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    Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future
    Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future
    Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future

    By Tim Flannery

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A forceful call to climate change action and a pragmatic roadmap toward sustainability from the internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers.
     
    Utilizing the most up-to-the-minute data available, Tim Flannery offers a guided tour of the environmental challenges we face and their potential solutions in both the big picture and in specific detail. He explores everything from techniques for storing the carbon that dead plants release into the earth to the fragile balancing act between energy demands and food supply in India and China, from carbon-trading schemes in South America to a collaboration between a Danish wind-energy company and an automobile manufacturer that may produce a viable electric car and end the reign of big oil.
     
    Now or Never is a powerful, thought-provoking, and essential book about the most urgent issue of our time. It burns with Flannery’s characteristic mix of passion, scientific precision, and “offhand interdisciplinary brilliance” (Entertainment Weekly).
     
    “Shocking . . . [Flannery] writes for a general audience with passion and clarity.” —Jim Hansen
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780802198969
    Author

    Tim Flannery

    Professor TIM FLANNERY is a leading writer on climate change. A Scientist, an explorer and a conservationist, Flannery has held various academic positions including Professor at the University of Adelaide, Director of the South Australian Museum and Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum. A frequent presenter on ABC Radio, NPR and the BBC, he has also written and presented several series on the Documentary Channel. His books include Here on Earth and the international number one bestseller The Weather Makers. Flannery was named Australian of the Year in 2007.

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    3.5/5

    16 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Thought provoking to say the least!
    • 4/5
      Some good essays, but I preferred The Weathermakers.
    • 4/5
      This pretty much starts out with some Gaia-speak that comes close to justifying the good Cardinal Pell's occasional assertions that the environmental movement is a form of neo-paganism: human beings collectively form the brain of Gaia and the purpose of our existence is to bring consciousness to her processes. (Actually, that's pretty close to how I understand things, only I'd prefer less theological ways of expressing it.) Theology out of the way, the essay has an unflinching look at the dire state of the Earth, and the urgency of the challenge from global warming. It argues that what is actually missing is vision, political will and leadership to rise to the challenges, and puts forward a number of hope-inducing proposals and examples, ranging from farming approaches that have already been tried and found extraordinarily effective in reducing greenhouse emissions to a possibly mad but nonetheless enticing vision of a new city, to be called Geothermia, near the Cooper Basin in South Australia, which would potentially supply all Australia's energy needs from environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral thermal.I started the essay expecting to be plunged into gloom and despair. Instead, I find I'm left with something approaching optimism about our chances.As always, a fair proportion of this issue (39 of its 106 pages) is taken up with correspondence about the last one. Given that Nº 30, Paul Toohey's Last Drinks, could reasonably be described as having attacked a number of public figures, it's striking that only of those figures, Rex Wild, has taken up the right of reply and he doesn't address Toohey's central, scathing criticisms of the Little Children Are Sacred report, of which he was co-author, but restricts himself to defending the aspersions cast on his behaviour as director of the NT Office of Public Prosecutions. He says near the start of his piece, 'I have been hesitant in accepting the editor's invitation to respond to Paul's essay as, among other things, I see he has a right of reply.' What on earth does that mean? And does it in some way account for the resounding silence from all the others, including the Aboriginal leaders repeatedly characterised (arguably defamed) in this correspondence as proponents of victimology. I find the whole thing baffling and disturbing, even more so given that Toohey's reply consists of nine lines, including this: 'My view is that I've had my go and now it is over to those who want to have their say to have it.' Hopefully QE #32 will resolve some of this.

    Book preview

    Now or Never - Tim Flannery

    NOW or NEVER

    Other books by Tim Flannery

    Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, a Scientist, and a Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Creature

    The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

    Mammals of New Guinea

    Tree Kangaroos: A Curious Natural History with R. Martin, P. Schouten, and A. Szalay

    Possums of the World: A Monograph of the Phalangeroidea with P. Schouten

    Mammals of the South West Pacific and Moluccan Islands

    Watkin Tench, 1788 (ed.)

    The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner (ed.)

    Throwim Way Leg

    The Birth of Sydney

    Terra Australis: Matthew Flinders’ Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia (ed.)

    The Eternal Frontier

    The Explorers

    A Gap in Nature with P. Schouten

    Astonishing Animals with P. Schouten

    NOW or NEVER

    Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future

    TIM FLANNERY

    Copyright © 2009 by Tim Flannery

    Foreword copyright © 2009 by David Suzuki

    Responses © 2009 by Bill McKibben, Richard Branson,

    Peter Singer, Fred Krupp, Peter Goldmark,

    Alanna Mitchell, and Gwynne Dyer

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

    Printed in the United States of America

    eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9896-9

    Atlantic Monthly Press

    an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

    841 Broadway

    New York, NY 10003

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    www.groveatlantic.com

    CONTENTS

    FOREWORD BY DAVID SUZUKI

    NOW OR NEVER

    IN THE YEAR FOUR BILLION

    THE CLIMATE PROBLEM

    A NEW DARK AGE?

    THE COAL CONUNDRUM

    AMERICA’S NEW LEADERSHIP

    TREES FOR SECURITY

    REVOLUTION IN THE FEEDLOT

    ANIMAL SOLUTIONS

    FARM-BASED ECOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY

    THE AGE OF SUSTAINABILITY?

    NOTES

    RESPONSES

    BILL MCKIBBEN

    RICHARD BRANSON

    PETER SINGER

    FRED KRUPP AND PETER GOLDMARK

    GWYNNE DYER

    ALANNA MITCHELL

    REPLY

    TIM FLANNERY

    FOREWORD

    by David Suzuki

    Human beings are an infant species, appearing in the last 0.001 percent of the time that life has existed on Earth. For most of the 150,000 years of our species’ existence, we were hunter-gatherers, carrying all our possessions in a constant search for food and materials. Even after the agricultural revolution ten millennia ago, we lived within limited confines in the company of a few dozen people. We have been local, tribal animals for almost all our time on Earth.

    But suddenly we have become a geological force, altering the physical, chemical, and biological makeup of the planet as no other species has ever done. We have embraced the benefits of our newly acquired powers with little regard for the consequences within the biosphere. But now we have to ask, What is the collective impact of all 6.7 billion human beings?—and it is very difficult to assess. Even when we do consider how we are all affecting our surroundings, we find there are no mechanisms to respond as a single species for our own benefit.

    It has long been my contention that at the time of our emergence as a species on the plains of Africa, we gave no hint of our explosive development into a dominant force in only 150 millennia. That’s because our evolutionary advantage was hidden in our skulls. The human brain conferred an enormous memory, insatiable curiosity, and impressive creativity that more than compensated for our lack of physical and sensory capacities. Accumulating knowledge through experience and imagination, we invented the notion of a future; and in so doing, we found we could influence that future. Using our knowledge and memory, we could look ahead, anticipate dangers and opportunities, and thus deliberately choose to take actions that avoided the dangers and exploited the opportunities. Foresight was our great advantage and was a key part of our enormous success as we spread across the planet.

    Today, we are the most numerous mammal on Earth, and our huge ecological footprint (that is, the amount of land and water needed to meet our demands) has been amplified beyond that of any other species by our technological muscle power, voracious appetite, and global economy. It has only been forty-seven years since Rachel Carson told of the costs of our technological prowess in her influential book Silent Spring. Despite her prescient warnings, pesticides are used today in far greater amounts and many are far more toxic than those used in 1962.

    Our capacity to look ahead has been greatly amplified today, with scientists, supercomputers, and telecommunications; and ever since Silent Spring, the warnings of scientists have become more urgent. But now we are turning our backs on the very way that so successfully got us to our current position of dominance.

    In 1988, the environment was the number one concern of people around the world. That year, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom declared, I’m a greenie, and George H. W. Bush promised, if elected, to be an environmental president. In 1988, Brian Mulroney was reelected prime minister in Canada and, to show he cared about the environment, he appointed his brightest star, Lucien Bouchard, as minister of the environment. I interviewed Bouchard three months later and asked what he felt was the most urgent environmental issue for Canadians. His instant response was, Global warming. When I asked how serious it was, he replied, It threatens the survival of our species. We have to act now.

    That year, 300 scientists met in Toronto to discuss the atmosphere. They were convinced there was evidence that global warming was occurring and that people were causing it. In a press release, they declared that global warming represented a threat to human survival second only to nuclear war, and they called for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1988 levels in fifteen years. Scientists had spoken, the public was concerned, and politicians had gotten the message. Had we acted accordingly, we would be far beyond the Kyoto target and well on our way to the deep reductions we now know we have to make.

    But we didn’t respond by taking on the challenge. Politicians didn’t have the stomach to take the criticism for spending big bucks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when they wouldn’t even be around to take credit for it fifteen years later. Many environmentalists, including me, felt it was a slow-motion catastrophe and there was time to focus on more urgent issues like clear-cut logging. But most egregiously, corporations began to spend millions on a campaign to confuse the public, calling climate change junk science, supporting articles and Web sites to dispute the evidence, and funding a few skeptics to spread disinformation. And it worked. (See Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan.)

    Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers was a wakeup call. A best-selling book, it made the impact of climate change real and personal and, like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, moved a wide audience to take the issue seriously. But as countries moved with glacial reluctance to make big reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions, glaciers themselves were melting with unprecedented speed. The most authoritative voice on climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has issued updates that have become more and more urgent, even as scientists announce unanticipated rapidity of change.

    Flannery’s latest message, Now or Never, is that we have passed the tipping point for climate change and are approaching a point of no return where we will not be able to do anything about it except hang on for the final ride through very turbulent times. For too long, we have pulled our punches to avoid being dismissed as sensationalists, alarmists, or extremists, even when the science warranted extreme statements. We have urged individual actions like changing lightbulbs and turning off computers while economies, energy use, and emissions continued to rise.

    The scientific foresight that enables us to look ahead now demands that we take the gloves off and tell it like it is. We are heading toward a precipice at break-neck speed and we have to slow down and, very soon, turn onto a different road. If we fail to act with the urgency Flannery demands, then our foresight poses a terrifying fate.

    Can we make the kinds of major shifts that Flannery suggests climate change demands? Of course. If we don’t, we will be left in a far more precarious state, as changes that we can’t even anticipate assault us. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the American Pacific fleet was severely damaged. Americans didn’t roll over and seek peace or decry the cost of all-out war. Americans had no choice—they had to make every effort to win. That’s one way: to let matters develop and deal with the consequences when they crop up. The scale of response should mimic a war effort—but there’s a better way.

    I was beginning my last year in college in 1957 when the world was electrified by the announcement, on October 4, that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, a basketball-size satellite, into orbit. In the ensuing months, U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy rockets all blew up on the

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