The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial
-
-
3.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $20.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year in The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune, and EcoLit Books
A USA Today Must-Read Summer Book
"David Lipsky spins top-flight climate literature into cliffhanger entertainment." —Zoë Schlanger, New York Times Book Review
The New York Times best-selling author explores how “anti-science” became so virulent in American life—through a history of climate denial and its consequences.
In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.
With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors—Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla—who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.
Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy—one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Humor accompanies horrific truths in this vital look at the rise of climate change denial. With dry wit and novelistic flair, National Magazine Award winner Lipsky (Absolutely American) chronicles how harnessing electricity changed the world, then charts growing public awareness of electricity and fossil fuels' contributions to climate change. After covering the innovations of Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and George Westinghouse, Lipsky fast-forwards to describe how the climate became a political issue, from concerns over air pollution to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency to the 2006 Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The most revelatory section illuminates corporate disinformation campaigns as Lipsky points out how climate denialism borrowed tactics that the tobacco industry used to push back on science linking smoking with lung cancer, notably the strategy of rebuking scientific consensus by calling for more research. Lipsky adopts an offbeat style ("Arrange all farewells and balloons no later than 2069," he deadpans about a biologist's tongue-in-cheek prediction of apocalypse), and his perspective on how diverse cultural and political forces have contributed to inaction on climate change is sobering and incisive. Buoyed by thorough historical research, this is a first-rate entry in the field of climate denial studies.
