Fools Rule
Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
This eloquent, rage-inciting polemic about the global failure to deal with climate change will appeal to readers of Tim Flannery, George Monbiot and Bill McKibben - and anyone concerned with the economic and environmental future of our planet.
Kyoto, 1997. Montreal, 2005. Copenhagen, 2009. Cancun, 2010. In Fools Rule, Marsden illustrates how inefficient and short-sighted political negotiations have become despite mounting scientific evidence that immediate action is essential to curb the effects of climate change. International climate change summits are now widely monitored events, attended by state leaders and crowded with journalists; yet somehow they have never been less productive. Treaties and action plans are smothered by economic self-interest, diplomatic errors and every nation's hungry scramble for its share of the remaining atmospheric space. Marsden takes us from inside the bungled negotiations at Copenhagen to the melting glaciers and untapped oil reserves of the Arctic; he shows us the paralyzing effect oil and gas companies have on green legal initiatives in the United States, and therefore on any international climate change treaty; and, with wit and penetrating insight, he asks the toughest question - will we be able to change before it's too late?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With lively prose and a healthy serving of sarcasm and welcome indignation, Canadian investigative reporter Marsden (Stupid to the Last Drop) brings levity to this otherwise deeply depressing analysis of the failure of the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits. In between, he travels to the Canadian High Arctic to hang with climate scientists and encounter evidence of incontrovertible global warming. As glaciologist Martin Sharp puts it, "the consensus is beginning to think that we are going to hell in a handbasket and that there is no turning back. But we don't understand things well enough to know if that is true." Trekking to the world's most northern research station to take "the amplified pulse of climate change at its very heart," Marsden finds a scientist who refuses to talk, "both a victim and a tool of the government's clampdown on information leaking out about the severity of climate change in the Arctic," apparently a result of the alliance of the Alberta tar sands gas and oil lobby and the Conservative party that have together destroyed Canada's carbon reduction efforts. Probing the apparent inability of humans to effectively attack this potentially deadly crisis, Marsden offers a solution: skip the useless negotiations among politicians altogether and bring experts together to make concrete plans. "Our brains have an amazing ability to chart new courses," he concludes. "Why not use them?"
