The New Climate War - The Library of the Uncommons

Paperback, 368 pages

Published June 10, 2021 by Scribe UK.

ISBN:: 978-1-913348-68-7

One of The Observer’s ‘Thirty books to help us understand the world’ Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we’ve been told we can save the planet. But are individuals really to blame for the climate crisis? Seventy-one per cent of global emissions come from the same hundred companies, but fossil-fuel companies have taken no responsibility themselves. Instead, they have waged a thirty-year campaign to blame individuals for climate change. The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War, renowned scientist Michael E. Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters — fossil-fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petro-states — and outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change.

5 editions

PublicHealthInnit reviewed The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann

Review of 'The New Climate War' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I found this a constant mix of enlightening discussion and frustrating waffle. There is much to take away in arguments for particular policy solutions to climate change. However, it also reads as super-defensive, needlessly antagonistic, and at times condescending and hypocritical. Mann has no time for people who disagree with him on any point, particularly if they are at all on the left of the political spectrum. If you agree with anybody who disagrees with him, e.g. you see a link between climate justice and social justice, you are either a shill for fossil fuels, a Russian bot, or as a last resort you could be a well meaning idiot.

It’s also strange to read of the danger of identity politics (not at all defined) and outrage that somebody could accuse him of mansplaining... shortly followed by an accusation of mansplaining of others who disagree with him. Now the accusation …

I found this a constant mix of enlightening discussion and frustrating waffle. There is much to take away in arguments for particular policy solutions to climate change. However, it also reads as super-defensive, needlessly antagonistic, and at times condescending and hypocritical. Mann has no time for people who disagree with him on any point, particularly if they are at all on the left of the political spectrum. If you agree with anybody who disagrees with him, e.g. you see a link between climate justice and social justice, you are either a shill for fossil fuels, a Russian bot, or as a last resort you could be a well meaning idiot.

It’s also strange to read of the danger of identity politics (not at all defined) and outrage that somebody could accuse him of mansplaining... shortly followed by an accusation of mansplaining of others who disagree with him. Now the accusation may be true in both, one or neither of these cases, but without any contextualisation, it reads as hypocritical.

Having said all that, I did get a lot from the discussion and get some good nuggets of info from a climate expert. I’m definitely going to have to read a book from one of those pesky people who want social justice with their climate justice though to get the other side of the argument.

bauarbeiterhund

rated it

February 14

bauarbeiterhund

rated it

April 4