Review by Choice Review
In Hot, author/journalist Hertsgaard makes a meticulous effort to describe the effect global warming will have on people at a very personal level. The book does not detail scientific evidence, nor immerse the reader in graphs and data. The author begins with the simple premise of trying to describe how climate change will affect the life of his daughter, and other young people, growing up with the onus of a warming world. Though Hertsgaard accents many problems associated with climate change, he is careful to highlight the work of people who seek to minimize the impact through plans to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate. He broadly covers projected global impacts such as sea level rise and food shortages, while spending a great deal of time on specific local efforts to address these challenges. While this reviewer disagrees with this approach, it does serve the author's purpose. This is not a scientific text, but more a book meant to give readers a sense of what climate change will mean in their personal lives. It is a narrative about people in the midst of an alarming situation--a vision we all need to consider. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, two-year technical program students, and general readers. M. Schaab Maine Maritime Academy
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
I HAVEN'T had the talk yet with my kids: my 11-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. I mean the one about global warming, about what's coming. But then, we grown-ups haven't had the talk yet among ourselves. Not really. We don't seem to know how: the topic is apparently too big and scary. Or perhaps, for the uninformed (or misinformed), not scary enough. We might take a cue from Mark Hertsgaard's "Hot," which raises the emotional stakes while keeping a clear head. This was the first book on climate change that not only frightened me - plenty have done that - but also broke my heart. It happened first on the dedication page, where he writes, "For my daughter, Chiara, who has to live through this." And again, as I read his epilogue: a letter addressed to Chiara on her 15th birthday, in 2020 - a "cardinal date," Hertsgaard rightly calls it. "According to the scientists I interviewed," he tells her, "many, many things have to happen by 2020 if this planet is to remain a livable place." That is, if the storms, droughts, rising sea levels and mass extinctions of species are to remain within "manageable" limits. Hertsgaard, to his credit, refuses to sugarcoat these facts. For all the justifiable fears about flooded coastlines, he writes, the "overriding danger" in the coming years is drought. "Floods kill thousands, drought can kill millions," one expert told him. Within two decades, the number of people in "water-stressed countries" will rise to three billion from 800 million. And yet Hertsgaard also knows that we cannot allow fear or despair, or even anger, to be our only response. To face this challenge, we need reasons to believe the task is doable. Hertsgaard makes a valiant effort to provide them. He presents a strong case that there is still time to make an enormous difference. We know what to do, and much of the technology already exists. But we must act now. Hertsgaard, a veteran journalist, had his awakening in October 2005. Interviewing David King, at the time Britain's chief climate scientist, he realized that humancaused climate change is not a distant threat but already upon us. "Scientists had actually underestimated the danger," he writes. "Climate change had arrived a century sooner than expected." What's more, given our current trajectory - economic, cultural and, most important, political - it's guaranteed to get a lot worse before it gets any better. (Significant impacts like sea-level rise are now "locked in.") And it won't get any better - indeed, it will become truly unmanageable - if we don't make the necessary cuts in global greenhouse emissions. This leads Hertsgaard to what he calls the new "double imperative" of the climate fight. "We have to live through global warming," he writes, "even as we halt and reverse it." In other words, while deep emissions cuts (what experts call "mitigation") remain the top priority, that alone is no longer enough. We also have to do everything we can to prepare for the effects of climate change. Adaptation - strengthening levees and sea defenses, safeguarding water and food supplies, preparing for more intense heat waves - has long been a touchy subject among advocates, who warn that it signals resignation, or a false sense of security (that we can continue adapting indefinitely), and that it steals resources from the all-important focus on mitigation. But the debate is shifting, and climate adaptation is starting to get the attention it deserves. There's not much new in what Hertsgaard advocates on the mitigation front - a "Green Apollo" program with an economy-wide price on carbon, vastly increased energy efficiency, huge investments in clean-energy technology, and other mainstream ideas. His significant contribution is his ground-level reporting on adaptation efforts around the world, from American cities to Bangladesh to the Sahel. All the stories are sobering, but many are also surprisingly hopeful: the Netherlands' bold 200-year plan to save the country from a devastating sea-level rise; the utterly unexpected success of farmers in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in reclaiming huge areas of arable land from desertification; China's research on large-scale ecological agriculture. But most important, what Hertsgaard finds is that the ability to adapt to climate change depends as much on "social context" - defined as "the mix of public attitudes, cultural habits, political tendencies, economic interests and civic procedures" - as on wealth and technological sophistication. Wealth and technology clearly matter, but politics and culture may trump them. Take Louisiana: efforts to prepare for future hurricanes, Hertsgaard writes, "have been crippled by the state's history of poor government" along with "its continuing reluctance - even after Katrina - to acknowledge the reality of global warming for fear that might harm oil and gas production, and an abhorrence of taxes and public planning as somehow socialistic." In fact, Hertsgaard's reporting makes me wonder if there isn't more hope for the Sahel than for the vulnerable South and Southwest of the United States. After all, why prepare for something - much less try to halt it - if you refuse to believe it's happening? The American social context too often remains the largest obstacle, Hertsgaard observes, not only to adaptation at home but to cutting emissions globally. It's not clear how to change this, but an honest, urgent, grown-up national conversation - beginning in Washington - would be a start. Wen Stephenson is a former editor of The Boston Globe's Ideas section.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 6, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Environmental journalist Hertsgaard traveled the world to assess green issues just over a decade ago and wrote Earth Odyssey (1999). The birth of his daughter in 2005 sent him back out into the field with a new sense of urgency. What will the world be like when she attains adulthood? As Hertsgaard reports on his conversations with scientists, business executives, politicians, and regular folks, he explains with defining clarity and aplomb why now is the crucial time for mitigation, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and for adaptation, taking action to reduce our vulnerability to the impact of climate change, which is already under way. Innovative adaptation is Hertsgaard's main focus, from vanguard projects in Britain and the Netherlands to impressive achievements in Chicago and Washington State's King County and a quiet green miracle in Africa. His analysis of the impact of global warming on industries as different as winemaking and insurance is intriguing, and his well-supported conclusion that social change can beat back climate change is inspiring. Hertsgaard's rigor and concern make for an exceptionally productive approach to a confounding reality.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A new father, Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) was growing increasingly anxious and despondent about climate change and the world his child would inherit. His new book is his investigation into the techniques that could allow his daughter and her generation "to survive the challenges ahead." This readable, passionate book is surprisingly optimistic: Seattle, Chicago, and New York are making long-term, comprehensive plans for flooding and drought. Impoverished farmers in the already drought-stricken African Sahel have discovered how to substantially improve yields and decrease malnutrition by growing trees among their crops, and the technique has spread across the region; Bangladeshis, some of the poorest and most flood-vulnerable yet resilient people on earth, are developing imaginative innovations such as weaving floating gardens from water hyacinth that lift with rising water. Contrasting the Netherland's 200-year flood plans to the New Orleans Katrina disaster, Hertsgaard points out that social structures, even more than technology, will determine success, and persuasively argues that human survival depends on bottom-up, citizen-driven government action. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Climate change is well underway, writes Hertsgaard (The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, 2002, etc.), and we must begin to adapt to it even as we work to stop it.The author notes that we have entered the "second era of global warming." Even if greenhouse-gas emissions ceased today, the consequences would continue for hundreds of years. Consequently, the author persuasively argues that we need to begin adapting to those changes, which does not mean that mitigating global warming is no longer important; in fact, it grows more urgent every day. Hertsgaard's mantra is "avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable." Though the consequences of unchecked global warming would be impossible to adapt to, we must decrease emissions of greenhouse gases with the greatest haste. This realization, as well as concern for his young daughter's future, prompted the author to travel the world and learn from the attempts that different countries and regions have made to adapt. He identifies the Netherlands as the global leader because they plan for (and fund) the next 200 years and accept that some areas are too expensive to protect. He also praises farmers in Africa's Sahel region. Their practice of growing trees amid their crops has improved yields, raised water tables and added so much greenery since the 1970s that it's visible in satellite pictures. While global warming is a "terrible injustice" because it "punishes the world's poor first and worst, even though they did almost nothing to bring it on," Hertsgaard finds that "even wealthy, technologically advanced societies will find it enormously challenging to defend themselves." The author's stated goal is to make readers feel hopeful so that they will act, but he is candid about his own lapses into despair. He puts forth many of the necessary tools and best practices, calling for a "Green Apollo" program. Hopefully, this book will prompt readers to action.Starkly clear and of utmost importance.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
