Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006, $22.95
ISBN 10: 1-59691-125-5
Field Notes from a Catastrophe covers much the same ground as The Weather Makers, but is much shorter (187 small pages of text, versus 314 pages of full size pages). Field Notes is an easy read, and whereas The Weather Makers makes its points by repetition, Field Notes makes the same points with fewer examples but in greater depth, as a result the two books are highly complimentary, read them both!
Elizabeth Kolbert starts with a description of a coastal village on the Bering Sea in Alaska that is feeling the impact of global warming as the ground it is built on thaws, and as thawed land is lost to the sea. She then shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, reviews the history of global temperature as reveled by ice-core data, and shows how animals (butterflies and Toads in her case) are modifying behavior in response to climate change/global warming.
Having established that “Global Warming is Real” and “Is Caused by Us” the author then deals very concisely (but very readably) with examples of civilizations brought down by climate change, the practical problems likely to be faced in adapting to climate change, technologies that could be used to reduce pollution, American political inertia on climate change at the national level, but some hopeful developments at the municipal level. She thus makes the implicit case “We must Stop using Fossil Fuels”.
As for other good books on the nature of the problem we face, Field Notes is light on ideas for the appropriate policy response. |