the economic chance-world of late capitalism ultimately meant they did not take their own risk models as seriously as they should. It also throws to light how much the very states whose officials - like Governor DeSantis of Florida - deride the supposed "socialism" of the left have only managed to prosper thus far given their climate precarity by the socialization of risk . Despite some occasion repetition (but then again, what has this past 50 years been if not repetitive on this issue?), this is a great political history of the past 50 years if you can stomach one depressing read.
July 27, 2025
I find this book helpful for filling in some important gaps in the climate conversation related to the negligent role of the insurance and finance sectors in willfully delaying action. The title (People’s history) is misleading: while Linden worked as a climate focused reporter for Times magazine for many years, and at the end of the book he announces he also worked for 16 years in a hedge fund which seems odd—not exactly the voice of the “people.” His main thesis is that the US government is socializing costly climate risks by funding climate disaster relief with tax money mostly to keep insurance companies afloat—a stop gap that dilutes the urgency of climate change in the public eye. He makes this argument alongside the suggestion that a pure free market would make the risks more apparent so businesses causing climate change would face more immediate consequences from market reactions (a point I find dubious, because climate impacts affect poor people, who are not responsible, worst). Another striking feature is his conclusion that universal tariffs leveraging climate action could solve countries’ inaction. Oddly enough this idea has now been picked up by the anti-climate Trump admin, leveraging a sole power player calling the shots and holding other countries hostage (exactly how universal tariffs could go wrong according to Linden). Did Trump advisors read this book? In addition, sometimes climate books come out that purport to be in favor of solving climate change, but instead just spew more detached economic theories and carbon capture as solutions that focus on the interests of the powerful (see also bill gates climate “thought leadership”). This book makes those errors, but it also has some good points. The commentary about the relationship between the governments of Florida and California and the insurance and reinsurance industries in this book is really interesting. I agree insurance has an important stake in the climate puzzle, with its powers to underwrite (or withhold underwriting) of climate affected areas as well as carbon intensive assets. Perhaps alongside #Exxonknew we should be saying #insuranceknew
August 3, 2023
Can you feel angry and depressed when you read a book? Those two emotions dominated my reaction to Eugene Linden’s “Fire and Flood.”
This is a tremendously compelling book from an author who has been following climate change debate for decades and has a unique perspective on the problem we face as a civilization.
While I too have been following the debate for decades, to read about the evolution of the discussion over decades makes a reader realize how we got into our current predicament. Linden lays out how the scientific community initially lagged behind recognizing the seriousness of the problem thus contributing to the public’s dismissive attitude that the problem was too far away in time to be much of a worry now. Of course, we all know that the science community was wrong, not in the basic premise of climate change, but in the estimation of how soon the impacts would occur.
Linden then does an excellent job of highlighting how various administrations in Washington joined with powerful business interests to stand in the way of any meaningful progress to address climate change.
The last part of the book deals with the reality we are now facing. Although Linden tries to be optimistic in some parts of the book it doesn’t really resolve the depression I felt after finishing it. Yes, a great deal of innovative work is being done in the business community. Linden shows the limited impact this will have in decreasing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere currently. Even if CO2 emissions were to stop tomorrow, the warming climate will continue on the same course for years.
So, anger and depression are in store for anyone who reads this book because it is so well-written and compelling in its logic. We are in for a very difficult time in the decades to come and it is coming quicker than anyone anticipated.
This is a tremendously compelling book from an author who has been following climate change debate for decades and has a unique perspective on the problem we face as a civilization.
While I too have been following the debate for decades, to read about the evolution of the discussion over decades makes a reader realize how we got into our current predicament. Linden lays out how the scientific community initially lagged behind recognizing the seriousness of the problem thus contributing to the public’s dismissive attitude that the problem was too far away in time to be much of a worry now. Of course, we all know that the science community was wrong, not in the basic premise of climate change, but in the estimation of how soon the impacts would occur.
Linden then does an excellent job of highlighting how various administrations in Washington joined with powerful business interests to stand in the way of any meaningful progress to address climate change.
The last part of the book deals with the reality we are now facing. Although Linden tries to be optimistic in some parts of the book it doesn’t really resolve the depression I felt after finishing it. Yes, a great deal of innovative work is being done in the business community. Linden shows the limited impact this will have in decreasing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere currently. Even if CO2 emissions were to stop tomorrow, the warming climate will continue on the same course for years.
So, anger and depression are in store for anyone who reads this book because it is so well-written and compelling in its logic. We are in for a very difficult time in the decades to come and it is coming quicker than anyone anticipated.
December 17, 2025
this does a decent job at doing what it tries to do. but what’s its trying to do is not at all what it says on the tin. nothing about this is “a people’s history.” it isn’t even really a social history. the title should actually say “an american presidential history of climate change” because he basically just goes through all the presidents starting with jimmy carter and tells us the climate related things that occurred during their terms. the focus of this book is limited solely to the united states. i think this important detail should have found its way into the title. it was interesting to read about the history of climate related federal policy in the united states. thats the extent of the book’s content. so im glad i found it interesting because there was literally nothing else here.
eugene linden also makes a bunch of bullshit ideological digs at developing countries and socialist environmental policy. these points were not so much argued as scoffed in passing. i would have respected his arguments more if he had taken them seriously instead of assuming his whole audience will take his word as gospel. after touting the successes of market based reforms he goes on to say that a democratic socialist turn is in order in this country if we wish to effectively manage the impacts of a changing climate. this was quite surprising to me.
this book is also strikingly dated which is funny when you consider that it was published FOUR years ago. it’s a product of the corona virus phenomenon and it seems like linden can draw parallels between the pandemic/its management and seemingly ANYTHING under the sun
eugene linden also makes a bunch of bullshit ideological digs at developing countries and socialist environmental policy. these points were not so much argued as scoffed in passing. i would have respected his arguments more if he had taken them seriously instead of assuming his whole audience will take his word as gospel. after touting the successes of market based reforms he goes on to say that a democratic socialist turn is in order in this country if we wish to effectively manage the impacts of a changing climate. this was quite surprising to me.
this book is also strikingly dated which is funny when you consider that it was published FOUR years ago. it’s a product of the corona virus phenomenon and it seems like linden can draw parallels between the pandemic/its management and seemingly ANYTHING under the sun
May 27, 2023
It’s a bit of a cliche but Linden references Stalin’s ‘one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic’. In a way, the same volume of pounding climate discourse starts to lose its punch. Having said that, it’s a unsurprising reminder of our inability to act in the face of very clear information. Scientists have known since the 70s that man-made climate change was a reality, yet have been scuppered by big business interests. What degree of fidelity to data is required? Clearly 99% didn’t work to prove indubitable.
The thing that feels interesting to me is Linden’s focus on the failure of the insurance companies. Despite climate change having cost 3Tn, they didn’t radically sound the alarm. Why? Well over financialisation meaning some could still receive good returns prior to a catastrophic event. Part of it was governments intervening to ensure insurers had to continue covering risky policies. This is what strikes me as neo-liberalism: a truly sensible and inventive driven market doesn’t exist. It’s a scam aimed at providing short term benefits.
Broadly, Linden’s book is an interesting account, if not coming across as a little sinophobic and self flagellating. He considers the original sin of climate in not helping developing countries to drop fossil fuels as they entered their hyper scaling phases. A mixture of IP sharing and tariffs could have made a huge impact. He does seem a little optimistic although that part is a little light.
The thing that feels interesting to me is Linden’s focus on the failure of the insurance companies. Despite climate change having cost 3Tn, they didn’t radically sound the alarm. Why? Well over financialisation meaning some could still receive good returns prior to a catastrophic event. Part of it was governments intervening to ensure insurers had to continue covering risky policies. This is what strikes me as neo-liberalism: a truly sensible and inventive driven market doesn’t exist. It’s a scam aimed at providing short term benefits.
Broadly, Linden’s book is an interesting account, if not coming across as a little sinophobic and self flagellating. He considers the original sin of climate in not helping developing countries to drop fossil fuels as they entered their hyper scaling phases. A mixture of IP sharing and tariffs could have made a huge impact. He does seem a little optimistic although that part is a little light.
January 29, 2025
I don't read enough non-fiction since finishing University, and this book has certainly proved I ought to change that. It's such a thorough investigation and presentation of climate change, and the four perspectives it focuses on (the reality of climate change, that of the scientific community, the political/economical reception, and the publics understanding) make for a totally comprehensive picture. Naturally, the focus is fixed to the North American continent and the United States, Linden being from there and all, but the messages and revelations it presents are quite global.
Reading through five decades of our struggle to grapple with climate change is quite dreary work, and this book doesn't shy away from presenting the often stark reality as it is. However, he comes to optimistic conclusions, which I'm more or less inclined to get behind considering I also live on this planet.
My most important takeaway; the flow of capital is the primary driving force behind climate change. That flow, and the very few it facilitates to thrive beyond measure, is what must change by any and every means necessary if we want to reduce the effects of climate crisis. That flow doesn't want to divert and neither do those behind it (COVID might've been the closest we've seen since the turn of the new millennium, and even that has been brushed under the rug). I feel like we must be vigilant to disrupting that flow if we really want to see any significant change at all.
Reading through five decades of our struggle to grapple with climate change is quite dreary work, and this book doesn't shy away from presenting the often stark reality as it is. However, he comes to optimistic conclusions, which I'm more or less inclined to get behind considering I also live on this planet.
My most important takeaway; the flow of capital is the primary driving force behind climate change. That flow, and the very few it facilitates to thrive beyond measure, is what must change by any and every means necessary if we want to reduce the effects of climate crisis. That flow doesn't want to divert and neither do those behind it (COVID might've been the closest we've seen since the turn of the new millennium, and even that has been brushed under the rug). I feel like we must be vigilant to disrupting that flow if we really want to see any significant change at all.
March 8, 2024
This book breaks up climate change into four sections per decade: the reality, the science, the public perception, and business/finance. Most of the information wasn't new to me, having an environmental science degree, but to the general public a lot of it might be shocking. Even still, there were bits and pieces that took me off guard. For instance, I hadn't realized how watered down the IPCC reports are (specifically the summaries) and the reasons why the insurance industry failed to treat climate change like the threat they knew it was early on.
One critique I have is that the chapters tend to blur together (because there's a lot of overlap between reality/science/public/business) and I wish there was more discrimination about where information was located to help keep things easy. Also, it tends to focus on the U.S. which could be a positive or negative for some people. I would also add it almost completely glosses over the modern-day environmental movement. Eugene goes to great lengths to talk about the public but fails to mention Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement, Extinction Rebellion, the 21 children that sued the U.S. government and won, the March for Science, the investor rebellion against Exxon, or a host of pushback against 'business as usual'.
One critique I have is that the chapters tend to blur together (because there's a lot of overlap between reality/science/public/business) and I wish there was more discrimination about where information was located to help keep things easy. Also, it tends to focus on the U.S. which could be a positive or negative for some people. I would also add it almost completely glosses over the modern-day environmental movement. Eugene goes to great lengths to talk about the public but fails to mention Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement, Extinction Rebellion, the 21 children that sued the U.S. government and won, the March for Science, the investor rebellion against Exxon, or a host of pushback against 'business as usual'.
July 7, 2022
I definitely had higher hopes for this book. It actually left me feeling less empowered than I had been prior to reading it as far as my will and efforts towards ecological (and therefore social) justice.
It's rather incredible that the author, who has been covering the issue since the early 1990s, still manages to present the history so dryly. We need the ghost of Rachel Carson to inject some vibrancy into it. I'm also rather astonished at how naively he focuses on dreams of "What if x Democrat had won instead?" as if that neoliberal centrist party wasn't also heavily invested in the maintaining of the status quo and big industry $$$. At least he points to some interesting economical arguments where maximizing profits (once international tariffs have gone into effect and are being enforced) is the motivation, since that's clearly where our culture finds its motivation.
There's no mention of the term "ecoterrorism" being coined in the '90s in order to exponentially increase the carceral punishment of individuals and groups who have resorted to direct action (without violence to anything but property) in order to disrupt the slaughter of our world's life.
It's rather incredible that the author, who has been covering the issue since the early 1990s, still manages to present the history so dryly. We need the ghost of Rachel Carson to inject some vibrancy into it. I'm also rather astonished at how naively he focuses on dreams of "What if x Democrat had won instead?" as if that neoliberal centrist party wasn't also heavily invested in the maintaining of the status quo and big industry $$$. At least he points to some interesting economical arguments where maximizing profits (once international tariffs have gone into effect and are being enforced) is the motivation, since that's clearly where our culture finds its motivation.
There's no mention of the term "ecoterrorism" being coined in the '90s in order to exponentially increase the carceral punishment of individuals and groups who have resorted to direct action (without violence to anything but property) in order to disrupt the slaughter of our world's life.
April 28, 2024
This excellent, disturbing audiobook discusses the history of climate change science and its denial.
For example, in the 70s, President Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof and began initiatives to jumpstart alternative energies. (This was a time of great interest in environmental issues, as I recall from my youth.) Then, in the 80s, the new President Reagan removed the solar panels and rolled back Carter's initiatives. During Reagan's eight years in office, the climate deniers gained traction and expertise in influencing the media and the public, as they are still doing today.
In the 90s, Bill Clinton wanted to do something on climate but he couldn't because the public no longer cared.
So we've lost 40 years of action and now it may be too late. The author still has some hope. He lists all the progress with clean energy lately and lays out his solutions at the end. We will see.
Highly recommended!
For example, in the 70s, President Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof and began initiatives to jumpstart alternative energies. (This was a time of great interest in environmental issues, as I recall from my youth.) Then, in the 80s, the new President Reagan removed the solar panels and rolled back Carter's initiatives. During Reagan's eight years in office, the climate deniers gained traction and expertise in influencing the media and the public, as they are still doing today.
In the 90s, Bill Clinton wanted to do something on climate but he couldn't because the public no longer cared.
So we've lost 40 years of action and now it may be too late. The author still has some hope. He lists all the progress with clean energy lately and lays out his solutions at the end. We will see.
Highly recommended!
September 23, 2022
Listening to this it was a little like watching Don’t Look Up. There were chapters and chapters about all the ways we’ve ignored climate change and what the results will be. Capitalism and consumerism and profit making is part of the problem. A big part of the problem.
it was a little repetitive and I got kind of depressed but the last chapter talks about some things that could be done and compares the rush to come up with the Covid vaccine with what we could do to stop global warming. I’m afraid I’m not hopeful.
it was a little repetitive and I got kind of depressed but the last chapter talks about some things that could be done and compares the rush to come up with the Covid vaccine with what we could do to stop global warming. I’m afraid I’m not hopeful.
July 31, 2022
Just a touch short of screaming climate alarmism. The parting line from the publisher's blurb claims, "There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and h ow." The prose absolutely pounds on the "why" part over and over, but really comes up short, I think, on the how. A recommendation to follow the insurance industry seems reasonable, but the nuts and bolts of doing so seem to come up short.
November 5, 2022
I really enjoyed this book - especially because my memories start just before 1979. My only quibble with the book is that it repeats itself a lot and I feel that there are a lot more stories that could have been told in more detail if the repeats were cut.
Still, I read this book really fast because it was so engaging. I have been trying to read and understand more about climate change and this was a great intro book.
Still, I read this book really fast because it was so engaging. I have been trying to read and understand more about climate change and this was a great intro book.
November 23, 2022
Linden masterfully captures the developments of global climate change. I've long looked for a book that talks about the issue in a more complex way. Most concerned readers understand the threat that climate change poses and Linden takes that starting point to take the reader somewhere new. He discusses climate change's effect in new and interesting ways I hadn't heard of before. If you are an environmentalist, you MUST read this book.
November 28, 2022
A really readable and fascinating history of the rise of climate science, awareness of the climate crisis, and the (unfortunately, very successful) attempts to discredit or downplay the peril until now it is almost too late (and, indeed, it is too late for some things). Ultimately optimistic about the possibility of making necessary changes, but a very depressing view of humanity and our ultimate capacity to deny reality even as it is killing us.
August 16, 2024
An important read if you are concerned about climate change. The authors construct of using four different clocks to represent how fast consensus is built and concern elevated is an excellent way to understand the complexity and confounding problem of motivating the public towards progress. This book is heavy because it lays bare our failures and potential consequences rolling ever more quickly into view.
July 23, 2023
This was excellently presented by the use of 4 time clocks to help the reader understand climate change. I found the history over the last 40 years interesting and informative. My only criticism was that sometimes the author went on tangents of political administrations and other areas other than climate change. Otherwise, a compelling read.
March 23, 2022
Linden is an excellent populizer and this book is compelling and informative, a story of climate and people.
I appreciated it and it's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
I appreciated it and it's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
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