mini review: 2045: A Story of Our Future

by Peter Seidel Prometheus Books 2009 333 pages

Carl goes into a coma in 2010 and wakes up 35 years later. He's still 40 years old, but the world has drastically changed. The environment has gone to hell, with predictable extreme heat, and eight corporations run the world with undercover police.

It's a good dramatic premise, and Carl's dilemma is believable. But too much explanation distances us from the action. Carl is too often "astounded" and "bewildered." Other flaws include a sometimes pedantic tone and a rather preachy "Afterthought."

Carl's adventures are convincing, but one wishes Seidel had immersed himself more subjectively in this all too probable new world.

My own futuristic eco-thriller, Human Scale, has just been published, by Plain View Press. You'll find it both more engrossing and more chilling than Seidel's.

The Age of Stupid: the movie

This film grabs you by the gut. Why?

It's a hodgepodge. A series of video clips from our time showing the behavior and attitudes of the culture causing climate change. Powerful images, from Kenyans who can't find clean water, to a British neighborhood fighting wind turbines, to an affluent Indian building an airline.

It's hard to tell whether director Franny Armstrong had any plan in mind other than cumulative effect. But it works. It's all held together by a grim faced narrator telling the story in 2050. He leans into the camera, right into your face, his unremitting expression of grief and disbelief hauntingly unforgettable.

Yes, Virginia, Global Warming Causes Earthquakes

Two geologists explain.

Ice is extremely heavy, and glaciers are massive sheets of ice. Professor Patrick Wu (Univ of Alberta) says that the weight of the ice suppresses the earthquakes, but when glaciers begin to melt, that pressure is released, and "earthquakes get triggered," as well as tsunamis (which are underwater earthquakes). He adds that melting ice in Antarctica is already triggering earthquakes and "underwater landslides."

Prof. Bill McGuire (Univ. College of London) says, "All over the world, evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and catastrophic seafloor landslides."

This is only the tip of the iceberg, folks, if you'll excuse the expression. What's happening in Haiti and Chile will be routine news items ten years from now.

Seven Things to Expect with Climate Change

You've been wondering what it'll be like. Whether you fear it or shrug it off, the prospect of an ailing Earth is a bit of a mystery. Even the scientists keep saying the full consequences of global warming are unpredictable.

Here are some things your grandchildren probably can expect:

1. No more personal cars
2. Locally grown food only
3. Small, compact cities; you work where you live
4. Coastline cities flooded and abandoned
5. Unpredictable seasons; hunger and disease
6. Political upheaval. Refugees, power grabs
7. Water wars

My novel What Love Can't Do took you to the 2040s. My next novel, Human Scale, happens in the 2060s. It comes out in April.

mini book review: Storms of My Grandchildren

Bloomsbury, hardcover $25 277 pages

The subtitle of James Hansen's book is: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and our Last Chance to Save Humanity. The urgency of this title and his last words, "It's our last chance," are not reflected in the presentation, which is a bit dry. Hansen is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia, and director of the NASA Institute for Space Studies. Though he's written innumerable journal articles and papers, this is his first book.

Each of the 11 chapters deals with a facet of climate science, also reporting his many often frustrating attempts to get government to listen to the science.

I would say, don't buy this book, but make sure your library has several copies, so everyone can taste it. The man's integrity and passion shine through, and you find yourself grateful that he lives in your time and cares enough.

"I Don't Believe in It"

Now and then on the subject of climate change, you hear those words. I usually reply that it's not a religion. It's not a belief system, it's a set of facts. Take the "germ theory." When germs were first discovered in the 19th century, there was widespread resistance and even outrage. But pretty much everybody nowadays accepts that germs bring disease. That's because all the reputable scientists say so, and it's been proven over and over.

So I've been encouraged in recent years that people seem to be listening, taking in the scary news about climate, waking up. The media is paying real attention, reporting the scientific evidence as fact.

But apparently the recent snowstorms in D.C are being touted by tea party types as proof that global warming is "untrue." Blizzards in Washington? Doesn't that sound screwy to you? Most people grasp by now that such extreme weather events, from hurricaines to wildfires, are becoming more and more frequent and violent. It's what's called empirical evidence. But fear does strange things, and denial is seductive and comfortable.

The logical conclusion to avoiding climate chaos is a drastic change in the oil-driven, consumer-worshipping way of life too many people call "American." Let's not face that subversive, disturbing thought at all!

Look, I want to love this world
as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

--from October, by Mary Oliver