In the 500+ page book, the climate, ecological and sustainability crisis must be addressed holistically. “My hope is that this book will become a kind of reference book for understanding these different and closely intertwined crises,” said Thunberg. “It covers everything from melting ice shelves and polar ice caps to economics, from fast fashion to species extinction, from pandemics to sinking islands, from deforestation to the loss of fertile soil, from water scarcity to the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. , from the future of food production to carbon budgets – and reveals the actions of those responsible and the failures of those who should have communicated this information to the world’s citizens long ago.”
It is a meeting of about a hundred scientists who present their knowledge in the areas of ecology and economics, biology and meteorology, geophysics and mathematics, oceanography and climatology, psychology and philosophy. Thunberg’s contributions guide you through the thick book, which is illustrated with diagrams and graphs, but this thread is not red but blue: Thunberg’s essays are highlighted in light blue. The 19-year-old is the main figure and will present the book in a worldwide live broadcast on Sunday night as part of the London Literature Festival.
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The “Climate Book” aims to provide comprehensive and clear information. So there is a basic part that explains “how the climate works”, how humans and nature interact, what role gases play in the atmosphere and when climate change was actually discovered (namely as early as the end of the 19th century, as the US geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer describes).
But then let’s quickly get to the point and the changes that can be seen everywhere. Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research writes about tipping points and feedback loops and his institute colleague Stefan Rahmstorf on ocean warming and sea level rise. We learned about droughts and floods, sea warming and ocean acidification, microplastics, jet streams and terrestrial biodiversity. The British biologist Goulsen (“Dumb Earth”) tells us something about insects, the Swede Örjan Gustafsson, professor of biogeochemistry in Stockholm, about permafrost.