Death in a Warm, Hard Place

Good review in The Seattle Times today on two new books about global warming. Both authors are coming to Seattle in future weeks.

I'm already familiar with, and often cite, Elizabeth Kolbert's work from The New Yorker. What makes Kolbert's reporting so effective is her cold-eyed, unflinching dissection of the human race's self-extinction as it unfolds. It's as though she were standing beneath the twin towers on September 10 saying, "Steps are in place for two passenger jets to fly into the World Trade Center tomorrow morning, causing extreme loss of human life and renewal of war in the Middle East. High-level intelligence memos have warned of this occurrence for months, including one titled, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' Yet unless there is a last-minute reversal of policy, the jets will destroy the towers."

Should we take action? You decide.

I'm not familiar with Tim Flannery's writing but it sounds just as apocalyptic. Kolbert's series is one reason I like to tell people that I'm living each day of my life as though it is a crisis. Not a happy message, I know, and not a happy way to live. I've always been an optimistic person and would like to remain so. One reason I joined Green For Good is the hope that an alternative approach can not only make an impact but succeed. But any notion that hey, humans have always faced insurmountable challenges to survival and prevailed, is just not scientifically supportable under current practices. If we are to survive, things not only need to change, they need to change exactly right now.

I'll leave for now with my favorite quote from Kolbert (the series; I haven't seen the book yet): "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."

— Paul Andrews, Green for Good

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