A serious, debatable assessment of a controversial global issue.
Climate change is manageable, one analyst asserts.
Prague-based Danish political scientist Lomborg, president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, follows his previous critiques of climate change policy—e.g., Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (2007)—with a hard-hitting analysis of failing strategies for addressing what he acknowledges is “a real problem.” He believes that “apocalyptic narratives,” echoing past panics about overpopulation, mass famine, and toxins, are hyped by the media and actually misrepresent evidence both of climate threats and the efficacy of solutions such as solar and wind technology, electric cars, and individuals’ efforts to limit energy use. Often citing U.N. climate and environmental studies, Lomborg argues that the prevalence of climate disasters such as flooding and wildfire is not increasing globally but rather the costs of damages that result from overbuilding are rising. The author’s least convincing argument focuses on humanity’s “remarkable ability for adaptation,” which he says does not factor into climate change predictions. If global temperature will rise 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century without any human intervention—a figure he does not dispute—people will respond by buying air conditioners and setting up cooling centers for those who cannot afford them. Wheat farmers will look to other crops or grain varieties or move their farms north. Lomborg is a strong critic of the patchwork Paris Climate Agreement, which, he writes, “will cost a fortune to carry out and do almost no good.” Other worldwide problems, including disease, hunger, and poverty, require urgent attention and could be mitigated by free trade, fighting early childhood malnutrition, and providing immunizations and access to contraception. Raising living standards globally, along with smart carbon taxes, geoengineering innovations, development of artificial meat, and increased fuel efficiency for planes can address climate change in the long run.
A serious, debatable assessment of a controversial global issue.Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5416-4746-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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