This book begins with a timeline from 2007 through 2008 that traces natural and man-made environmental disasters, chronicles changes in oceans and the efforts to protect endangered species, while illustrating the connection between earth’s inhabitants and the changes that affect them.
The 2009 State of the World by the Worldwatch Institute is a collaborative work, the 26th consecutive book in a series by the organization, building on and crediting the groundbreaking climate change work by Goddard Institute scientist James Hansen more than 20 years ago.
With dozens of contributors from around the globe, the book covers everything from the role of cities in climate change, through India’s fledgling efforts to stem the progress of climate change and building resistance to drought in Sudan.
“The science of climate change has come a long way” say the three project directors – Robert Engelman, Janet L. Sawin and Michael Renner – at the book’s start.
“This volume offers a range of informed perspectives on pathways for adapting to a warming world while avoiding catastrophic consequences,” they add. “The politics is still lagging behind, but the urgency of constructive climate action is now clearer than ever.”
From farming to the security challenges climate change will present as populations grow hungrier and poorer, the data in the book is diverse, but most of the authors point out the worldwide connections.
Despite the book’s far-flung perspectives, it provides useful information for everyone concerned about the effects of global warming.
Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C., writes a chapter on Climate Change’s Pressures on Biodiversity. He shows changes in the behavior of species, for example, eel grass and the yearly northward movement of its southern limit in Chesapeake Bay.
“An even more devastating system change is already taking place: the acidification of the ocean” due to concentrations of carbon dioxide, writes Lovejoy. It “is a matter of great consequence because tens of thousands of marine species build shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate.”
These species need an “equilibrium… The colder and more acid the water is, the harder it is for organisms to mobilize calcium carbonate,” including coral and giant clams.
Lovejoy and other authors, despite documenting negative effects on the world and its people, also offer hope for progress, mitigation and adaptation, if not total respite.
For instance: “Natural connections urgently need to be reestablished in landscapes to facilitate the dispersal of individual species as they follow the conditions they need to survive,” writes Lovejoy. “… the opposite of the current situation of patches of nature in human-dominated landscapes.”
Minimize stresses on ecosystems to avoid reinforcing warming changes, he adds, “by reducing siltation, for instance, on coral reefs.”
To lower stresses, Lovejoy recommends reducing areas of concern to smaller, manageable sizes because adaptive measures “are hard to design using the extremely coarse scale of global climate models.”
He suggests “downscaling,” working cheaper and faster by using laptops instead of supercomputers, saying, “Managers need a much more precise idea of what kind of change is likely to take place within a square kilometer and over the next few years.”
In the first chapter, The Perfect Storm, authors Christopher Flavin and Robert Engelman identify 10 key challenges, while later in the book, author Betsy Taylor writes a chapter called “Not Too Late to Act.”
There’s optimism along with the dire news, but authors agree optimism will last only if there’s action, because urgency is needed.
“Though rarely recalled today (in the late ‘80s) the Montreal Protocol offers lessons for the climate negotiations of 2009” when the U.S. government and chemical manufacturers supported the phaseout of ozone-depleting gases.
“We cannot afford to have the Copenhagen climate conference (planned for November) fail,” write Flavin and Engelman. “The outcome of this meeting will be written in the world’s history books — and in the lasting composition of our common atmosphere.”
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