I'm a Professor of Climate Science at University College London. My early career was spent as a ‘rocket scientist’ designing, building, and operating instruments to fly on sounding rockets and satellites to study the cosmos and the Sun. I established the UCL satellite Remote Sensing Group, with special attention to the polar regions. I then ran an international Global Change research programme that coordinated Earth science activities in 75 countries. Since then I've run the British Antarctic Survey, responsible for the UK’s research access to Antarctica, and the Science Museum in London. The museum’s collection traces the evolution of the industrial revolution, which started in the UK, and of which climate change is the unintended consequence.
I met Clive Hamilton at an event in London in 2011 shortly after the book’s launch. At the time the climate science community was still reeling from the disaster of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit.
As rationalists, we were asking the question: “Why is the scientific evidence not being listened to?” Hamilton provided answers – about humanity’s free market consumerist fetish, the insidious role of mainstream economics, and our denialist tendencies, alienation from nature, and hubris.
He explained that “Awakening to the prospect of climate disruption compels us to abandon most of the comfortable beliefs that have sustained our sense of the world as a stable and civilising place.”
Dismissing techno-solutions such as Carbon Capture and Storage and ‘Clean Coal’ as diversionary tactics by powerful interests, the book offers an ethical and moral basis for reconstructing the future. Rereading it 13 years after its publication, I am impressed by its substance and depressed by its continuing relevance.
This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act.
This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it is now too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of…
The most common question I am asked when giving lectures on climate change is “What can I do?”
Mike Berners-Lee’s mission is to answer that question in as comprehensive, comprehensible, and helpful way possible. He provides a handbook of justifications and authoritative insights into addressing “how we can make the transition into a new mode of living that works for us and fits our new context (of climate and environmental change) – a way of operating that won’t smash the place up and will allow us to thrive despite our power.”
The antidote to climate dismay is action, and this book points the way.
Feeding the world, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics, pandemics - the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, and what should we do first? Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly in a low-carbon world? How can we take control of technology? And, given the global nature of the challenges we now face, what on Earth can any of us do, as individuals? Mike Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers and plotted a course of action that is full of hope, practical, and enjoyable. This is the big-picture perspective on the environmental and economic…
Christiana Figueres was the UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change in the run-up to, and during, COP21. She is founding partner of Global, a member of the B Team, and Convenor of Mission 2020.
Her co-author, Tom Rivett-Carnac was a senior political strategist influencing the COP21 proceedings. Between them they provide a view from the highest level of the international political machinery addressing climate change.
Following a comparison of two possible futures – one dystopian and one utopian – the book offers a dose of ‘stubborn optimism’ moderated by recognition of the limits of ‘endless abundance’ and a call for ‘radical regeneration’. It continues with ten actions to which we can all contribute, and ends with a passionate call to arms.
It aims to be practical, optimistic, and empowering. Of the many popular books on the topic, its pedigree and carefully crafted content cause it to stand above the crowd.
'Everyone should read this book' MATT HAIG 'One of the most inspiring books I have ever read' YUVAL NOAH HARARI 'Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW' MARK RUFFALO 'Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world' NAOMI KLEIN
*****
Discover why there's hope for the planet and how we can each make a difference in the climate crisis, starting today.
Humanity is not doomed, and we can and will survive. The future is ours to create: it will be shaped by who we…
Simon Sharpe has a knack for original thinking. His book is a tour de force in three parts.
Having explained on page 1 that to keep the climate “just about safe and stable” requires a reduction in global greenhouse emissions per unit of GDP at a rate five times faster than we have managed for the past two decades (hence the title) – he proceeds to examine the performance and practices of the climate science community, the mainstream economists, and the diplomats.
In each case, with ruthless clarity, he finds them wanting. The science community has overdosed on predictions when risk assessment and addressing “What is the worst that could happen?” would have been more helpful. The flawed assumptions and norms of neoliberal economics have generated results and advice which are “worse than useless”.
And the world of diplomacy has focussed on unilateral national action, when encouraging small groups of countries to work together could accelerate change – “through faster innovation, larger economies of scale and measures to protect new entrants against incumbents”.
A key insight is the existence of social tipping points, which once triggered can allow the seemingly impossible to be achieved. Time is not on our side, and Simon’s book offers the means for influential actors to open up the accelerator.
We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress are the ideas and institutions that are supposed to be helping us? Five Times Faster is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, who has spent ten years at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy. In our fight to avoid dangerous climate change, science is pulling its punches, diplomacy is picking the wrong…
What if we get it wrong? What if the scale and pace of our collective measures to address climate destabilisation and the biodiversity crisis remain insufficient?
Oreskes and Conway provide the imagined view of a historian of the “Second People's Republic of China” from 2393. His account describes how the political and economic elites of the early decades of the twenty-first century ignored or dismissed the clear warnings of climate catastrophe.
Soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, drought, and mass migrations resulted in “The Great Collapse of 2093”. Three centuries later as the world emerges from the “Penumbral Age’ it is a more subdued and thoughtful place.
By dramatizing an all-too-plausible ‘ghastly’ outcome, the authors seek to galvanise the energies of readers to rise from their armchairs and act. We should all strive to ensure that the book remains firmly on the shelves of fiction.
The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and-finally-the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment-the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced…
The book is the script of a play I wrote with the playwright Duncan Macmillan. The aim is to tell the climate change story clearly and vividly to join the conversation about how to act. The format is a ‘fireside chat’, describing my personal journey as a scientific researcher, my involvement in climate science, the evidence that destabilising the Earth’s energy balance is a big mistake, and the steps being taken globally to tackle it. I performed it for two seasons at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. A final performance at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels is credited with having stimulated discussions that influenced Europe’s preparations for the Paris COP21, at which world leaders finally agreed to act.
A fast-paced literary thriller with a strong sci-fi element and loaded with existential questions. Beyond the entertainment value, this book takes a hard look at the perilous world of publishing, which is on a crash course to meet the nascent, no-holds-barred world of AI. Could these worlds co-exist, or will they destroy each other? And more importantly, how will humans tolerate their own creations, the robots, on this planet?
In this, his latest speculative fiction novel, Shane Joseph, returns to the “what if” questions facing humanity that he raised in After the Flood, a book that won him the…
With Chatbots and Large Language Models changing the world of writing and publishing dramatically, what happens when we introduce a sentient robot capable of feelings into the mix?
Phil Kruger, inventor, and serial womanizer, believes he has the answer in his creation, Victoria, the first sentient robot in the world, imbued with beauty, knowledge, and strength and on a crash course to acquire human feelings through massive infusions of data. Arrayed against him are independent trade publisher Artemius (Art) Jones and his rebellious and sexually starved daughter, Paula, an editor herself, who is determined to take her father's failing press,…
