Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change

By William H. Calvin

Book Overview

Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent. Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are declining, hurricanes are strengthening. The debate about climate change is over: there's no question that global warming has made the Earth sick, and the outlook for the future calls for ever-warmer temperatures and deadlier results. Something must be done-but how quickly?
With Global Fever, William H. Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription. In striking, straightforward language, he first clearly sets out the current state of the Earth's warming climate and the disastrous possibilities ahead should we continue on our current path. Increasing temperatures will kill off vegetation and dry up water resources, and their loss will lead, in an increasingly destructive feedback loop, to even more warming. Resource depletion, drought, and disease will follow, leading to socioeconomic upheaval-and accompanying violence-on a scale barely conceivable.
It is still possible, Calvin argues, to avoid such a dire fate. But we must act now, aggressively funneling resources into jump-starting what would amount to a third industrial revolution, this one of clean technologies-while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs.
Passionately written, yet thoroughly grounded in the latest climate science, Global Fever delivers both a stark warning and an ambitious blueprint for saving the future of our planet.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226092046
• ISBN13: 9780226092041
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Global Fever

Excellent book! Written in such a way as to be understandable to those with little background in climate issues yet blunt enough in its analysis to wake up those who politically or otherwise are laggards when it comes to moving forward on existential environmental issues. Written in plain english!