An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis - Softcover

Gore, Al

 
9781635651089: An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1635651085 ISBN 13: 9781635651089
Verlag: Rodale Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A New York Times bestseller!

The follow up to the #1 New York Times bestselling An Inconvenient Truth and companion to Vice President Al Gore’s new documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, this new book is a daring call to action. It exposes the reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and delivers hope through groundbreaking information on what you can do now.

Vice President Gore, one of our environmental heroes and a leading expert in climate change, brings together cutting-edge research from top scientists around the world; approximately 200 photographs and illustrations to visually articulate the subject matter; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness (and with humor, too) that the fact of global climate change is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be assuredly disastrous if left unchecked.

Follow Vice President Gore around the globe as he tells a story of change in the making. He connects the dots of Zika, flooding, and other natural disasters we’ve lived through in the last 10+ years—and much more.

The book also offers a comprehensive how-to guide on exactly how we can change the course of fate. With concrete, actionable advice on topics ranging from how to run for office to how to talk to your children about climate change, An Inconvenient Sequel will empower you to make a difference—and lets you know how exactly to do it.

Where Gore’s first documentary and book took us through the technical aspects of climate change, the second documentary is a gripping, narrative journey that leaves you filled with hope and the urge to take action immediately. This book captures that same essence and is a must-have for everyone who cares deeply about our planet.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Al Gore was the forty-fifth vice president. He is the co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is also a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of Apple, Inc.'s board of directors. Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the Climate Crisis.

Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years. During his time in the Clinton Administration, Gore was a central member of the president's economic team. He served as President of the Senate, a Cabinet member, a member of the National Security Council, and as the leader of a wide range of Administration initiatives.

He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, and Our Choice.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

INTRODUCTION

Having spent the better part of my life for the past several decades trying to learn from experts on the climate crisis and working with technology and policy innovators to develop solutions for the unprecedented challenge humanity faces, I have never been more hopeful.

At this point in the fight to solve the climate crisis, there are only three questions remaining:
Must we change?
Can we change?
Will we change?

In the pages that follow, you will find the best available evidence supporting the overwhelming conclusion that the answer to the first two of these three questions is a resounding “Yes.”

I am convinced that the answer to the third question—“Will we change?”—is also “Yes,” but that conclusion, unlike the answer to the first two questions, is in the nature of a prediction. And in order for that prediction to come true, there must be a continued strengthening of the global consensus embodied in the Paris Agreement of December 2015, in which virtually every nation on Earth agreed to take concerted action to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero as early in the second half of this century as possible.

That strengthened consensus depends in turn upon the continuing growth of a global grassroots movement to encourage political leaders in every nation to take even bolder steps than the ones agreed to in Paris. Luckily, that grassroots movement is already growing rapidly, not only among activists and leaders of civil society but also among business leaders, investors, mayors, and other elected officials who recognize that the stakes have never been higher. As more and more people come to the same realization that we really must change, the movement continues to gain momentum.

In other words, all three of these questions are intimately interrelated. In order to accelerate and complete the historic transformation of global civilization that is already under way, it is first necessary to come to grips with the unprecedented threat to humanity posed by our continued reliance on fossil fuels, our unsustainable industrial transportation, agriculture, forestry, and ocean management practices—and our habit of short-term thinking that blinds too many of us to the unimaginable damage we are causing. And in order to summon the will to act with the requisite boldness, we have to have confidence that once we commit ourselves, we can succeed.

I have never been more hopeful. So let’s begin with the first question: must we change?

In some ways, it is easy to understand one of the main reasons it has taken so much time to fully recognize the self-destructive nature of our current pattern. After all, humanity has gained immeasurable benefits from the burning of fossil fuels—higher standards of living, longer lifespans, historic reductions in poverty, and all of the blessings of the elaborate global civilization that has been developed over the past 150 years.

Moreover, because we still depend on fossil fuels for more than 80 percent of the energy that powers our civilization, we are naturally daunted by the prospect of a rapid transition to renewable sources of energy and the speedy development of much higher levels of efficiency in all human activities.

Nevertheless, the obvious and overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing is now increasingly impossible for reasonable people to ignore. It is widely known by now that there is a nearly unanimous view among all scientists authoring peer-reviewed articles related to the climate crisis that it threatens our future, that human activities are largely if not entirely responsible, and that action is needed urgently to prevent the catastrophic harm it is already starting to bring.

More importantly, Mother Nature is reminding us almost daily that the impacts of the climate crisis are growing steadily more severe, with more frequent and powerful climate-related extreme weather events. Every night, the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.

But before diving further into examples of the unprecedented harm we are causing, please remember how important it is to guard against feelings of despair. Despair, after all, is simply another form of denial, and can serve to paralyze the will we need to fight our way out of this crisis. And bear in mind that the hopeful news about the availability of solutions is a powerful antidote to the feelings that can be aroused by the disconcerting news about the self-harm we are presently inflicting upon humanity.

High temperature records are being routinely broken on every continent—even Antarctica, where, in 2015, scientists confirmed one measurement of 17.5ºC (63.5ºF). Because of the physics of global warming, nighttime temperatures are rising even faster than daytime temperatures, and heat waves are becoming far more common.

Air temperatures are predicted to steadily increase all around the world because of the continuing accumulation of man-made global warming pollution in the atmosphere, the thin shell of air that surrounds our planet. The cumulative amount of this gaseous pollution exceeded 400 parts per million for the entire year for the first time in human history in 2016 (43 percent higher than preindustrial levels).

The combination of higher ocean temperatures and the growing acidification of ocean water (approximately one-third of the CO2 we release into the atmosphere settles into the ocean, where it has already increased acidity by 30 percent) are leading to the death of coral reefs throughout the world. It is also disrupting the process by which coral polyps—and all sea creatures with shells—scavenge calcium carbonate from seawater and transform it into the hard structures necessary for their survival.

Warmer ocean temperatures are also causing the mass migration of fish populations, many of which are simultaneously being depleted by overfishing, the runoff of pollution from coastal areas, and a sharp decline of oxygen in the growing number of “dead zones” in the ocean. The decline of fish populations in the tropics and subtropics is especially threatening because of the heavy reliance on seafood in those regions.

The climate crisis is resulting in more frequent downpours around the world, but the geographic distribution and the periodicity of rainfall have also been altered. As the water cycle is disrupted, some areas are receiving big increases in precipitation, while others are receiving much less. While much more precipitation falls in big storm events, the period of time between rainfalls has also been increasing in many regions. And during the intervals between rainfalls the higher air temperatures suck more moisture from the first several centimeters of the soil, leading to deeper and longer droughts.

Driven by these droughts and warmer temperatures, there has been a dramatic increase in fires and a radical extension of the “fire season” (in the western United States, for example, the annual fire season has already increased by 105 days). Firefighters are now having to deal with a new phenomenon they call “mega-fires.” These extremely large fires are particularly severe in the northern boreal forests of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. The higher temperatures have also greatly increased the damage to forests from pine beetles and bark beetles, which survive milder winters in greater numbers and reproduce more generations during the longer summers. When they attack trees weakened by drought, they end up devastating millions of acres of forestland, turning them into kindling for the larger fires.

The seasonal timing of rainfall patterns has become more erratic and less predictable,...

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Verlag
Rodale Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1635651085
ISBN 13 
9781635651089
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Rodale
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/imprints/A6/rodale-books/books

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