Best of
Global-Warming

2020

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet


Bjørn Lomborg - 2020
    Wildfires rage across the American West. Glaciers collapse in the Artic. Politicians, activists, and the media espouse a common message: climate change is destroying the planet, and we must take drastic action immediately to stop it. Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg. Climate change is real, but it's not the apocalyptic threat that we've been told it is. Projections of Earth's imminent demise are based on bad science and even worse economics. In panic, world leaders have committed to wildly expensive but largely ineffective policies that hamper growth and crowd out more pressing investments in human capital, from immunization to education. False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong -- and points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.

The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate War


Joe Bastardi - 2020
    

Life Changing: How Humans are Shaping the Course of Evolution


Helen Pilcher - 2020
    We domesticated animals to suit our needs, and altered their DNA--wolves became dogs to help us hunt, junglefowl became chickens to provide us with eggs, wildebeest were transformed through breeding into golden gnus so rifle-clad tourists had something to shoot. And this was only the beginning. As our knowledge grew we found new ways to tailor the DNA of animals more precisely; we've now cloned police dogs and created a little glow-in-the-dark fish--the world's first genetically modified pet. The breakthroughs continue.Through climate change, humans have now affected even the most remote environments and their inhabitants, and studies suggest that through our actions we are forcing some animals to evolve at breakneck speed to survive. Whilst some are thriving, others are on the brink of extinction, and for others the only option is life in captivity. Today, it's not just the fittest that survive; sometimes it's the ones we decide to let live.According to the Bible, Noah built the original ark to save the world's creatures from imminent floods. Now the world is warming, the ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. With nowhere "wild" left to go, Helen Pilcher proposes a New Ark. In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, she considers the many ways that we've shaped the DNA of the animal kingdom and in so doing, altered the fate of life on earth. In her post-natural history guide, she invites us to meet key species that have been sculpted by humanity, as well as the researchers and conservationists who create, manage and tend to these post-natural creations.

What Is to Be Done: political engagement and saving the planet


Barry Jones - 2020
    Meanwhile, technologies such as the smartphone and the ubiquity of social media have reinforced the realm of the personal. This has weakened our sense of, or empathy with, ‘the other’, the remote, the unfamiliar, and all but destroyed our sense of community, of being members of broad, inclusive groups.In the post-truth era, politicians invent ‘facts’ and ignore or deny the obvious, while business and the media are obsessed with marketing and consumption for the short term. Sleepers, Wake! Revisited is a long-awaited update on such challenges of modernity.

Mimi of the Nowhere


Michael Kilman - 2020
    The original cover edition is here.In the bowels of the giant walking city of Manhatsten, Mimi survives, homeless, and unique as the only telepath in what’s left of humanity. Mimi has isolated herself for centuries, watching the few friends and lovers she let close die, as she endures.Then, after decades alone with her gift, something interrupts her telepathy. She realizes she might not be alone after all. Mimi soon discovers a secret that has remained hidden since the walking cities took their first steps a thousand years ago. A secret that could cost her life, or worse.Will she survive, or will the city ultimately recycle her?

Salvaged


C.A. Clark - 2020
    The horrors of the past are of no concern to her…Until an impulsive decision to go diving during a storm leads her far away from the comforts of New Melbourne. Cassie soon discovers that not everybody lives the same way she does.With her life in danger, the horrors of the past become the horrors of today. Will Cassie salvage the wreck of her life?

The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet


Noam Chomsky - 2020
    It is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity. Meanwhile, the leaders of the most powerful state in human history are dedicating themselves with passion to destroying the prospects for organized human life. At the same time, there is a solution at hand, which is the Green New Deal. Putting meat on the bones of the Green New Deal starts with a single simple idea: we have to absolutely stop burning fossil fuels to produce energy within the next 30 years at most; and we have to do this in a way that also supports rising living standards and expanding opportunities for working people and the poor throughout the world. This version of a Green New Deal program is, in fact, entirely realistic in terms of its purely economic and technical features. The real question is whether it is politically feasible. Chomsky and Pollin examine how we can build the political force to make a global Green New Deal a reality.