Can we survive climate change? This learned book suggests that we can, but it won’t be easy.
A long look back at human interactions with changing climate issues in the past.
Archaeologists Fagan and Durrani, the former of whom has written about climate and natural resources in several popular books, survey the “story of how our ancestors adapted to…myriad shifts, large and small,” as portions of the world alternately heated and cooled. One adaptation of long standing is simply to move, as Ancestral Puebloan people did when a centurylong drought settled over what is now the Southwestern U.S. Ecological refugees who are leaving present-day drought-stricken zones in places such as the Sahel are evidence of “the ancient survival strategy of mobility on a truly massive scale.” The massive drought that has settled over the present-day Southwest does not afford the same ability. As exploding population in the region, the authors write, has “placed major stresses on groundwater and other scarce water supplies as global warming intensifies.” Given that mass migration “is no longer a viable option in our time,” it’s up to modern planners to figure out a way to ensure the chances of our survival. While questioning our near-religious faith in the thought that technology can somehow save us, the authors allow that it will help, even as we continue to wreak catastrophic damage. Megadroughts in places such as the Southwest and India are not our only concern; the authors write of climate change–induced flooding and plagues, noting that the difference between present and past is that the natural alterations of old are now human-caused. What we do have going for us, the authors conclude in this accessible survey, is our ability to think problems through. “In planning adaptations to future climate change,” they write, “we need to maximize those enduring qualities that will sustain us as we plan decisive adaptations for the future.” That includes local leadership to address local effects.
Can we survive climate change? This learned book suggests that we can, but it won’t be easy.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-5087-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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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
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