Sunday, February 13, 2011

Requiem for a species

Great book...everyone should read it. A climate change book with a difference.

First chapter is a little heavy on the detail and even for the committed might you may feel like you're wading through mud because of the amount of facts that are jammed into the chapter about climate change. I do however believe that it provides a good summary of some of the facts relating to climate change and thought about distributing just this chapter to friends (those that don't understand climate change) to bring them up to speed. The rest is an interesting twist on why many people don't like to recognise the truth about climate change and why we persist the way we are going.

The one thing I found truly horrifying in the book (but on reflection think it is likely to be the planetary outcome) is that many people don't value the natural environment and recognise its intrinsic value.  Thus in the face of this dramatic challenge to the planet and many of its species the human race will be happy to sacrifice the natural environment to ensure they can maintain with their current lifestyles and ensure the persistence of the human species. In some minds we don't need the natural environment. Some of these people consider the human species the greatest species and we will "engineer" a fix to ensure our persistence but it may just be that we don't have any remnant of what we understand to be the natural environment.  

Borrow it from your library. Pin It