I’ve just about finished reading a great new book on climate change by Australian thinker and university professor Clive Hamilton. The book, Requiem For A Species, is an interesting but disconcerting read.

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change

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Retail Price: $24.95

Amazon Price: $22.39

The starting point is an admission that (as many climate change activists know) our goose is well and truly cooked. Hamilton reviews the now conclusive science that we will experience up to four degrees of warming this century – on our way there we will cross several major tipping points (such as an ice-free Arctic, and loss of much of the Amazon Basin through drought and fire) that will produce positive feedback and accelerate global warming.

The main focus of the book is why our civilisation can’t accept the scientific evidence that major warming-induced changes have already occurred, and that such changes are at or above the worst case IPCC scenario from the 2007 report. He blames our consumerist society for much of the problem, and goes to some length to explain why green is the new red (from the conservative’s point of view).

He discusses what a +4 degree world could be like, and ends with some ideas about what we can still do to mitigate the most extreme manifestations of climate instability.

Related posts:

1. Tim Flannery reviews James Lovelock’s latest book “The Vanishing Face of Gaia”
2. Climate Change Threatens Australia’s Great Barrier Reef