(Reviews)

Hot Air and Green Dreams

Between the ends of the global warming debate, a consensus begins to emerge.

By Robert Braile

Thermageddon: Countdown to 2030
By Robert Hunter
Arcade, 276 pages, $24.95

Reconstructing Climate Policy: Beyond Kyoto
By Richard B. Stewart and Jonathan B. Wiener
AEI Press, 193 pages, $20

Environmental issues are easy targets for ideologues. Problems from desertification to overpopulation are complex and persistent, seemingly beyond resolution. Thus, they often become platforms for political and cultural agendas, where the would-be solutions say more about the solver than the solved.

So it is with global warming, humanity’s greatest environmental issue, as two new books attest. Robert Hunter’s Thermageddon: Countdown to 2030 is the angry lament for an imperiled planet one would expect from a cofounder of Greenpeace. Reconstructing Climate Policy: Beyond Kyoto, by Richard B. Stewart and Jonathan B. Wiener—a New York University law professor and a Duke University professor of environmental policy and law—is the optimistic ode to free market capitalism one would expect from the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that commissioned the book.

What comes as a surprise are the broad points on which these authors concur, despite standing on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. They agree, for instance, that political efforts to curtail global warming have stalled, especially since 2001, when President George W. Bush disavowed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world’s blueprint for addressing the problem. And they are not happy about it, contending that climate change is a dire threat.

This is hardly a surprising sentiment from Hunter, who cut his activist teeth in the antinuke and antiwar protests of the 1960s. “The most obvious fact of life at this juncture of history, Dexter, is that if we continue to pollute, burn, overfish, clear-cut, strip-mine, dam, drain, net, poison, dump, exterminate, develop, fly, drive, and procreate at our current rate, we will inevitably precipitate a global disaster,” Hunter writes to his grandson, apologizing for the “ecological nightmare” the child may inherit.

But from Stewart and Wiener, writing for a group more at home in Bush’s conservative GOP camp, similar concerns about the earth’s welfare—though expressed in more measured language—raise eyebrows.

“The flaws in the Kyoto Protocol do not justify refusal to face up to the risks of climate change,” they argue, referring mostly to the protocol’s failure to require China and other developing nations to reduce their mounting greenhouse-gas emissions. “Yet instead of proposing an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration seems to have embraced a strategy of ‘benign neglect’ in the hope perhaps that the Kyoto Protocol will collapse when the time comes to implement it, or that the climate change issue will just go away. It will not.”

Of course, someone like Hunter is bound to have only so much in common with free marketers, even those like Stewart and Wiener, who are willing to buck President Bush on his environmental stewardship. So it is inevitable that the authors’ contrasting worldviews would shape two very different solutions to global warming.

Hunter calls for “a revolution of some sort,” involving energy efficiency, population control, a global carbon tax, international environmental laws enforced by governments and environmental groups, an end to fossil fuels, and other actions. Stewart and Wiener prescribe a “third option” to loving or leaving the Kyoto Protocol; it would entail the United States teaming up with China and other developing nations to create their own international emissions trading regime. Such a plan would cover all of the key greenhouse gases, make use of “sinks” like forests to absorb carbon dioxide, and set longer-term emissions reduction goals than those required by Kyoto. Since the United States produces about 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and China more than 13 percent, the protocol is virtually pointless without them, the authors argue. And because China, as a developing nation, is not obligated to sign on to Kyoto, and the United States is refusing to, neither is involved. The nations that have signed on to Kyoto, however, would see the wisdom of this third option, and modify the protocol accordingly, at which point the United States, China, and the other third-option nations would join in, Stewart and Wiener assert.

Ultimately, both books are presumptuous in that you cannot accept their solutions without accepting their agendas. For Hunter, this means a return to ’60s activism to save the world; for Stewart and Wiener, to a world made safe for capitalism, where profit reigns over purpose. For instance, international environmental laws enforced by governments and environmental groups might ease global warming. But they would require broad acceptance of the command-and-control thinking many environmentalists espouse and many free marketers eschew. Similarly, international emissions trading might have an impact. But it would require wide acceptance of the market-based thinking many free marketers laud and many environmentalists loathe.
Each book thus falls short, purporting to be about climate change but really being more about social change, however viable their solutions might be. The books are more compelling if considered together, suggesting that,
if nothing else, a tenuous political and cultural common ground is emerging on this issue—that climate change is a real threat, and it must be averted.
And with the world warming, that is reason for hope.

Robert Braile is a former correspondent for The Boston Globe.

For Families

Audubon: Painter of Birds in the Wild Frontier
By Jennifer Armstrong/Illustrations by Joseph A. Smith
Harry N. Abrams, 38 pages, $17.95, ages 5–9

Highlighting john james Audubon’s fledgling career as a painter in the early 1800s, Armstrong brings to life both the man and the uncharted territories he explored. As we join Audubon on his adventures, we marvel at vast flocks of passenger pigeons, “like a tornado or a mighty thundercloud. The sky was black with them, as far as the eye could see.” Smith’s muted watercolors further remind us of the paradise lost that Audubon saw and preserved on canvas.

Life Under Ice
By Mary M. Cerullo/Photographs by Bill Curtsinger
Tilbury House, 40 pages, $16.95, grades 3–7

At one point, early in this enchanting glimpse of life under the Antarctic ice, Curtsinger, a veteran nature photographer and frequent visitor to the area, takes pictures by floating through a crack in the ice, “a little like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit’s hole.” Indeed the incredible array of animals and plants this book captures does seem straight out of storybook fantasy. “[Due to a] phenomenon called ‘gigantism’ found in extremely cold seas, you can find sea spiders as large as dinner plates and sea stars almost two feet across!” In the end, Cerullo sounds a cautionary note about global warming’s impact. (For more about global warming in the region, see “On Thin Ice.”)“Antarctica has the distinction of still being the most peaceful, untouched place on earth,” she concludes. “No wars have ever been fought there, [and] no country owns it.”

Compost, By Gosh!
Written and Illustrated by Michelle Eva Portman
Flower Press, 42 pages, $16.95, ages 4–9

The environmental reasons for composting household food scraps are self-evident: Composting lowers municipal waste and reduces reliance on pesticides and fertilizers. It is also tremendous fun, particularly for children who enjoy a good science experiment. Portman’s rhyming text and droll illustrations trace the magical transformation, from yesterday’s apple core to tomorrow’s humus, that nourishes plants and trees. The book serves as a valuable primer on worm composting, as a young girl tends to her bin filled with red worms, bedding, and kitchen scraps. “While writhing and wriggling, / On food scraps they dined / Now waste turned to gold / Has come out their behind.” Sentiments as earthy as these are sure to inspire all composters at an early age.

Raptor! A Kid’s Guide to Birds of Prey
By Christyna M. and René Laubach and Charles W. G. Smith
Storey Publishing, 118 pages, $14.95, ages 7–12

No matter where you live in North America, raptors are living nearby. Peregrine falcons nest on skyscraper ledges in our cities; bald eagles and ospreys fish along our rivers and seacoasts.” Chock-full of fun and useful information, Raptor! includes everything from a detachable “pocket spy guide” to help identify flying raptors to instructions on dissecting owl pellets. Coauthor René Laubach, director of Massachusetts Audubon’s Berkshire Wildlife Sanctuaries and a contributor to Audubon’s buildable bird box series, shows how to fashion a raptor nest box. No book in recent memory better conveys the thrill of enjoying these birds “perched at the top of the food chain.”

—David Seideman

© 2003  NASI

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