****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I found Jeremy Leggett's The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era quiteinteresting and informative. Leggett, a renowned scientist at Oxford and a formerGreenpeace UK director, discusses the politics of global warming. He focuses on oildependence, while working in explanations of resulting climate change and the possibleimpacts. It?s engaging because it goes behind the scenes in recounting importantconferences with scientific, intergovernmental, and business representatives, not all ofwhich would be covered by the media. He traveled all over the world for nearly a decadewhile he directed Greenpeace's Climate Campaign, and wrote this account of it in a kindof journal style with entries spanning from October 1989 to December 1997. I appreciatedhis vivid writing style in illustrating scenes and people, which helped relieve thedensity of scientific detail. While I had expected a dry, rather dull scientific text, itproved appealing as well as instructive.The first portion of the book concerns the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,which is a panel set up in 1988 by the UN General Assembly to advise governments on theissue. The IPCC gathered worldwide input from scientists and experts over a year and ahalf to formulate "consensus reports on the science of global warming, the probableimpacts, and the potential policy responses" (2), which is collectively called itsScientific Assessment Report. At the time it was being prepared for the World Climate Conference where governments come together to decide what action to take. Leggett describes a series ofconferences with various governments, groups, scientists, and business leaders concerningthe final draft of this report. The first meeting mentioned deals with the summary of thedocument. Strikingly, the draft states that 60-80% cuts in carbon dioxide emissions arenecessary to stabilize its atmospheric concentrations, a daunting goal. Leggett doesn?tdirectly mention it but at least in the US such an extreme cut would be devastating tothe economy, with our dependence on oil leading to the colossal success of several majoroil companies. Thus throughout conferences in the book the US government, as well as oilgiants Saudi Arabia and Iran, refuses to set targets and timetables or make any kind ofcommitment, arguing that the uncertainties over impacts make such action too drastic.Legget emphasizes how scientists are certain that the current rates of greenhouse-gasemissions will lead to climate change, but there is uncertainty over the degree of theimpacts because of the complexity of the climate system. Feedbacks in the climate systemare difficult to predict and almost impossible to calculate, making resulting climatechanges similar to a roll of dice. Toward the beginning of the semester we learned aboutpositive and negative feedback- positive leads to increase in a response while negativecontains the response, controlling it. In a warming world positive feedbacks wouldamplify the warming by triggering extra carbon emissions from repositories in nature, andnegative feedbacks would suppress it (5). The concern is that the positive will end upoutweighing the negative. And the draft read that an overall increase rather thandecrease appears likely. All of this was more understandable because of learning aboutclimate change in class and about the carbon cycle.Leggett has to deal with the frustrating responses of many people. Representatives of thecoal and oil industries, and countries dependent on them, deny the issue so theirlivelihood won't be jeopardized. Others think that global warming is just a theory andnot a certainty, or aren't aware of just how urgent the situation is. At one pointLeggett gives a speech where he delivers his research of what the runaway greenhouseeffect or worst-case scenario would be. It describes how many island nations would besubmerged and coastline lost, unbreathable air, increase of famine, in areas of extremelyhot temperatures there would be many deaths leading to much conflict over water and food,ect. He gives a survey on the worst case to around 100 different scientists- about 13%say that they think it is a possibility. But the survey results are released to the mediawho misrepresent the information, saying that only 13% of scientists thought that globalwarming was happening. An oil company representative also gives a presentation and warpsthe information because he is trying to recruit employers.With this context you can really understand his vexation, and it draws the reader intothe cause. But yet his writing is hardly ever centered on himself despite the journalstyle, but rather externally oriented. Other major points were the increase in coralbleaching, which I hadn't known are the second major ecosystem in the world. He discussesoil drilling at length, actually going to Siberia for an interview where a Texan companyis drilling. It should how drilling is happening in increasingly uninhabitable land, andthe Texans said that their motives are selfish, they don?t care about the earth and justwant to make money. Oil spills are another major issue. Each spill releases millions oftones of oil onto the surface or in the ocean, which, in cold areas, doesn't evaporateand breaks down very slowly.The insurance industry is also in danger of crashing from paying the coverage of so manymajor storms, which are increasing in frequency and intensity. Finance in general willsuffer great losses from cuts in emissions. After talking about insurance Legget mentionsa high tax on carbon use as a way to lessen emissions.In trying to combat climate change I think the first step is raising awareness of theurgency of the issue. Al Gore has admirably tried to do this, but the media has takenhold of the topic and sensationalized it, which makes people less inclined to take itseriously. Reliable information is key with this because of possible misrepresentation bythe media, as Leggett shows. This makes the public even less informed, and can be used todownplay climate change to the public. Release of the runaway greenhouse effectdescription could be very effective if delivered in a way that wouldn't cause a panic.I think a carbon tax would help to an extent in decreasing emissions, but of coursecarbon would still be burned. As the title of the work imparts, we are approaching theend of the oil era. We cannot continue burning oil at our current rates for anothercentury without serious, even disastrous, consequences. This means we should focus onresearch and development of alternative energy and fuel sources. Especially in such adeveloped, industrialized, and technologically dependent country like the US, we are muchtoo used to moving around very quickly, making retrogression to earlier forms oftransportation out of the question. As alternative fuels are more accessible they will beinvested in, bringing back the economy. A huge issue is trying to convince the colossalChina, as well as India, to attempt to make cuts as well.
