February 1, 2024
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist explores the climate crisis in 26 short essays. In this book, Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction and Field Notes from a Catastrophe, adapts articles she wrote for the New Yorker and organizes them alphabetically to offer a brief historical account of climate change. At the beginning, the author tells the story of Svante Arrhenius, the 19th-century Nobel Prize-winning physicist who first deduced that humans were altering the Earth's climate through carbon-emitting activities. Kolbert then moves to the present day with the letter B, which she uses to reference climate activist Greta Thunberg's infamous 2021 "blah, blah, blah" speech, which critiqued empty political calls to preserve the planet. The pieces that follow explore many elements of the current global situation and its effects. Scientists all over the world are making strides in the development of green technologies that will "electrify everything" using renewable resources like the wind. Major contributors such as the U.S. have passed legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which has authorized more than $350 billion to go to climate initiatives--but not everyone is willing to act. Those who defend corporate interests or are unwilling to end fossil fuel dependence (i.e., Republicans) stand in the way of much-needed progress. In the meantime, increasing damage to the environment is creating a new class of climate refugees who may increasingly be met with xenophobia from their more fortunately situated counterparts. Illustrated throughout with vivid pen-and-ink-style drawings by graphic artist Allsbrook, the book both informs and disturbs us about the climate uncertainties facing humankind, but never without offering glimmers of hope. Its accessibility, readability, and thoughtfulness will undoubtedly appeal to a wide audience. Other entries include "Green Concrete," "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs," and "Quagmire." An intelligently provocative and well-presented look at the world's most pressing issue.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
March 1, 2024
Kolbert, New Yorker staff writer and author of such commanding environmental works as The Sixth Extinction (2014) and Under the White Sky (2021), joins forces with illustrator extraordinaire Allsbrook to brilliantly and unnervingly subvert the usually upbeat alphabet-book format. Twenty-six pithy and piercing essays draw on history, science, statistics, fieldwork, politics, ethics, and social observations to present the jarring facts about the climate crisis. Kolbert's tone is exemplified in this statement in "A," which is for Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius, who, at the close of the nineteenth century, created the first climate model: "Here we all are, watching things fall apart. And yet deep down, we don't believe it." "B" is from Greta Thunberg's lament over "thirty years of blah, blah, blah" instead of actual climate action. Kolbert charts the obstacles to building a new clean energy grid and "climate change's many compounding injustices," stating that the "ethical challenge is as big, or perhaps even bigger, than the technical challenge." She continues, "But let's try to stay positive." Visually stunning and bracingly forthright, this is an invaluable climate primer.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.