book review the new climate war

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THE NEW CLIMATE WAR

The fight to take back our planet.

by Michael E. Mann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021

An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels.

One of the world’s leading climate scientists embarks on a journey into the minds of climate change deniers to try to understand their motivations and strategies.

Outright climate change denial is no longer acceptable, writes Mann in this blunt, lucid work of climate politics. Lobbyists and publicists for the fossil-fuel industry used to be focused on refuting the scientific evidence—models too unreliable, data too short, natural variability too unknown—but the new climate war is a softer form of denialism that seeks to shift the responsibility for climate change from the corporations who are producing the greenhouse gases to individuals (following the lead of the gun and tobacco industries) in a devious form of deflective accountability. Yes, Mann writes, individuals must act responsibly when it comes to the environment, but the necessary big-picture change will require massive action on the policy level—e.g., the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which combatted ozone depletion, and the 1990 Clean Air Act. Consistently displaying his comprehensive command of climate science and the attendant politics, he clearly walks readers through the disingenuous arguments about carbon pricing; the mechanics of receiving governmental incentives for renewable energy; how the energy market lacks sufficient incentives to build a new infrastructure; solar and wind energy scare tactics in right-wing media; the pitfalls of “clean” coal and geoengineering; “doomism,” which “leads us down the same path of inaction as outright denial of the threat”; and carbon budgeting (“every bit of carbon we avoid burning prevents additional damage. There is both urgency and agency”). Mann is a cautious optimist—he even sees signs of accountability in some Republican lawmakers—and he hopes that the Covid-19 pandemic will teach us something about ideologically driven science denialism. The author recommends a “delicate middle ground”: Individual action includes pressuring “politicians to support climate-friendly governmental policies,” and collective action seeks to solve systemic problems.

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5417-5823-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020

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PERSPECTIVES

WHAT THIS COMEDIAN SAID WILL SHOCK YOU

by Bill Maher ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2024

Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.

The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.

Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden —is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.

Pub Date: May 21, 2024

ISBN: 9781668051351

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024

POLITICS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the pocket change collective series.

by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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“The New Climate War” by Michael Mann – book review

My review of new book by Michael Mann on how to fight the climate change inactivists.

This is my review of new book by the climate scientist Michael Mann , titled: “ A New Climate War. The Fight to Take Back Our Planet “.

Mann is professor for atmospheric science at the Penn State university in USA, he is famous for his incessant climate activism and the so-called hockey-stick study he co-authored over 30 years ago ( Mann et al 1999 ). The finding that global temperatures, quite stable over the past 1000-2000 years have started to exponentially rise with the burning of the fossil fuels in 20th century, has been attacked and denounced as false or even fraudulent many times since it first appeared. Yet science has so far supported and even expanded those initial hockey-stick data for the last 24k years. The anthropogenic global warming has become an undeniable fact of everyday’s life in every corner of the globe.

From Denial to Inactivism

Like Big Tobacco, fossil fuel industry succeeded in sowing doubt in science, having payrolled their own scientists and derailed public intervention for decades, but eventually hard facts won. We now all know that smoking causes cancer and that climate change is real and dangerous. But just like Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry and its billionaire owners are not prepared to forfeit their immense profits. Sure, they can’t continue to deny the climate change with its devastating floods, fires, storms and heat waves which the world just started to suffer, and only a niche audience still falls for their alternative, non-anthropogenic explanations. So the oil, gas and coal lobby invented other disinformation and deflection tactics, which they learned from the tobacco and gun industries. And they even have their environmentalist enemies working for them, unwittingly or not.

Mann’s new book is the very definition of a call to action, since its main focus is fighting the inaction and the “ inactivists ” who bamboozle the public and politics with techno-fix non-solutions, who gaslight environmentally concerned citizens into blaming themselves, and who want us to accept that it’s already too late and all is lost anyway. All these different disinformation tactics have a common goal – to prevent all policies aimed at reduction of carbon emissions.

The outright climate change denial is now pushed to the very far right fringes of the society and rarely features in the public debate. Those like Bjorn Lomborg still have their fossil fuel industry-sponsored think-tanks and their media platforms (like that of Rupert Murdoch), but these days most people don’t want to be (knowingly) associated with climate change denialism. Also because climate change denialists often additionally engage in eugenics, misogyny, homophobia and racism, plus these days also in antivaxxery and covidiocies, theirs is not really a pleasant company one would want to share.

Fixing science: with climate denial, misogyny and white supremacism?

In the face of overwhelming evidence of natural disasters worldwide, the fossil fuel industry, billionaires with vested interests, payrolled politicians and ideologically-driven media have changed their public stance. They now pretend to be concerned with the climate change, even position themselves as part of the solution, and they managed to get some climate change activists to work on their side. The war to derail the public and political decision making process towards inaction is waged by inactivists in very perfidious ways, and Mann asks you not to fall for their tricks and to remain active instead.

It’s all YOUR fault

First, the concept of individual responsibility. Mann recalls the “ Crying Indian ” public service announcement from 1970ies, when the soft drinks industry convinced the Americans that the real problem with packaging pollution was their own individual littering, and not this industry’s business model itself. Keep America beautiful – drink Coke but don’t litter.

In reality, even the “Indian” was fake, the western film actor was Italian and not a Native American. But the message worked, people really believe ever since that their plastic packaging waste magically disappears once they put it into the trash bin, or even better, into a recycling bin. In reality, our plastic waste , recycled or not, most often ends up in the garbage dumps, sometimes far away abroad, completely out of sight. Otherwise, our carefully sorted, cleaned and collected “recyclable” plastic waste gets burned, very little is actually recyclable.

Individual responsibility: it was the same message arms industry and NRA have used for decades, repeated as mantra after each school massacre in US: guns don’t kill people, people kill people. And now the fossil fuel inactivists started to use the same approach for the climate change debate. Their propagandists tell you that not eating meat, never flying, not owning a car and even not having children is the right way to fight climate change. Shame on every climate scientist who flew to an international conference. Shame on you for occasionally eating meat and shame on you for being vegan also. Shame on you for having children, this is incidentally where the environmentally-concerned caviar-communists join hands with fascists eugenicists.

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children, says a new study https://t.co/dNtaAIBQcw via @guardian pic.twitter.com/MwEzM1U3lY — Climate Central (@ClimateCentral) July 14, 2017

The idea is to drive a wedge between climate activists and to make them compete over personal sacrifices and fight each other over perceived treasons upon the common cause, instead of jointly fighting against the fossil fuels.

Make no mistake: Mann is very much in support of individual action. He became a vegetarian himself, also for health reasons. Greta Thunberg is his biggest hero. But Mann keeps driving home the point that individual actions alone are meaningless without governmental actions, especially actions needed to divest the energy sector of fossil fuels. Indeed, as COVID-19 lockdown data demonstrated, most of our carbon output is not due to individual activities like driving or flying (which must be de-carbonised also), but due to electricity and heat production, for which gas, oil and even coal (the most carbon-emission-intensive fossil fuel) are mostly used.

The Nuclear Option

As it happens, this is where techno-fix non-solutions come into play. First and foremost, the nuclear industry. Even the European Union recently embarrassed itself big-time when the EU Commission, obviously under pressure from France, announced to certify nuclear power as a green energy investment, along with natural gas (Mann’s book was released in January 2021, so these recent developments, even Trump’s election loss and Biden’s return of USA to the Paris Agreement , don’t feature in the book).

In USA, nuclear shills like Michael Shellenberger keep promoting the industry as the green miracle solution to climate change. But not just those who live off nuclear money, sometimes it’s the other way around. While Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation sponsor a lot of climate change research, Gates himself is a big proponent of nuclear as the “green” technology to combat climate change. Even UN is part of it:

Are you a teenager interested in science and who cares about #ClimateChange ? Voice your thoughts on how the 🌍 could tackle the climate crisis with nuclear and digital tech. The top 5 videos will be shown at the conference! Deadline: 31 January 2022 🔗 https://t.co/9Buz5r2MoL pic.twitter.com/nMmFJUC96H — IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) January 24, 2022

Mann is definitely not convinced. He warns that nuclear industry is not safe and the problem of nuclear waste, its long-term storage and dangers cannot be solved. Nuclear energy is also economically utterly inviable without massive public investments, because nuclear power plant construction costs are enormous and the nuclear waste disposal costs are again a different public investment altogether (so much for the free market!). These nuclear subsidies should be instead given to the regenerative energy industry, to allow it for a level playing field with the fossil fuels.

The arguments of climate change inactivists about the alleged unreliability of the solar and wind energy have all been debunked. Modern smart grid technology allows to rapidly switch electricity flows between demand and supply, and there is always wind somewhere when the sun is not shining, and vice versa. Plus there are also regenerative energy sources which deliver power steadily and constantly, like water, tidal or geothermal plants. There are also plans to convert today’s natural gas power station to “green” hydrogen, which would be in turn produced from water using excess solar and wind energy: storable, movable and deployable at all times. All that is needed is the political will for the energy transformation.

A must read for the #climate movement. @MichaelEMann masterfully details the shifting tactics from climate denialism to: Disinformation Divisiveness Deflection Delay Doomism and what we can do about it. #climatechange #climatecrisis #ClimateJustice https://t.co/zrGJ0yN2qM — Irina Gerry (@Irina_Gerry) January 26, 2022

Political machinations

But the denial is strong. Mann spends several pages narrating how carbon tax laws failed in US, even revoked where they were already passed, under pressure from the fossil fuel lobby. He regrets that also US left-wing Democrats oppose carbon tax because they believe it would serve the interests of that same fossil fuel lobby. For Mann, a tax on carbon emissions is a key regulatory element to bring those emissions down, because the costs would incentivise the industry to invest into other, climate-friendly technologies.

My only criticism that the book is a bit too exclusively focussed on the climate policies in USA, with occasional references to other English-speaking nations like UK and Australia (Mann wrote much of his book while in Australia, as it happened during the disastrous bushfires of summer 2019/2020). There could have been more focus on other nations, especially the European Union, which climate impact and attempts to mitigate it are both non-neglectable.

In this regard, Mann briefly recalls how a Republican politician in US declared on TV that solar energy is so productive in Germany and not applicable for USA because Germany has much more sun than the States. In reality, Germany has roughly the same amount of sunlight a year as Alaska.

The book is very political, Mann even suspects that Russia’s 2016 interference in the US elections to install the climate change denier Donald Trump as US president was driven by Russian fossil fuel interests. That is certainly true at least in part, indeed Putin’s regime depends on oil and gas exports and is comprised of climate change denialists, who nevertheless declared climate change as a boon for Russia, with grand development plans for the warming Siberia and Arctic.

Mann also recalls in this regard the Climategate affair of 2009, when emails by climate scientists were hacked and then leaked, allegedly revealing that the climate change didn’t really happen and its science was a huge conspiracy to defraud the public of grant money. The emails, including Mann’s, were misinterpreted in all possible way to get there, and derailed international climate negotiations as the result. Behind that leak, just like behind the 2016 US elections leak of Democratic Party’s emails, was in both cases Russia and Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. This fact sadly cannot be denied, maybe Assange is not such a great hero after all, my own two cents.

Much of the book strives to visualise the state of political and social denial in USA towards workable climate fixes. Instead, what is on offer are the techno-fix non-solutions.

Geoengineering and Carbon Capture

Once the fossil fuel industry has convinced you that there are no alternatives, while admitting that climate change is happening, what can the national governments do then to prevent a catastrophe? Carbon capture and geoengineering of course!

Under a White Sky, by Elizabeth Kolbert: book review

Mann debunks these proposals as well. Carbon capture, where CO 2 is drawn from chimney stacks or straight from the air, and then pumped down into the Earth where it would petrify into limestone, is only feasible in very specific geological locations. Pumping CO 2 into unsuitable bedrock will have it bubble out back into the air straight away. Liquefying carbon dioxide and transporting it with tanker ships to suitable geological sites is environmental insanity, considering that approach’s own carbon footprint. And anyway, suitable geological sites for carbon storage are rare, and their potential limited: even there, a lot of CO 2 escapes back into atmosphere.

But then there is geoengineering! That Mann sees as technically doable, but definitely not advisable. Shooting sulphur dioxide into atmosphere to block out the sunlight is actually what humanity used to do before on a big scale – while burning coal. The climate denialists’ red herring about climatologists being so confused that they used to predict an ice age in 1970ies, actually stems from some scientists’ calculations back then regarding the contradicting impacts of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emissions on the Earth’s climate. The result of these sulphur oxide emissions, finally recognised over 50 years ago, was the acid rain and the death of forests, I am not sure how killing trees and other plants figures into the climate change fighting efforts, can some geoengineering professors weigh in please?

After being recommended to President Johnson in 1965, little progress has been made toward blotting out the sun via geoengineering to reduce global warming. But they're still trying. Climate idiocy is what's dangerous. https://t.co/Xx94Myr2Ta — Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) January 17, 2022

But eventually humanity understood how dangerous this pollution was for the life on Earth, and thus the fossil fuel power stations were forced to scrape their sulphur emissions straight at the chimney stacks. The acid rain ended, and as Mann reminds us, in the US it was the Clean Air Act by the Republican government which imposed these regulations. Today’s Republicans fight a carbon emission tax tooth and nail, and they were so far extremely successful. Instead of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the world seriously considers to geoengineer a cooler climate by blocking sunlight, i.e. by shooting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. Yet what comes up, always comes down.

The Crack of Doom

But the fossil fuel industry is also aware that not everyone falls for the “individual responsibility” or techno-fix ruses. For these people, they have the Armageddon narrative. Mann describes this as “doomism”, coming in different flavours, hard and soft doomism, but always telling you that it is too late, we ignored the solutions while they were still possible, we failed to avert a climate catastrophe, there is nothing we can do now to save humanity. The run-away climate collapse is inevitable, it is about to happen even if we cease all carbon emissions immediately, the point of no return is long passed, the Climate Armageddon is coming, either in 50 years, or in 10 years, or tomorrow, depending to who penned the recent bestseller book or the article in the New York Times or The Guardian . The world is doomed. Basically, either hang yourself or join the pillaging. In any case, you must accept that there is no point anymore for reducing fossil fuel consumption.

Under the most optimistic scenarios, we may be able to limit global warming to 1.8°C by 2100. But will overshooting 1.5 degrees of warming push us over climate tipping points, triggering irreversible and catastrophic changes? https://t.co/wEZ40AFQyZ — Columbia Climate School (@columbiaclimate) November 12, 2021

Mann however says that there is no scientific evidence for this nihilism. The release of the potent greenhouse gas methane from the thawing permafrost in the Arctic, which indeed already began and is a central tenet of climate doomism, is definitely not a sign that it is too late to act. There is no scientific support for the model of a runaway methane release which would turn the planet into a “ Hothouse Earth ” and which is the current scare of doomism. Mann’s simple explanation where this attitude comes from: climate doom porn sells.

The propagandists of individual responsibility, techno-fix non-solutions and the doomists are working for the fossil fuel lobby whether they want it or not. Ironically, the scientists actually employed by the oil industry predicted already in the 1970ies the temperature developments of today, quite precisely in fact. But the billionaires running the oil business decided that their money will protect them from climate disaster and anyway, they might be already dead by then. So they began with massive sponsoring of climate change denialism while knowing perfectly well about the truth. It wasn’t just individual people, sometimes it was entire national governments.

#2021inReview As the impacts of climate change became increasingly pronounced throughout Russia, experts fear the country cares more about carbon levies than the environmental crisis, @Nikita7687 reports https://t.co/qsujvRwEep — The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) December 30, 2021

While Russia and other petrostate regimes never cared about climate change and seem to even believe it will be good for them, the concept of resilience, mitigation and adaptation in the face of climate change is another diversion strategy deployed by the fossil fuel industry to derail climate action. It is part of the soft doomism approach, where you are supposed to think that climate change is already happening (true) and that all you can do is to adapt to it because you can’t prevent it anymore. That is a fallacy, wrong on many levels. Climate change is not a binary thing, it happens qualitatively. If we give up on slashing carbon emissions and focus our efforts and investments on adaptation alone (like, evacuating waterfront settlements), the effects of the climate change will get much, much worse. So bad, that all resilience strategies will fail and the disaster can’t be mitigated. And in a globalised economy and a mobile society, no country will be able to profit from the climate change.

Sure, the climate change is happening and it’s very, very bad. But if we act now, it will be much less bad than if we do nothing. To follow inactivists and do nothing would be really a disaster for the humanity and the planet. Every step counts, and we must put political divisions aside to achieve our common goal of slashing carbon emissions while not falling into the trap of non-solutions.

This is why Mann wrote this book. He wants us to act. He wants us to vote for the climate policies, to become active ourselves, and he concludes that it is the young generation, young people like Greta Thunberg and her fellow campaigners who will save the world with their activism. They deserve our full support in every respect, and we must never fall for the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry, even when they deploy environmentalists and climate scientists as their unwitting stooges.

Another evaluation of the accuracy of a media report on climate science, from https://t.co/K1mlnZUn3k – a group which lets experts comment on media reports. (In this case including me.) https://t.co/uh1o0FaWjv — Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 (@rahmstorf) August 21, 2020

PS: If you are unsure about the scientific validity of climate claims in the media, Mann recommends this fact-checking website, Climate Feebac k .

Disclaimer: As usual, I received no payment or incentive to write this review, but I did receive the book gratis from the author and publisher upon request I am also a bicycle-riding near-vegan vegetarian.

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5 comments on “ “The New Climate War” by Michael Mann – book review ”

I haven’t read the book. One aspect that is too often overlooked is degrowth. Degrowth is part of the solution. An economic growth (which leads to greater consumption of resources and therefore of emissions) on an annual basis of 0.5, or 1, or 2, or X percent compared to the previous year for each country is unsustainable. In a finite system such as planet Earth, infinite economic growth is mathematically impossible. We are not talking about complex calculations here, it is elementary arithmetic. 75 percent of emissions from industrialized countries (20 percent of the population) mean that living standards are too high and unsustainable. And the remaining 80 percent of the population want to achieve these standards. And the world population is constantly growing. Problem is: how is willing to drastically reduce their own living standards?

Who wants to lower living standards? Part of the reason why I am an incel is that my living standards are too low as it is to attract a suitable mate. Which kinds of points out that if we stop caring to impress the opposite sex with good living standards, the world will get better. I’ve stepped up, anyone else?

Economic growth is the only recipe that all Prime Ministers and Heads of State propose. From an economic point of view, from the point of view of employment and social levels, this is legitimate. Without economic growth, consumption would collapse and millions of jobs would be at risk. There are millions of jobs that are not strictly necessary, but which simply raise the standard of living: restaurants, bars, boutiques, entertainment, products and gadgets of all kinds and degrees that we could do without. But what work do we give to those who work in these sectors as an alternative? But constant economic growth destroys the planet. It’s a difficult riddle to solve.

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The New Climate War review: Reasons to be optimistic about the future

The forces fighting climate science have not been defeated, just changed tactics. But Michael Mann, a key figure in the fightback, argues for hope in his new book

By Richard Schiffman

19 January 2021

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

A wind, solar and fishing base in Dongtai, Jiangsu province in China

Alex Plavevski/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The New Climate War: The fight to take back our planet

Michael E. Mann

Scribe UK (Buy from Amazon *)

MOST people accept that climate change is happening, but that doesn’t mean the war against climate science is over. The denialists have just changed their tactics, argues Michael Mann in his book The New Climate War .

Mann should know. A climatologist at Penn State University, he has been a target since his “hockey stick” graph was published in 1999. The graph shows the rapid rise in temperature globally since industrialisation caused heat-trapping carbon dioxide to spew into the atmosphere.

This dramatic visual, featured in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth , earned Mann decades of harassment and death threats. This was part of a war against climate research that has been waged since the 1970s, first to cover up and then to contest the growing evidence that shows our planet is warming.

However, as data about rising sea levels, higher temperatures and megafires mounted, the climate sceptics shifted to “a kinder, gentler form of denialism”, says Mann. They now mostly concede that, yes, there is some warming and human activity plays some role, but it’s not nearly as bad as those “alarmist” scientists say.

This new effort (bankrolled by the same polluting interests that funded the old one) no longer disputes climate change, but tries to block the action needed to move towards a low-carbon future. It is being fought by the successors to climate change denialists, who Mann calls the “inactivists”. They lobby against effective carbon pricing programmes and subsidies for renewable energy that would imperil big energy’s bottom lines.

According to Mann, central to this strategy is a campaign to shift culpability for climate change from the corporations selling fossil fuels to those who use them. Fossil fuel companies aren’t to blame, “it’s the way people are living their lives”, Chevron argued in court in 2018.

“Doomism and the loss of hope can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial”

Some environmentalists have bought into this argument. While Mann agrees it is good to eat less meat, travel less and recycle more, such actions alone aren’t enough. We need to decarbonise the economy, he says. Focusing on personal responsibility takes our eyes off that prize.

Another thing inactivists do, Mann says, is to support divisive films like Michael Moore’s recent documentary Planet of the Humans that purported to show that renewable energy is ineffective and polluting .

The film was condemned by environmental activists and climate scientists. But the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance spent thousands to promote a film it hoped would take the wind out of the sails of the push for clean energy.

“Doomism and the loss of hope,” writes Mann “can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial. And Michael Moore plays right into it.” Despair is counterproductive.

Fossil fuel interests also cynically push “non-solution solutions” like natural gas, carbon capture and geoengineering, whose inadequacies Mann details. Again, the effort is to distract from the real task of weaning the world off fossil fuels.

But in the end, Mann says he is optimistic, heartened by the upswell of youth activism and the rapid development of green technologies. Even investors are beginning to flee from fossil fuels. Moreover, botched responses to covid-19 underline the peril of ignoring science and failing to act.

With the major COP26 UN climate summit due to be held later this year in Glasgow, UK, Mann’s call to get serious about climate change couldn’t be more timely. Let’s hope he is right that the tide is finally about to turn.

(*When you buy through links on this page we may earn a small commission, but this plays no role in what we review or our opinion of it.)

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Nonfiction Books » Environmental Books » New Climate Books

The new climate war: the fight to take back our planet, by michael e mann.

In The New Climate War Michael E Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, analyzes why we seem to be unable to move forward with combating climate change and pins the blame firmly on corporations. Like tobacco companies and gun makers in the past, fossil fuel companies deflect attention. ( A graphic novel by Mann has previously been recommended on Five Books , by Professor Naomi Oreskes of Harvard, who recommended it among her books on ‘the politics of climate change’).

The implications of this latest book are critical for how we, as individuals, take action. As Mann writes, “Personal actions, from going vegan to avoiding flying, are increasingly touted as the primary solution to the climate crisis. Though these actions are worth taking, a fixation on voluntary action alone takes the pressure off of the push for governmental policies to hold corporate polluters accountable. In fact, one recent study suggests that the emphasis on small personal actions can actually undermine support for the substantive climate policies needed.”

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“Personal actions can’t do any harm, but he says that focusing on individual behaviour—have you lagged your loft or stopped eating meat—is a rather devious deflection tactic. He’s unhappy with it being the major focus of attention, and actually thinks it’s a new form of climate denialism. So it’s a strong book and I think that as well as the very pressing urgency of the problem, it gets on the shortlist because it’s written in a way that does generate some feeling. It’s probably one of the strongest polemics to make the list since we started the prize.” Read more...

The Best Business Books: the 2021 FT & McKinsey Book Award

Andrew Hill , Journalist

Other books by Michael E Mann

The madhouse effect: how climate change denial is threatening our planet, destroying our politics, and driving us crazy by michael e mann & tom toles, our most recommended books, on liberty by john stuart mill, war and peace by leo tolstoy, middlemarch by george eliot, nineteen eighty-four by george orwell, republic by plato, the odyssey by homer and translated by emily wilson.

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Yale Climate Connections

Scientist Mike Mann’s must-read book, ‘The New Climate War’

Jeff Masters

Jeff Masters, Ph.D., worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 Hurricane Hugo, he left the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a... More by Jeff Masters

16 replies on “Scientist Mike Mann’s must-read book, ‘The New Climate War’”

I’m in fundamental agreement with some of what Dr Masters has presented as the position of this book (I have not yet read the book myself), especially most of the tabulation of pirate tactics. My lifetime of working on hunger, led me to economics as the solution:

Our consumer-driven marketplace rewards ducking the costs of good stewardship to compete to offer the low prices that consumers prioritize, and thus we need a fundamental upgrade to counter that bad incentive through rewarding good stewardship .

In practice, producers seldom have the option of good stewardship because that prices them into marketplace failure, and there is scarce ability for policymakers to counter that by creating global policy with teeth. Saying, “All we require are policies to incentivize the needed shift,” is thus a catch22 because the first needed global shift is the policy to permit the policies that incentivie the first needed global shift.

Put another way: the authors conclusion is circular and stems from a common error. This reason is why Ted Turner abandoned his contest to award half-million-dollar fellowships continuously to stories that present global solutions. The first and only winner had a talking gorilla tell us it was too late so don’t repeat the same greed when we rebuild after the fall. I asked the winning author how defeatism was a solution, and he told me that the judges told him that everybody else wrote about what they would do if they were in charge of the world, but nobody is . He told me that the local empowerment I argued then in ’93 is a solution was the only solution he had ever heard. Fifteen years later, E. Ostrom won the Nobel for proving it. And now, 15 year years after her win, we know what is going wrong in practice and how any community can fix it for themselves.

The necessary world power is too decentralized except in one overpowering way: global money empowers anyone and everyone to act as invasive species. And global money isn’t going away. The task before is restoring the Earth now, and the power to do that comes from having the money to pay people to restore it in a system in which the money stays on task instead of flowing into pirate pockets, which task is local restoration everywhere , which means local money everywhere to empower communities to incentivize the hundreds of millions of persons seeking employment to engage in work caring for each other and the world around them.

We now have funding for pilots. And we have the plan. But meanwhile, the Arctic began a runaway meltdown, accelerating climate change, so having the time to restore the Earth with reforestation and agroforestry may require quickly restoring the Arctic Ice Cap. We know how to do that too.

And education plays a role. That’s why we share the solutions. But will policy leaders step up? They might, but betting the world on “might” is not well-informed.

Haha.. Nearly destroyed this blog trying to share this global sea level graph.. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level

Watch Michael Mann discussing his new book on Sunday, Jan.31. It’s on C-SPAN2 @6:40pm ET. For those of you who no longer have a TV, it’s on the internet.

I’m always more skeptical when a writer uses feel-good phrases such as “clean energy” when, considering manufacture, siting, transmission, maintenance, disposal… there is no such thing. The other feel-good thing here is avoidance of the contributing factor of our continued high population growth – another billion in only about 12 years, then another billion, then another…. no possible sustainability without addressing that

I totally agree with your comment on population. To ignore its rampant growth would undermine any effort to mitigate the climate crisis. In my lay opinion, the climate crisis and population are inseparable, and we need to be cognizant of that. It makes it harder to tackle the climate problem, but if you fail to include the surging population in any calculation you’re wasting time.

People in different countries average vastly different energy uses. Some countries don’t have so many people but are using up far more electricity & wastefully per person. Yeah using a green energy label to describe things like fracking has been a joke. Some wells they are just venting to the atmosphere & enough water wells have been polluted to do way with the green label. Good to see biomass electricity starting to move toward crops easier to grow with more energy to offer than corn. That has been regulation to decide who makes money, not what is cheapest or best for everyone’s health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

Skyepony says; “Good to see biomass electricity starting to move toward crops easier to grow with more energy to offer than corn” for whatever all of that means. I’m sure that “green energy” people want to believe that ethanol is the salvation of the planet when it is as much of a waste of resources as windmills and solar. “Science News … from universities, journals, and other research organizations Study: Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm Ethanol fuel from corn faulted as ‘unsustainable subsidized food burning’ in analysis by Cornell scientist subsidies http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says&nbsp ;

Yeah burning food for energy is a really dumb idea..worse than burning crops that are easier to grow or even “waste products” like manure.. None of these are green energy. Since I don’t really get to choose the level of stupid, I can at least cheer on when some lawmakers gets how dumb ethanol from corn is.

Skyepony says; “Good to see biomass electricity starting to move toward…” Here are some FACTS about “Green” Biomass Electricity. New Report: “Green” Biomass Electricity More Polluting Than Coal Renewable energy biomass plants are avoiding regulation, burning contaminated fuels, and threatening air quality Pelham, MA. – Biomass electricity generation, a heavily subsidized form of “green” energy that relies primarily on the burning of wood, is more polluting and worse for the climate than coal, according to a new analysis of 88 pollution permits for biomass power plants in 25 states. Trees, Trash, and Toxics: How Biomass Energy Has Become the New Coal, released today and delivered to the EPA by the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI), concludes that biomass power plants across the country are permitted to emit more pollution than comparable coal plants or commercial waste incinerators, even as they are subsidized by state and federal renewable energy dollars. It contains detailed emissions and fuel specifications for a number of facilities, including plants in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. “The biomass power industry portrays their facilities as ‘clean,’ said Mary Booth, Director of PFPI and author of the report. “But we found that even the newest biomass plants are allowed to pollute more than modern coal- and gas-fired plants, and that pollution from bioenergy is increasingly unregulated.” The report found that biomass power is given special treatment and held to lax pollution control standards, compared to fossil-fueled power plants. Biomass plants are dirty because they are markedly inefficient. The report found that per megawatt-hour, a biomass power plant employing “best available control technology” (BACT) emits more nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide than a modern coal plant of the same size. http://www.pfpi.net/trees-trash-and-toxics-how-biomass-energy-has-become-the-new-coal&nbsp ;

I don’t think of ethanol as a green energy or any kind of real bridge to a clean renewable source of energy.

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Jacksonville FL 136 PM EST Thu Jan 28 2021

FLZ024-025-031-032-037-136-140-236-240-340-291400- /O.NEW.KJAX.FR.Y.0004.210129T0800Z-210129T1400Z/ Inland Nassau-Inland Duval-Bradford-Clay-Putnam-Eastern Alachua- Eastern Marion-Western Alachua-Central Marion-Western Marion- Including the cities of Ratliff, Hilliard, Kings Ferry, Bryceville, Normandy, Ortega, Riverside, San Marco, Starke, New River, Doctors Inlet, Lakeside, Bellair, Middleburg, Orange Park, Bostwick, Carraway, Palatka, Gainesville, Gainesville Airport, Newnans Lake, Lynne, Moss Bluff, High Springs, Newberry, Archer, Anthony, Burbank, Ocala, Weirsdale, and Ocala Airport 136 PM EST Thu Jan 28 2021

…FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 3 AM TO 9 AM EST FRIDAY…

* WHAT…Temperatures in the lower to middle 30s will result in frost formation.

* WHERE…Inland Nassau, Inland Duval, Bradford, Clay, Putnam, Eastern Alachua, Eastern Marion, Western Alachua, Central Marion and Western Marion Counties.

* WHEN…From 3 AM to 9 AM EST Friday.

* IMPACTS…Frost could kill sensitive outdoor vegetation if left uncovered.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…

Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold.

I am a “doomist”. Unless the whole world helps India and China go completely nuclear in 9 years, mankind will have reached a tipping point. Watch https://www.c-span.org/video/?457382-1/a-bright-future

If you don’t have time read the amazon reviews https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Future-Countries-Solved-Climate/dp/1541724100

If you don’t have time for that, you can join me—I no longer care about #ClimateChange. There’s always covid and The Bomb.Funny, how the one means of saving us, is also the one means of annihilation.

I quite imagine mankind’s time is slowly coming to an end,Nature has a way of doing that over the centuries to animals etc

Negative! That’s the reply I get.

Did you look at the video? Read what it said about the book?

It’s not all on you to try and save us from these things. Everything you do to prevent climate change personally in your life will most likely save you money and improve your health. If it doesn’t work out a few generations down the road, at least your life was better. China is ahead of us in developing like bus batteries and other solutions. There is so much new tech that is making healthier alternatives less expensive than far dirtier sources. Nuclear isn’t the winner economically or environmentally.

I have great respect for Dr. Mann as a climate pioneer and determined activist who has courageously fought denialism despite ongoing assaults from the ignorant. As a physical scientist, he understandably focuses on energy and greenhouse gases. And of course his critique of the fossil fuel industry is on target.

But the Earth is an extraordinarily complex system, and reducing it to a handful of small heat-trapping molecules critically omits some of the most important elements of the systemic problems we face. Climate is not an isolated issue, it is intimately connected to general destruction of the biosphere, and we won’t solve climate separately from repairing the damage humans have inadvertently wrought since the last ice age.

In fact, living systems are the most powerful force on Earth, going back almost four billion years. Life has created an oxygen atmosphere, changed the nature and function of land- and waterscapes, and has evolved into marvels of existence seen nowhere outside of living systems.

I haven’t read the book but based on Jeff Masters’ summary, leaving biology out of the equation is a sin of omission. The most hopeful developments at this stage of the game are in managing the biosphere to bring twelve billion or so degraded and desertified acres back to life. This is how photosynthesis and massive growth of biomass cool the biosphere, provide nourishment for the creatures on this planet (including humans), help tame the weather, reduce floods and droughts and bring back a livable planet – and along the way draw down many gigatons of carbon dioxide.

Clean energy may well contribute to addressing climate, but it is nowhere near sufficient. We desperately need healthy, fully functioning natural systems to do that.

Comments are closed.

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Spring 2024 Appeal - Keep the Fuse lit!

Book Review: “The New Climate War” — Enough of the Doomsayers!

This incisive volume will assist the creation of a much-needed collective effort, helping to frame a unified approach to waging combat on those who are destroying the environment for the sake of short-term profit.

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E. Mann. Public Affairs, 351 pages. $29.

When it comes to combating climate change, Mann spends most of the book identifying various enemies who stand in the way of getting all of us on the same page. The first few chapters round up the usual suspects: the fossil fuel industry and its big money enablers who are bent on sowing confusion and doubt. Mann compares the obfuscatory strategy of the fossil fuel industry to big tobacco. “Doubt is our product,” said a tobacco executive when confronted with evidence that smoking caused cancer. Mann points to the long history of corporations attacking the messenger, beginning with Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring “ushered in the modern environmental movement.” When Carson pointed out the tragic consequences for animals of using the pesticide DDT, the agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto turned to character assassination.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, in the early ’80s Exxon asked its own scientists to investigate the effects of burning fossil fuels. Internal memos predicted the rise in CO2 and global temperatures. Exxon decided to keep this information from the public and to engage in decades of fostering lies. This approach didn’t work for long because global temperatures, along with CO2 levels, were obviously rising.

So, companies like Exxon and BP decided to take another misleading approach. Mann refers to it as the “Crying Indian.” The Crying Indian was an advertisement in the ’70s by Coca Cola in which a native American is shown shedding a tear over litter strewn along America’s highways. The message of the ad was that we should all pick up after ourselves and protect our environment. The real purpose behind this nefarious campaign: to prevent bottle bills from being passed because Coke and other soft drink manufacturers thought legislation would cut into their profits. The idea was to shift the responsibility for protecting the environment from them to us.

Mann argues that fossil fuel companies use this same approach to deflect the public. Corporations want us to focus on what we, individually, should be doing. The psychological switch is obvious: by making us feel guilty about our role in climate change, fossil fuel companies figure that we won’t go after them. Or at least it will slow us down from pointing fingers at the real culprits. Oddly enough, as Mann points out, liberals often buy into the idea that it is our fault rather than the fault of fossil fuel companies and the politicians who support them.

This marketing campaign, with its hypocritical selling of “personal responsibility,” is effective because to reject it Americans will have to shake their embrace of “selfie” culture — the idea is that you are the center of the universe. Big oil figures it can hawk the notion that we are in control and drum up peer pressure to cut back on flying or become vegetarians or drive a hybrid. But, as Mann points out, reducing our individual carbon imprints is only of use in the contest if fossil fuel companies stop drilling and mining and if our politicians create laws that help us transition to clean energy. The bottom line is that we have to keep the oil in the ground.

Mann also assails those on the left and right for harping on worst case scenarios He takes on David Wallace Wells, who wrote Uninhabitable Earth , making the case that it doesn’t help the cause to scare people out of their wits. Mann’s position is that we have to face reality, but that, if we work together, we still have time to make a difference in the quality of life for the generations to come.

Mann also calls leftists like the Sunrise Movement, Bernie Sanders, and AOC to account for refusing to back a carbon tax because, according to them, it will hurt the poor. This is a war we all have to fight: we need to draw on all the tools available and one of them is a tax on carbon.

Overall, Mann is optimistic about Greta Thunberg and the youth movements she has fostered. They are signs we are finally beginning to deal with a monumental challenge that threatens our environment and our future. We are now at a turning point because of mounting evidence that something is seriously wrong with our planet: the wildfires in Australia and in California, the droughts, the floods, the warming and rising oceans and the melting ice at the poles, along with the negative effects of climate change on animals, fish, birds and bees. All of this evidence of transformation has convinced 63 percent of Americans that “global climate change is affecting their community” and “the federal government is not doing enough about it.” The US “should prioritize developing alternative energy sources” say 79 percent, according to a poll taken last year.

In an excellent essay in this month’s Harper’s Magazine , Greg Jackson asks, “Why not address this issue [climate change] head on? Why not seize the opportunity to stimulate our economy, rebuild our nation, take meaningful action, and come together in common purpose?” Jackson claims our country is suffering from depression, fostered by an epidemic of loneliness, and that the mutual effort required to fight a war on climate change is just what we need. Mann’s incisive volume will assist that move toward a collective effort, helping to frame a unified approach to waging combat on those who are destroying the environment for the sake of short-term profit. To do that, Mann argues we must remove the lackeys of big oil from positions of power: “We must vote out politicians who serve as handmaidens for fossil fuel interests and elect those who will champion climate action.”

Ed Meek is the author of High Tide (poems) and Luck (short stories).

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Book Review: The New Climate War

Review by Roger Lohr

The book The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E. Mann was released during the early months of the pandemic in 2020 by PublicAffairs books. In a story about efforts by what the author refers to as “inactivists” (previously known as climate-change deniers) to thwart any significant change, there are many references to the pandemic and to analogies in other segments of the political action spectrum.

Mann is a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State and author of five books, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often called the Nobel Prize for the Environment.

The Climate War has a historical review of the strategies used to defer and prevent addressing climate change. This type of “undertaking” started with the internal Exxon documents in which a scientist admitted the measurable and nonreversible outcomes associated with fossil fuels, and resulted in robust public relations campaigns incorporating science deniers-for-hire, and more.

The culprits in the war are the fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and oil-funded governments who have shifted from outright science denial to softer strategies based on deception and distraction. Free-market fundamentalists (individuals and corporations) obscure public understanding with misinformation and misdirection. They discredit the scientific message, attack the messengers, undermine facts, deflect blame, divide the public, delay action, promote alternative solutions that don’t actually solve problems, and insist that we simply accept our fate. Mann attaches names and dates to an avalanche of inactivists and their activities – both on the right and left of the political spectrum from claims of denial to warnings of the Earth’s extinction.

Michael E. Mann

Mann presents examples of the techniques used outside of climate change such as the battle against the DDT ban, the Crying Indian TV ad that was created by Keep America Beautiful (Coke, Pepsi, Anne Heuser Busch, etc. with the Sierra Club and Audubon Society as original program partners) as a way to defeat bottle-return legislation, and the cigarette industry’s joint campaign with the chemical industry that blamed flammable furniture for cigarette-induced house fires. The fire-retardant campaign even bought off firefighting organizations for support! And speaking about fire, last year President Trump deceptively insisted the California forest fires were promulgated by poor forest management rather than climate change and drought.

Techniques to combat meaningful action on the climate crisis attack and divide individual action, responsibility, and broader government policy for systematic change. Mann feels that the needed tipping point will only happen when there is active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward, but he realizes that individual action (from turning off lights to installing solar panels on your roof) while necessary, can only get us so far to tackle the climate crisis. The reduction in travel and commerce during the pandemic shutdown reduced global emissions by only 4%. Systemic changes are far more critical to carbon emission reduction. According to Mann, applying broad-based technology is required. High-speed railways, research and development for renewables and battery storage, and developing programs to reduce CO2 must be done on the macro level. Inter-governmental agreements with enforcement of domestic energy and climate policies that incentivize the shift are necessary.

There is also division among and against the community that wants to address climate change as the politics of identity, behavior shaming, and virtue signaling are used. Some of this action is instigated by inactivists using social media similar to the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. election. Personal carbon footprints are a regular weapon that are used, whereby individuals are pegged as hypocrites if they eat meat, fly in airplanes, or have children. The threat of mandated personal sacrifice is an easy way to mobilize people to oppose change. These techniques are to prevent climate advocates from effectively speaking with a united voice and erode support for systematic solutions to the climate crisis.

Currently there are progressives in favor of societal transformation and opposed to carbon pricing schemes because the plans seem politically unattainable, unworkable, and unjust to economically disadvantaged people. Progressive leader Naomi Klein’s view is that environmental sustainability is not compatible with a neoliberal political framework built on market economics. Can the government that spends $30 million to develop a healthcare website that does not work, takes months to mail stimulus checks, or struggles to coordinate a vaccination program be expected to develop and maintain a carbon pricing tax redistribution program?

Mann feels that we have to disregard the doomsayers (those who state that it is too late to fix climate change), look to the young leadership; educate the populace and engage in systematic change (remove the politicians who oppose changes needed), and consider corporate culpability to bring about momentum to address climate change. Can it be done in your lifetime?

Roger Lohr of Lebanon, NH, who owns and edits XCSkiResorts.com , has published articles and promotional topics on snow sports, sustainability, and trails in regional and national media. He is also the Recreational Editor for Green Energy Times .

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The New Climate War

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Business Book of the Year 2021, Financial Times (runner-up)

The Wainwright Prize in Nature Writing (long-listed)

Fifteen Best Science & Environment Books 2021, The Times (UK)

Best books of 2021: Climate and Environment, Financial Times (UK )

Top 10 Books of 2021, International Affairs (Oxford University Press)

Noteable Books of 2021, Behavioral Scientist

Best Books of 2021, Pulse of Europe

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Blog reviews

A seat at the table in the climate war room — David Wineberg

Ten to Watch: Our favorite climate change book — Climate and Capital

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet — The Green Spotlight

If you read just one climate book this year, read "The New Climate War" — Brigitte Van Gerven for Citizens Climate Lobby

The Path to (Climate) Victory — Tom Okeefe

A Book Review: “The New Climate War” — Mark Marchand

Michael Mann Takes on Climate ‘Doomists’ in His Latest Book ‘The New Climate War’ — Alex Strachan

Think Again, The New Climate War: 2 books that will make you re-think again — Nikola Zivkovic

Climate Friday — Alex Rühle in the Sueddeusche Zeitung

Alles hat keine Zeit XCVI — Sokratischer Marktplatz

While we're stll all occupied with the pandemic anthropocene adversities advance. — The KHIT Blog

The New Climate War by Michael Mann — Chris Jerrey

We Can't Say We Weren't Warned — Charles Alexander

Books at budtime: spring reading — Barbara Kiser

Neues Buch von Michael E. Mann: Propagandaschlacht ums Klima — Frank Urbansky

We've read Michael Mann's "The New Climate War" so you don't have to — Toxorial

Neues Buch des Klimaforschers Michael E. Mann: Propagandaschlacht ums Klima — Cora Sacher for Greenpeace Energy Magazine

Considering some of the issues raised by “The New Climate War” by Michael Mann — Martin Hodson for The John Ray Initiative

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews — Bärbel Winkler, Timo Lubitz, and John Garrett for Skeptical Science

Klima: Was kann jeder Einzelne tun? — For Franky's Blog

August 2021 Book of the Month: The New Climate War — For World Wise Today

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. By Michael E. Mann — For Mrs Geography

Una voce dalla prima linea della nuova guerra del clima — For Climalteranti.it

If you read only two books this year make them The New Climate War and Silent Earth — Prof Jeff Ollerton for jeffollertton.co.uk

Michael E. Mann: The New Climate War. The Fight to Take Back the Planet — Martin Hudymač for Medium

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann — Paul Hormick for The Green Dispatch

Climate Optimism? — Elliott Rabin for elliottrabin.net

Michael Mann - The New Climate War: Book Review — Adam Hardy for Carbon Watchdog

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet — Simon Mundy for Smart Thinking Books

How to Address the New Age of Climate Denial — Alex Casey for Population Connection

The New Climate War - a brief review — Peter Gardner for petergardner.info

The New Climate War by Michael Mann — Leonid Schneider for For Better Science

" Mann hits hard on disinformation, exposing how corporations (led by the fossil fuel industry) have delayed climate action and deflected blame. He also holds no punches on the questionable narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate. This book is blunt, but you will come out of it more equipped to navigate your own feelings on various climate solutions." ― Rosana Xia, LA Times "Fossil fuel companies have, for decades longer than I have been alive, been the largest contributors to the climate crisis that affects my generation today--all in pursuit of profits and growth. In The New Climate War , Michael Mann holds them to account, and shows us how we can take the bold steps we must all take together to win the battle to save this planet." ― Greta Thunberg, climate activist "This book takes the reader behind the front lines into the decades long information war waged by the fossil fuel industry and those that share their interests. From his perspective as a leader in the battle for scientific reason, Michael Mann provides hope and a roadmap for all of us to address the systemic issues fueling climate change, and shows how we can come together to wage a new war in the fight for our future." ― Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and environmentalist "Few people bear more scars from the climate wars than Michael Mann--and few have fought longer and harder for a basic, rational approach to dealing with this greatest of crises. Because of his persistence--and that of so many others--we are finally making progress!" ― Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? "With this book, Michael Mann details the challenges we face from enemies (" inactivists ") both without and within while dropping critically important breadcrumbs for us to follow to lead us out of the forest of despair and set us on the path of victory in a battle we must win. We need an army of Michaels, stat!" ― Don Cheadle, actor, activist, UN global goodwill ambassador "Pulling no punches, Michael Mann lays out our predicament and tells the shocking story of persistent climate denial and corporate deception. We are in a war for the planet, but one we are now on the verge of winning. And he deftly cuts through the propaganda and shows us the path forward." ― Jerry Brown, California governor, 1975-1983, 2011-2019 "Mann shows that corporations and lobbyists have been successful in convincing us that climate change will be fine, if we just recycle our bottles and turn out the lights. Instead, he says, global warming is a problem way too hot for any one person to handle. He's optimistic though, because he sees what we really can and will do. Read his book, and let's get to work." ― Bill Nye, Science Educator, CEO The Planetary Society "For over two decades, Michael Mann has been our Janus at the gates, defending climate science from corporate-funded insinuations of confusion and suspicion. We would not have progressed this far had it not been for his unflinching and brilliant rejoinders to the traffickers of doubt. This chronicle of ongoing climate injustice may make you mad, but hopefully it will make us act. This is the only civilization we have. Mann is its resolute champion once again." ― Paul Hawken, Founder, Project Drawdown " The New Climate War is an insightful treatise on how the polluting fossil fuel industry and their right-wing allies have deflected the blame for the climate crisis. The book charts a common sense course for collective actions to force government and corporations to make real solutions to the climate crisis-an existential threat to humanity and the planet." ― Robert D. Bullard, Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University " The New Climate War is engaging, approachable, and ultimately deeply uplifting. Mann outline a hopeful vision of the transformation we must undertake in order to create a better, brighter future on this planet." ― Sasha Sagan, Author of For Small Creatures Such As We " Blunt, lucid… Consistently displaying his comprehensive command of climate science and the attendant politics…An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels. " ― Kirkus Reviews "Michael Mann skillfully explains the complicated dynamics of global warming and vividly portrays the sophisticated and coordinated campaign by polluters to block the policies and solutions needed to solve the climate crisis." ― Al Gore, Former U.S Vice President "A fascinating journey through the minds and motivations of the champions of climate denialism as well as the more recent climate doomists. Along the way, we learn of the unequivocal scientific evidence and the rapid evolution of technological solutions. Most importantly, public opinion finally seems to be at a 'tipping point' to catalyze political will to leave the next generation a sustainable world - and not a moment too soon!" ― Rosina Bierbaum, former Acting Director of OSTP "An engrossing mix of footnoted history, acerbic political commentary and personal anecdotes." ― Science News “This book is a must read not just for people currently working to address climate change but also for those who are new to the climate fight, the latter of whom will learn much about past challenges, struggles, and attacks that have been aimed at climate champions.” ― Science "Michael Mann has written a book about climate change that you not only need to read, but will want to read. It's eye-opening and even fun.” ― Alden Mudge, Book Page "It is hard to overstate the timely value of Michael Mann’s latest book, “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.” ― Centre Daily Times "prose rattles along, entertaining and horrifying us in equal measure as he exposes scientists, politicians, the conservative media and other supposed experts who have slowed climate action by caring more about the interests of big industry." ― Philippa Nuttall Jones, The New Statesman Michael Mann may or may not be a Climate Jedi, but he is a climate smart guy and The New Climate War is a must read ― Donald Right, The Globe and Mail a call to arms in the new war against "inactivists" ― Bob Ward, The Guardian The New Climate Wars is a punchy, provocative, informed…take on the [climate] crisis, by a respected voice in the climate science and communications field ― John Gibbons, The Irish Times Mann makes a convincing case that the fight against climate action continues — under different terms of engagement. ― Pilita Clark, The Financial Times The New Climate War makes a compelling case both for revising the global Green New Deal and for counteracting disinformation from climate sceptics. ― John Meagher , The Independent (of Ireland) The New Climate War is a detailed, passionate, and insightful overview of the latest schemes by fossil fuel interests and their minions to halt or delay a transition to a clean energy economy. ― Jake Whitney , The Progressive The book's reflections on the manipulation of public discourse and how to resist the unhelpful trends of modern thinking are not just interesting and varied, they are important. ― David Ferrell , The Canberra Times The New Climate War is a detailed, passionate, and insightful overview of the latest schemes by fossil fuel interests and their minions to halt or delay a transition to a clean energy economy. ― Sorcha Hamilton , The Irish Times In the New Climate War..Mann points out how...fossil fuel interests have shifted focus from discrediting the science to decelerating action to transform the carbon economy. ― Art Flynn, The Irish Examiner An important addition to the pushback against inaction and doom that has delayed action against climate change for too long and led too many to surrender without even a fight. ― David Biello, Sierra Magazine In this extensively researched book, Mann outlines a plan to hold corporations and governments more accountable for slowing climate change. ― Ellen Wanamaker, Ames Tribune Mann's voice is especially powerful on the subject. ― David Montgomery, The Washington Post He wants to keep the focus on systemic rather than individual change, and explains why that's so important. He criticises the denialists, and greed of the corporate bodies who fund them. In doing those things, his book is an asset for us all. ― David Renton, The Ecologist In this extensively researched book, Mann outlines a plan to hold corporations and governments more accountable for slowing climate change. ― Max Spokes, The Oxford Blue "Mann believes this 'new war' can be won, and he charts a clear path forward." ― Sue Gilmore, Bay City News "The #NewClimateWar is a wonderfully confrontational book. Passage after passage reminded me of my daughter’s favorite phrase: 'shots fired!'" ― David Robbins, The Independent (Ireland) "Mann has combined the roles of groundbreaking scientific researcher, compelling popular communicator, and courageous activist in a way few have since Carl Sagan. His latest book, The New Climate War, provides a thoughtful perspective on the forces impeding meaningful climate action” ― David Carlin, Forbes "Mann offers readers an absorbing and accessible take on an alarming pattern that stands to shape the course of climate action—and our collective future." ― Rebecca M. Peters, Chatham House (UK) "an important and highly recommended read." ― Dan Rather, SiriusXM "This incisive volume will assist the creation of a much-needed collective effort, helping to frame a unified approach to waging combat on those who are destroying the environment for the sake of short term profit." ― Ed Meek, The Arts Fuse "a fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality." ― Deena Robinson, Earth.org "Mann’s book, aimed at everyone from young students to longtime activists, alerts the public to the tactics and stakes of this new climate war, and arms readers with the weapons to fight it." ― Oliver Lazarus, National Center for Science Education Summer Newsletter "[The New Climate War] dreams of a common future of humanity by upholding coexistence between nature and man [and] seeks ways of symbiosis and cooperation." ― K Sahdevan, CounterCurrents "All three of these books are well worth reading, but if I had to pick one of them to recommend, it would probably be Mann's." ― Gabriel Carlyle, PeaceNews "his book can jolt you out of despair and 'doomism' over climate change." ― Jean Boivin, Blackrock Investment Institute "an important and timely book - well worth reading." ― Stephen Shenfield, WSPUS Newsletter "An engaging, well-documented book about climate politics and the industrial and political forces that have resisted the science of climate change and continue to manipulate and distort public perceptions about its causes and effects." ― Susan Glick, Seacoast Online "[The New Climate War] is a book relevant to people everywhere, and especially those in our region concerned about environmental change." ― Richard Frost, Adirondack Daily Enterprise " [The New Climate War] explains very clearly, with researched facts, that the focus on individual behaviors to slow climate chaos is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in guilt tripping the individual and deflecting responsibility from the fossil fuel companies, where it belongs . " ― Ruah Swennerfelt, Friends Journal " Mann’s book is enlightening. Despite the seriousness of the subject, his book entertains, raises awareness, and inspires optimism. That is how we fight for the climate. " ― Claudia Detsch, IPS Journal " a brilliant study of how fossil fuel companies are already changing their tune in this way, and why we shouldn’t listen to them " ― The Times of London (UK) "Mann is an excellent communicator, and his book is also a very good place to find out what the current climate science actually does and does not say.” -- Bibek Bhattacharya , Mint

Media Reviews

"The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet" by Michael E. Mann - Rosana Xia for LA Times

Battle for the Earth: The baffling strategies of the fossil fuel industry part1 - Fred Hageneder for Pressenza

Die Strategien der Untätigen - Sandra Pfister for Deutschlandfunk

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - Deena Robinson for Earth.org

An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels - Kirkus Reviews

Fossil fuel advocates may have added strategic inaction to their arsenal, but there is reason for climate optimism - Science

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet - Shelf Awareness

If you read just one climate book this year, read "The New Climate War" - Brigitte Van Gerven for Citizens Climate Lobby

A Rising Tide of Optimism - Richard Schiffman for New Scientist

‘The New Climate War’ exposes tactics of climate change ‘inactivists’ -Carolyn Gramling for Science News Magazine

12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate change - Michael Svoboda for Yale Climate Connections

A Review of The New Climate War - Alden Mudge for Book Page

Scientist Mike Mann's must-read book, 'The New Climate War' - Jeff Masters for Yale Climate Connections

3 books on climate change for academics, dummies and deniers - Allison Arieff for Datebook

The New Climate War: an interview with climate scientist Michael E Mann - Joana Partyka for Greens.org

'The New Climate War’ – Michael E. Mann calls out bad actors - Kendra Reed for AIPT Comics

Climate Watch: Michael Mann’s latest is a must-read for anyone who cares about climate action - Centre Daily Times

Michael Mann Talks Of A New War Against Climate Change In His Book - Sharon Griffin for California Herald

The New Climate War - The Fight to Take Back Our Planet - Tim Campbell for Isthmus

3 books on climate change for academics, dummies and deniers - Allison Arieff for Datebook

The rise of the climate dude - Philippa Nuttall Jones in The New Statesman Newspaper

In his book The New Climate War, Michael Mann is a climate jedi - Donald Right for The Globe and Mail

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates - Bob Ward for The Guardian

The New Climate Wars: How vested interests delay action - John Gibbons for The Irish Times; Free Version Click HERE

The new politics of climate change - Pilita Clark for The Financial Times

Book Brief - John Meagher for The Independent

It's Up to Us': New Book on Climate Explains Why It's Not Too Late to Save Our Planet - Jake Whitney for The Progressive

American scientist Michael E. Mann exposes the ways we're manipulated by the language of climate change - David Ferrell for The Canberra Times

Beware the climate doomsayers - Sorcha Hamilton for The Irish Times

The New Climate War - Art Flynn for Irish Examinera

Lessons From a Climate Warrior - David Biello for Sierra Club

La inacción climática - Nelson Lagos for @LaTerceracom

Ames library notes: Iowa Climate Action Planning at the library - Ellaen Wanamaker for Ames Tribune

Neues Buch von Michael E. Mann: Propagandaschlacht ums Klima -arank Urbansky for Enwipo.de

The Search for Environmental Hope - David Montgomery for Washington Post magazine

Mann verses the oil oligarchy - David Renton for the Ecologist

Kleiner Kanon der Klimaliteratur (small canon of climate literature) - @EnergieWinde

THE NEW CLIMATE WAR – The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (On page 26) - Roger Lohr for Green Energy Times

‘The New Climate War’: Michael E. Mann On How To Fight The Climate Inactivists - Max Spokes for The Oxford Blue

Wir sind so nah dran ( Full Article ) - Samiha Shafy for Die Zeit

Regional: Earth Day Reading List -- Five New Books With Ideas And Inspiration For Protecting The Planet - Sue Gilmore for Bay City News

Earth Day: Reviews of the latest books on climate change and the best ways to save a planet in peril - David Robin for The Independent (Ireland)

How You Can Fight Back Against The 3 ‘Ds’ Of Climate Inaction - David Carlin for Forbes

The new climate war: the fight to take back our planet ( Full Article ) - Rebecca M. Peters for Chatham House, UK

The New Climate War - Dan Rather for Dan Rather's America, SiriusXM

How we talk about the climate crisis is increasingly crucial to tackling it - Susanna Rustin for The Guardian

'The New Climate War': Enough of the Doomsayers! - Ed Meek for The Arts Fuse

Die Strategien der Untätigen - Sandra Pfister for Deutschlandfunk

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet ( Full Article ) - Oliver Lazarus for National Center for Science Education (NCSE)

A Journey into the Unfamilar Future - K Sahadevan for CounterCurrents

Klimakrise: Ablenken ist das neue Leugen [Climate crisis: distraction is the new denial] - Björn Lohmann for RiffReporter

Nach dem Leugnen [After Denial] - Björn Lohmann for Spektrum der Wissenschaft

Michael Mann, The New Climate War: the fight to take back our planet - Gabriel Carlyle for PeaceNews

2021 summer reading list - Jean Boivin for Blackrock Investment Institute

WSPUS Newsletter - Stephen Shenfield for WSPUS

Getting Ready: Fossil fuel fights and the future - Susan Glick for Seacoast Online

The politics of climate change - Richard Frost for The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet - Ruah Swennerfelt for Friends Journal

Propagandaschlacht ums Klima: Neuer Titel von Michael E. Mann - Claudia Detsch for IPG Journal

Résister à l’inaction climatique - Benjamin Caraco for nonfiction.fr

To win the new climate war, we need a new strategy - Claudia Detsch for IPS Journal

15 best science and environment books 2021 - The Times of London (UK)

Propagandaschlacht ums Klima - Ulrich Graf for Wochenblatt

Propagandaschlacht ums Klima - Taz News (Germany)

Buchtipp: Propagandaschlacht ums Klima - richtig gut! - ECOreporter (Germany)

Le livre éco de la semaine en VO : la guerre climatique à l'heure du "déni doux" - L'Express (Canada; in French)

Propagandaschlacht ums Klima ( Image ) - Bild der Wissenschaft (Germany)

Buchtipp: Propagandaschlacht ums Klima - EnergieZukunft (Germany)

5 climate change books that you must read - Bibek Bhattacharya for Mint

Trailer of The New Climate War:

Available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y_ko7VfEgQ

Forbes : With Biden, The Whole Climate Will Change

Rolling Stone : Michael Mann talks with Jeff Goodell about his forthcoming book, “The New Climate War”

Inside Climate News : Warming Trends: Big Cat Against Big Cat, Michael Mann’s New Book and Trump Greenlights Killing Birds

Salon : Cautious optimism" about fighting climate change: Salon talks with author of "The New Climate War

Scientific American : Climate Deniers Shift Tactics to ‘Inactivism’

Our Daily Planet : Dr. Michael Mann’s Plan to Fight Back Against Climate “Inactivists”

Wisconsin Public Radio : The Morning Show with Dr. Michael Mann”

Cheddar : 'The New Climate War' Author Talks Global Warming in 2021

KPCW : Fighting The New Climate War with Author Michael Mann

Clean Technica : Michael Mann Has A New Book About Climate Denial And How To Fight It

Politics and Prose : THE NEW CLIMATE WAR with Bill Nye

State Impact : Climate scientist Michael Mann: U.S. is in position to be a leader on climate change

Radio Ecoshock : The New Climate War: Michael Mann

Lynda Steele of News : By the way, we’re still in a climate emergency. Are we addicted to fossil fuels?

Rod Podcast : Dr. Mann speaks about Climate Issues, Trump and Biden Environmental Policy, and Hope for our Future

MPR News : From denial to obstruction: New book charts changing tactics of the fossil fuel lobby

WPSU : Take Note: Michael Mann On Climate Change

Ashbrook Live : Dr. Mann's conversation with Tom Ashbrook of Ashbrook Live

Stabroek News : An overheated planet

KPFA : Michael E. Mann chronicles decades of climate “inactivism” in new book

Science News : A New President, An Ongoing Climate Crisis

North State Public Radio : THE NEW CLIMATE WAR: A Conversation With Michael Mann

Midtown Scholar Bookstore : Michael E. Mann in Conversation with Rober D. Bullard: The New Climate War

Politics and Prose Bookstore : THE NEW CLIMATE WAR with Bill Nye

NPR : Climate scientist Michael Mann: U.S. is in position to be a leader on climate change. New book calls for 'fight to take back our planet

Commonwealth Club of California : This Moment in Climate With Michael Mann and Leah Stokes

Australian Greens : The New Climate War: an interview with climate scientist Michael E Mann

KALW YourCallRadio : One Planet: Michael Mann On The #NewClimateWar And How To Fight It

WPSU / Allegheny Front : Climate Scientist Michael Mann: ‘We’re Going to Need Every Tool We Have’

MSNBC : Are Biden's actions on climate change enough to make a difference?

Thom Hartmann Program : The NewClimateWar with Dr. Michael Mann

CBS News : Are Biden's actions on climate change enough to make a difference?

BNN Bloomberg : We need to get past the fossil fuel age, level the playing field for renewables

WWL Radio : Climate change and The New Climate War

MSNBC Morning Joe : Science-based climate policy is back, says author

C-SPAN : Interview with C-SPAN about The New Climate War

CBC News : Prominent climatologist behind 'hockey stick' graph talks about the 'New Climate War'

CBC Radio : Biden’s plans for climate change and what they mean for Canada

Writer's Voice : Michael Mann, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR

ABC TV : Is "climate doom porn" a tactic of the fossil fuel industry?

KPFK : Polluters Try to Blame Climate Change on Personal Responsibility Not the Fossil Fuel Industry

Onward State : 10 Questions With Penn State Climate Expert Michael Mann

WORT Madison : The New Climate War

WPKN Community Radio : Michael E. Mann author of "The New Climate War" - Digging In The Dirt with Kevin Gallagher

Crikey : Beware the soft climate doomists

NBCLX : Fossil Fuel ‘Inactivists' Are Still Trying to Distract From Real Progress on Climate Change: Michael E. Mann

The Juice Media : Juice Podcast 19 | The New Climate War

RNZ Afternoons : Dr Michael E Mann on fighting a new climate war

WITF : MICHAEL MANN, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR-Climate scientist was attacked for “hockey stick” graph

Late Night Live : Late Night Live with Phillip Adams

The Guardian : How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

BBC News : Why we shouldn't fall for the ‘climate doom porn’ narrative

BBC Radio 4 : BBC Radio 4 Interview

Eric Schwartzman : Climate Scientist Reveals Culprits in War Against Science

JENerational Change : Dr. Michael E. Mann | The New Climate War

CNBC : U.S. must go ‘well beyond Paris commitments’ to avert catastrophic global warming, warns scientist

KXAN : Weather Q&A: The New Climate War

Reuters : Worried about climate change? There's a book for that

The Guardian : Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes'

The AI Franken Podcast : Nobel Climate Scientist Michael Mann on Denier Tactics and Idioc‪y‬

Stephanie Weaver : Humans are likely cause of shift in Atlantic hurricane cycles, climate study suggests‬

Brad Blog : Humans are likely cause of shift in Atlantic hurricane cycles, climate study suggests‬

The Big Issue : Michael E Mann explains why the climate crisis is a war‬

Kirkus Reviews : 5 Books About Climate Change You Should Read Now

The Revelator : 10 Environmental Books We’re Reading This Spring

Kirkus Reviews : New Book Explains We Can Still Reverse the Effects of Climate Change

KCBS Radio : La inacción climática ["climate inaction"]

DER SPIEGEL : Auch in Deutschland werden Naturkatastrophen zunehmen

EnergieWende Magazine : Ich nenne sie die Inaktivisten" ["I call them the inactivists"]

Die Zeit : Wir sind so nah dran ( Full Article )

Forbes : How You Can Fight Back Against The 3 ‘Ds’ Of Climate Inaction

Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren : Overtime: Michael Mann discusses his book, 'The New Climate War'

The Assam Tribune : Earth Matters: Renowned climatologist and geophysicist Dr. Michael E. Mann on climate change ( Full Article )

Nature : Witness in US climate-change law suit tells all

TeleAmbiente : Esce in Italia “La nuova guerra del clima – Le battaglie per riprenderci il pianeta” di Micheal Mann

Smart Thinking Books : Interview With Michael E. Mann, Author of The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

News24 : Earth is changing in terrifying ways. How to calm your climate anxiety

Oxford University Press : Top 10 Books: the International Affairs Christmas reading list 2021

Behavioral Scientist : Notable Books of 2021

The Planet (Substack) : Michael E. Mann: "The fossil fuel companies have not given up; they turned to other tactics."

Mint : 5 climate change books that you must read

Crikey: Beward the soft climate doomists who sow the seeds of a non-solution solution

ScienceFriday : How Companies Denied Their Role in Climate Change

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The New Climate War

The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

Contributors

By Michael E. Mann

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This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 12, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

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Description

A common-sense, attainable approach to carbon pricing- and a revision of the well-intentioned but flawed currently proposed version of the Green New Deal;
Allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels
Debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions
Combatting climate doomism and despair-mongering
Global Warming & Climate Change
“This book will no doubt prove controversial for some climate campaigners, as well as the deniers, but I hope it will be read by everybody who is engaged in making the case for action.” The Guardian
“This book is a must read not just for people currently working to address climate change but also for those who are new to the climate fight, the latter of whom will learn much about past challenges, struggles, and attacks that have been aimed at climate champions.” Science
“Michael Mann may or may not be a Climate Jedi, but he is a climate smart guy and The New Climate War is a must read.” The Globe & Mail
“ [Mann’s] prose rattles along, entertaining and horrifying us in equal measure as he exposes scientists, politicians, the conservative media and other supposed experts who have slowed climate action by caring more about the interests of big industry. The New Statesman
"Blunt, lucid… Consistently displaying his comprehensive command of climate science and the attendant politics…An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels.” Kirkus Reviews
"Fossil fuel companies have, for decades longer than I have been alive, been the largest contributors to the climate crisis that affects my generation today--all in pursuit of profits and growth. In The New Climate War , Michael Mann holds them to account, and shows us how we can take the bold steps we must all take together to win the battle to save this planet." Greta Thunberg, climate activist
"This book takes the reader behind the front lines into the decades long information war waged by the fossil fuel industry and those that share their interests. From his perspective as a leader in the battle for scientific reason, Michael Mann provides hope and a roadmap for all of us to address the systemic issues fueling climate change, and shows how we can come together to wage a new war in the fight for our future." Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and environmentalist
"Few people bear more scars from the climate wars than Michael Mann--and few have fought longer and harder for a basic, rational approach to dealing with this greatest of crises. Because of his persistence--and that of so many others--we are finally making progress!" Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
" The New Climate War is an insightful treatise on how the polluting fossil fuel industry and their right-wing allies have deflected the blame for the climate crisis. The book charts a common sense course for collective actions to force government and corporations to make real solutions to the climate crisis-an existential threat to humanity and the planet." Robert D. Bullard, Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University
"With this book, Michael Mann details the challenges we face from enemies (" inactivists ") both without and within while dropping critically important breadcrumbs for us to follow to lead us out of the forest of despair and set us on the path of victory in a battle we must win. We need an army of Michaels, stat!" Don Cheadle, actor, activist, UN global goodwill ambassador
"Pulling no punches, Michael Mann lays out our predicament and tells the shocking story of persistent climate denial and corporate deception. We are in a war for the planet, but one we are now on the verge of winning. And he deftly cuts through the propaganda and shows us the path forward." Jerry Brown, California governor, 1975-1983, 2011-2019
"Mann shows that corporations and lobbyists have been successful in convincing us that climate change will be fine, if we just recycle our bottles and turn out the lights. Instead, he says, global warming is a problem way too hot for any one person to handle. He's optimistic though, because he sees what we really can and will do. Read his book, and let's get to work." Bill Nye, Science Educator, CEO The Planetary Society
"For over two decades, Michael Mann has been our Janus at the gates, defending climate science from corporate-funded insinuations of confusion and suspicion. We would not have progressed this far had it not been for his unflinching and brilliant rejoinders to the traffickers of doubt. This chronicle of ongoing climate injustice may make you mad, but hopefully it will make us act. This is the only civilization we have. Mann is its resolute champion once again." Paul Hawken, Founder, Project Drawdown
“Mann’s call to get serious about climate change couldn’t be more timely.” The New Scientist
"Punchy and illuminating… a bracing read—both eye-opening and even fun." BookPage
"An engrossing mix of footnoted history, acerbic political commentary and personal anecdotes." Science News
“Lucid, accessible and an important read for anyone who cares about the present and future of climate action.” The Centre Daily Times
“An informed, opinionated guide to an ever-changing conflict.” Shelf Awareness
The New Climate War is engaging, approachable, and ultimately deeply uplifting. Mann outlines a hopeful vision of the transformation we must undertake in order to create a better, brighter future on this planet. He makes the clear case that our species is capable of great change, laying out exactly why and how we can rise to overcome the grave challenges before us.” Sasha Sagan, author of For Small Creatures Such As We
“A fascinating journey through the minds and motivations of the champions of climate denialism as well as the more recent climate doomists. Along the way, we learn of the unequivocal scientific evidence and the rapid evolution of technological solutions. Most importantly, public opinion finally seems to be at a ‘tipping point’ to catalyze political will to leave the next generation a sustainable world – and not a moment too soon!” Rosina Bierbaum, Professor, University of Michigan and University of Maryland, former Acting Director of OSTP
“ The New Climate War is a detailed, passionate, and insightful overview of the latest schemes by fossil fuel interests and their minions to halt or delay a transition to a clean energy economy.” The Progressive
“Mann’s book is an important addition to the pushback against inaction and doom that has delayed action against climate change for too long and led too many to surrender without even a fight.” Sierra Club magazine
“A fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality.” Earth.org
“[H]ard-hitting… the book shares an attainable approach to carbon pricing along with a look at renewable energy, discredited false narratives, and going up against the idea of doomism in regards to climate change.” Seattle Book Review
“With glowing reviews from Bill Nye, Leonardo DiCaprio, Greta Thunburg and more, world-renowned climatologist Michael E. Mann’s The New Climate War debunks deniers and sets out systemic measures to combat the global problem.” Parade

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Michael E. Mann

About the author.

Michael E. Mann is the Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received many honors and awards, including NOAA's outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. Additionally, he contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. More recently, he received the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019, he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2020, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines , and The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet , Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy . He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

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The New Climate War The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

About this book

Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the tactics that we've been told can slow climate change. But most of these recommendations are a result of a multi-pronged marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals. Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame (think "guns don't kill people, people kill people") or greenwashing (think of the beverage industry's "Crying Indian" commercials of the 1970s). Meanwhile, they've blocked efforts to regulate or price carbon emissions, run PR campaigns aimed at discrediting viable alternatives, and have abdicated their responsibility in fixing the problem they've created. The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War , 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 petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including: - a common-sense, attainable approach to carbon tax – an overhaul of the flawed Green New Deal - allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels - debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions - how to combat climate doomism With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won't happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward. The New Climate War will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.

Customer Reviews

Dr Michael E. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). Dr Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a PhD in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand Earth's climate system. Dr Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001 and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. He has received a number of honours and awards including NOAA's outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC authors in 2007. In 2012 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. Dr Mann is author of more than 150 peer-reviewed and edited publications, and has published two books: Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming in 2008 and The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines in 2012. He is also a co-founder and avid contributor to the award-winning website RealClimate.org.

– Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and one of The Observer ’s ‘Thirty books to help us understand the world’. "Mann shows that corporations and lobbyists have been successful in convincing us that climate change will be fine, if we just recycle our bottles and turn out the lights. Instead, he says, global warming is a problem way too hot for any one person to handle. He's optimistic though, because he sees what we really can and will do. Read his book, and let's get to work." – Bill Nye, science educator, CEO of The Planetary Society "Fossil fuel companies have, for decades longer than I have been alive, been the largest contributors to the climate crisis that affects my generation today – all in pursuit of profits and growth. In The New Climate War , Michael Mann holds them to account, and shows us how we can take the bold steps we must all take together to win the battle to save this planet." – Greta Thunberg, climate activist "This book takes the reader behind the front lines into the decades long information war waged by the fossil fuel industry and those that share their interests. From his perspective as a leader in the battle for scientific reason, Michael Mann provides hope and a roadmap for all of us to address the systemic issues fuelling climate change, and shows how we can come together to wage a new war in the fight for our future." – Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and environmental activist "With this book, Michael Mann details the challenges we face from enemies ('inactivists') both without and within while dropping critically important breadcrumbs for us to follow to lead us out of the forest of despair and set us on the path of victory in a battle we must win. We need an army of Michaels, stat!" – Don Cheadle, actor, activist, and UN global goodwill ambassador "Brilliant." – Ben Cooke, The Times "A strategic, wide-ranging overview of humanity's present predicament and an exploration of possible pathways out of it." – Jonathan Watts, The Guardian "Comprehensive." – The Financial Times "The main focus of Mann's book is a call to arms in the new war against "inactivists" who are using new tactics of "deception, distraction, and delay" to prevent the phase-out of fossil fuels. Mann is a robust character [...] Mann does not pull his punches, but his aim is usually strong and true. This book will no doubt prove controversial for some climate campaigners, as well as the deniers, but I hope it will be read by everybody who is engaged in making the case for action." – Bob Ward, The Observer "Pulling no punches, Michael Mann lays out our predicament and tells the shocking story of persistent climate denial and corporate deception. We are in a war for the planet, but one we are now on the verge of winning. And he deftly cuts through the propaganda and shows us the path forward." – Jerry Brown, California governor, 1975-1983, 2011-2019 "For over two decades, Michael Mann has been our Janus at the gates, defending climate science from corporate-funded insinuations of confusion and suspicion. We would not have progressed this far had it not been for his unflinching and brilliant rejoinders to the traffickers of doubt. This chronicle of ongoing climate injustice may make you mad, but hopefully it will make us act. This is the only civilisation we have. Mann is its resolute champion once again." – Paul Hawken, founder of Project Drawdown " The New Climate War is an insightful treatise on how the polluting fossil fuel industry and their right-wing allies have deflected the blame for the climate crisis. The book charts a common sense course for collective actions to force government and corporations to make real solutions to the climate crisis – an existential threat to humanity and the planet." – Robert D. Bullard, professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University "Thought-provoking." – Pilita Clark, Financial Times " The New Climate War is a punchy, provocative, informed [...] deeply personal take on the crisis, by a respected voice in the climate science and communications field." – John Gibbons, The Irish Times "A fascinating journey through the minds and motivations of the champions of climate denialism as well as the more recent climate doomists. Along the way, we learn of the unequivocal scientific evidence and the rapid evolution of technological solutions. Most importantly, public opinion finally seems to be at a 'tipping point' to catalyse political will to leave the next generation a sustainable world – and not a moment too soon!" – Rosina Bierbaum, professor at University of Michigan and University of Maryland, and former Acting Director of OSTP "Few people bear more scars from the climate wars than Michael Mann – and few have fought longer and harder for a basic, rational approach to dealing with this greatest of crises. Because of his persistence – and that of so many others – we are finally making progress!" – Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? " The New Climate War is engaging, approachable, and ultimately deeply uplifting. Mann outlines a hopeful vision of the transformation we must undertake in order to create a better, brighter future on this planet. He makes the clear case that our species is capable of great change, laying out exactly why and how we can rise to overcome the grave challenges before us." – Sasha Sagan, author of For Small Creatures Such As We "Provocative [...] The New Climate War makes a compelling case both for revising the global Green New Deal and for counteracting disinformation from climate sceptics." – John Meagher, Irish Independent "Mann is the genuine article [...] his prose rattles along, entertaining and horrifying us in equal measure as he exposes scientists, politicians, the conservative media and other supposed experts who have slowed climate action by caring more about the interests of big industry." – Philippa Nuttall Jones, New Statesman "Mann's call to get serious about climate change couldn't be more timely." – Richard Schiffman, New Scientist "Michael Mann is a pre-eminent climate scientist whose academic pedigree is beyond question." – Art Flynn, Irish Examiner "A wonderfully confrontational book." – David Robbins, Sunday Independent "This book is a must read not just for people currently working to address climate change but also for those who are new to the climate fight, the latter of whom will learn much about past challenges, struggles, and attacks that have been aimed at climate champions." – Science Magazine "One of the world's leading climate scientists embarks on a journey into the minds of climate change deniers to try to understand their motivations and strategies [...] Blunt, lucid [...] Consistently displaying his comprehensive command of climate science and the attendant politics [...] An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels." – Kirkus Reviews "Mann starts from the premise that we can save the planet from the worst impacts of climate change if we move to net-zero carbon emissions. As a scientist, he dismisses most scenarios of an uninhabitable Earth because they're based on a misunderstanding of methane feedback loops, and, as a citizen, he has no time for "climate doom porn" because it leads to political paralysis. But if Mann is "objectively hopeful", he's not naïve. The challenges are real and the vested interests of business as usual are powerful [...] Michael Mann may or may not be a Climate Jedi, but he is a climate smart guy and The New Climate War is a must read." – Donald Wright, The Globe & Mail " The New Climate War is an informed, opinionated guide to an ever-changing conflict." – Shelf Awareness "An engrossing mix of footnoted history, acerbic political commentary, and personal anecdotes." – Science News "[P]unchy and illuminating [...] uses both peer-reviewed climate science research and combative wit to expose the strategies of people and industries bent on deflecting responsibility and limiting the systemic change necessary to move the world away from dependence on planet-destroying fossil fuel [...] Mann clearly has skin in this game. Both his professional and personal reputations have been viciously attacked in response to his work. Here he fights back, settles some scores and argues for the necessity and possibility of aggressive, systemic changes. It's a bracing read – both eye-opening and even fun." – Alden Mudge, BookPage "If there's ever a Hall of Fame for climate scientists, Michael Mann will be among the first to be inducted." – Rolling Stone " The New Climate War is an enlightening exposé of something that many of us probably already took as given: vested financial interests are psychotic in their efforts to control the dialogue." – David Ferrell, The Canberra Times "Fantastic." – David Ritter, Pro Bono Australia " The New Climate War is a detailed, passionate, and insightful overview of the latest schemes by fossil fuel interests and their minions to halt or delay a transition to a clean energy economy." – The Progressive "Lucid, accessible, and an important read for anyone who cares about the present and future of climate action." – The Centre Daily Times "Mann's book is an important addition to the pushback against inaction and doom that has delayed action against climate change for too long and led too many to surrender without even a fight." – Sierra Club magazine "Extremely insightful." – Tim Rook, H and V News

A Book Review: “The New Climate War”

There is a new type of warrior emerging in the ongoing tussle between the evidence-based science of climate change and the diversionary tactics of fossil-fuel companies and political supporters. This rare but growing cohort in the winnable battle against climate change denial are scientists who can effectively communicate about complex science. They’re also willing to engage in pitched social media, news media, and other battles against the trolls, bots, and uber-conservative news outlets who are telling us to move along … nothing to see here.

One of the leaders of this new battle front is Dr. Michael E. Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. Working with two other scientists, he was the originator of the famed “hockey stick” graph that in 1999 showed us the sharp rise in atmospheric temperatures over the past 1,000 years. It is perhaps the most easily understood, most frequently used visual depiction of why we need to act against manmade climate change.

Dr. Mann has previously authored or co-authored four books on climate change, each time providing us with the empirical science behind relentlessly advancing temps and sounding the alarm we need to hear. He is constantly called on to speak around the world. And he has developed a reputation as a no-nonsense, often amusing, and blunt combatant against the social media misinformation campaigns waged by fossil fuel supporters, oil-producing nations, conservative Republicans, and news media outlets such as Fox News. I have been following Dr. Mann on Twitter for some time. His tweets are entertaining, informative … and prolific. As I write this, he has tweeted or re-tweeted over 35 times in the last 24 hours. He touched on topics ranging from the bizarre Republican “green new deal/alternate energy source” blame game in the wake of the tragic Texas storm to his ongoing news media interviews on climate change and his new book.

With his fifth and latest book, “ The New Climate Wars ,” (released Jan. 12) Dr. Mann is taking his efforts to a new level. The new book represents his sharpest blow yet against climate change denial. While it contains the accepted and proven science to support the reality of climate change, it also raises the stakes in several new areas. Dr. Mann draws the curtain back on the well-funded communication and public relations campaigns designed to shed doubt on climate change and to attack leading public and scientific figures, including him. As someone who has spent a career working in journalism, communications, and public relations I found this part of his new book fascinating.

Some elements of Dr. Mann’s discussion of PR and communications are not new but are bolstered with revelations sure to shock even the most ardent of environmental activists. You might not know, for example, that Exxon’s own researchers as far back as the 1970s knew continued burning of fossil fuels would elevate atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide dramatically and could raise average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees centigrade—and this warming could happen within 5 to 10 years. Exxon not only didn’t act on the conclusions of its own scientists and others in the field, but the company also launched a long-term PR effort to cause confusion about climate change and the role of fossil fuels.

Think of tobacco companies and their legendary (and now admitted) PR efforts to bolster cigarette sales—despite well-known connections of the habit to lung cancer. The fossil fuel companies employed the same game plan.

For me, the most startling revelation involved the famous anti-littering “crying Indian” public service TV ad in the early 1970s. Those of us who saw the ad were so moved by it we stopped littering. What I didn’t know—and I wasn’t alone—was that the ad was a clever creation of beverage and packaging companies. They launched the effort to deflect attention from early efforts to pass bills to require deposits on cans and bottles, removing that trash from waste and garbage streams. The strategy worked. There is still no national bottle bill law today. Only 10 states have these laws.

To add insult to injury, the actor in the commercial was not even Native American. His name was Espera de Corti, an Italian American well-known for playing Native Americans.

In his book, Dr. Mann uses this example to draw our attention to today’s diversionary tactics. Fossil-fuel companies and their fervent conservative supporters want us to focus on individual actions we should be taking to help slow or reverse the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. Through direct or indirect PR efforts, they encourage us to drive cars with better mileage, take fewer airline flights, use alternative energy sources, and generally reduce our carbon footprint. And when we do take those airline flights, they say, we should buy carbon offsets. Those same groups are quick to shame people who don’t take these and other personal greenhouse gas-limiting actions. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking these steps. But by themselves these measures will not save us from the potential catastrophic damage of climate change.

What’s needed, Dr. Mann and other scientists and activist argue, are widespread systemic changes, such as better government regulation and policies, significant industry steps such as electric or higher-mileage cars, an array of proven alternate energy sources, and carbon pricing. All of these and other major changes are challenged by fossil fuel providers and their supporters. Who can blame them? They have a massive revenue stream based on selling oil, coal, and natural gas. Dr. Mann asks the question: Why not do both? Take individual action and become an activist for the wider-reaching changes we need. It’s pretty simple when you step back and examine the big picture. The confusion we see (and the shame we experience when we don’t take personal action) is exactly what climate change opponents and deniers want.

Like the crying Indian ad, our attention is diverted from what really should be happening.

While Dr. Mann’s new book is rich with points like these, I’ll share just two more.

Those who deny the reality of climate change want us to give up because they want us to believe we’re already past the point of no return. There’s nothing we can do now, they say, so the focus should be on adapting to this new world. Build higher sea walls and dikes. Use water more efficiently. Change building codes to harden them for the stronger storms. Perhaps, as Dr. Mann says humorously, we’ll develop gills and fins, maybe even fireproof skin. The point is if we believe the result is inevitable, we won’t do anything to stem carbon dioxide emissions now. Dr. Mann and other scientists argue that we still have time to slow down, flatten out, and eventually reverse carbon dioxide emissions that result from burning fossil fuels. Don’t fall for the deniers’ claims.

Finally, I’ll call it the coal mining point. As our former president and others have stated on many occasions, we must do everything we can to save the livelihoods of coal miners and the companies they work for. As a reminder, not only does burning coal emit carbon dioxide but it also produces the sulfur dioxide behind acid rain, the particulate pollution behind smog and other forms of air pollution, and nitrogen oxides, which also contribute to air pollution and respiratory illnesses. And there is no such thing as “clean coal.”

Whether we like it or not the constant state of our world is change. Horse and buggies were replaced by cars and trains. Candles gave way to electric lights. One of my favorites stories in this vein was my own experience working as a senior manager in public relations at Verizon and its predecessor companies. Up until late in the 20 th century pay phones were an important part of our business. From street corners to airline terminals, they were a staple in our lives and the way we communicated when we were away from home or the office. Enter the handheld cell phone. Within a short time, the pay phone business within Verizon—a multimillion-dollar revenue source—withered away. No one tried to save them. Customers wanted more portability. We gave it to them, even if it meant killing off another part of our business. We closed the large centers where we used to count coins from pay phones, and we migrated those and other pay phone-related employees to new jobs.

My conclusion? This newest book from noted climate scientist Michael Mann is essential reading. In a world beset by problems caused by the non-stop burning of fossil fuels since the 19 th century, this book should rest beside our computers as we live our lives each day. It is, in my opinion, an indispensable aid not only in understanding climate change but also in mapping out how to take individual action and engage in activism to spur the significant systemic change needed to arrest the warming of our globe. And it’s well written.

“ The New Climate War : The Fight to Take Back Our Planet ” Michael E. Mann, PublicAffairs Books, January. 2021

This Post Has 4 Comments

Sounds like a very interesting book. I recently heard that, I think was the EPA, if nothing was done the ski season would be only 6 weeks by 2050.

Bill — I certainly hope we don’t see a ski, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, ice skating season that short!

Great review Mark – so many good points to explore, will check out the book.

Thank you, Mr. Mann, and thank you for posting, Michael Boyer! When will the necessary actions start? My most urgent demand is to stop production of automobiles in Germany in order to reduce waste and waste heat significantly

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Sorry, there was a problem., the new climate war: the fight to take back our planet audible audiobook – unabridged.

Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award

A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.

Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told can slow climate change. But the inordinate emphasis on individual behavior is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals.

Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame (think "guns don't kill people, people kill people") or greenwashing (think of the beverage industry's "Crying Indian" commercials of the 1970s). Meanwhile, they've blocked efforts to regulate or price carbon emissions, run PR campaigns aimed at discrediting viable alternatives, and have abdicated their responsibility in fixing the problem they've created. The result has been disastrous for our planet.

In The New Climate War , 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 petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including:

A common-sense, attainable approach to carbon pricing- and a revision of the well-intentioned but flawed currently proposed version of the Green New Deal;
Allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels
Debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions
Combatting climate doomism and despair-mongering

With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won't happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward. This book will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.

Listening Length 9 hours and 48 minutes
Author Michael E. Mann
Narrator Tim Campbell
Audible release date January 12, 2021
Language English
Publisher PublicAffairs
ASIN B08QV8KSGH
Version Unabridged
Program Type Audiobook
See all details

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Listening Length	9 hours and 48 minutes
Author
Narrator
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	January 12, 2021
Publisher
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B08QV8KSGH
Best Sellers Rank	#40,073 in Audible Books & Originals ( ) #28 in #89 in #163 in

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25 Inspiring Climate Change Books To Read in 2024

2023 has been a year of tremendous climate extremes. Humanity is learning the extent of the existential threats posed by climate change and ecological destruction the hard way. In a year of such tremendous transformation, leaders and innovators continuously come up with solutions and new ways of thinking that make us reflect and hope. In Earth.Org’s best climate change books to read in the new year, we see a world that is ambitious about humanity’s prospects, but humble about our place in nature. Extremely hopeful for our future, while realistic about what we might have to endure.

2023 was the hottest year on record , supercharged by the return of El Niño , a weather phenomenon that has pushed temperatures off the charts around the world and that is expected to last well into 2024 . As expected, the trend continued in the first few months of the new year, with March 2024 becoming the 10th consecutive month to break records , with temperatures at 1.77C above an estimate of the February average for 1850-1900.

In February 2024, the EU weather service Copernicus recently confirmed that the critical 1.5C global warming threshold set in the Paris Agreement was breached over a twelve-month period for the first time in history , with global temperatures at 1.58C above the 19th century benchmark. While this does not signal a permanent breach of the limit, which scientists say is measured over decades, it sends a clear warning to humanity that we are approaching the point of no return much faster than expected.

Books are some of the best tools to unpack this difficult information and make climate science accessible to all. They offer a platform for experts to share their knowledge, enabling readers to develop a well-rounded understanding of the current state of the environment and the urgent need for collective action.

It is precisely for this reason that Earth.Org revamped and significantly expanded its book review series to include regular talks with authors and more in-depth coverage of their books. But aside from the award-winning writers, world-leading climate scientists, and thought leaders paving the way toward humanity’s brighter future, here is our list of the best books on climate change that everyone should read.

Best Climate Change Books To Read in 202 4

1. the new climate war , by michael mann.

Michael Mann is arguably one of the closest things we have to a climate superhero. His story is certainly reminiscent of some cinematic superhero adventures. After hitting the climate science stage hard in 1999 when co-authoring the now-famous ‘hockey stick graph’ that demonstrates how human activity has contributed to average temperature rise, Michael Mann was lambasted, criticised and dismissed by a system perpetrated by our story’s villains, principally the fossil fuel industry and other actors with vested interests But our hero did not back down, and continued to push for the emerging field of climate science to be recognised.

In The New Climate War , Mann explains how the fossil fuel industry has adjusted its tactics, from outright climate denialism to obstruction and shifting the burden of responsibility to individuals, thereby delaying necessary action to push through systemic changes. The book is a fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality. Cautiously optimistic, Mann argues that the fundamental challenges we still face today are not tied to a technological or intellectual inability to achieve systemic change, but in the lack of political will required to do so.

2. Supercharge Me: Net Zero Faster , by Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers

Supercharge Me (2022) takes a look at how governments, businesses and individuals behave and discuss what has (and hasn’t) worked so far in transitioning the global economy to net zero. Fund manager Eric Lonergan and sustainability adviser Corinne Sawers introduce practical ideas for change that will embolden people to reframe the climate crisis as an opportunity and suggest augmenting traditional economic solutions, such as carbon pricing, with EPICs: extreme, positive incentives for change that “supercharge” behavioural change.

3. Post Growth: Life After Capitalism , by Tim Jackson

For the economics-inclined, Post Growth may be our pick for the most accessible and inspiring technical environmental books of 2021. Professor Tim Jackson , a highly influential ecological economist, first gained fame for his 2009 book, Prosperity Without Growth , a highly researched deep dive into the economics and models that can bring us into a more sustainable and prosperous future.

Jackson’s 2021 foray is a romantic, passionate and highly readable book that illuminates what a future after capitalism, competition and egregious self-interest really looks like, largely doing away with much of the jargon and economics’ parlance used in Prosperity. Grounded in a deep understanding of ecological economics, Post Growth presents one of the most compelling arguments yet that the economy is not at all separate from the natural world, but an intrinsically embedded subsidiary of it. Under this worldview, it becomes clear that constant economic growth is simply untenable.

Whether or not you agree with Jackson’s more fundamental assertions on the nature of capitalism and its role in a prosperous society, this is a book that sheds light on a version of the future where having outright winners does not necessarily translate to having outright losers, where prosperity is not only linked to material wealth but to wellbeing, health and safety for all members of society. Post Growth does not necessarily offer the solutions and technical means that Prosperity does, but it does provide a way of thinking about the future that is hopeful, bright and entirely achievable.

4. Under A White Sky , by Elizabeth Kolbert

For the more scientifically and solutions-inclined, this is the book pick for you. On a world-hopping adventure from one solution to the next, journalist and author Elizabeth Kolbert guides readers through the sheer madness of ‘fixes’ that humans have attempted to dominate the natural world. The bottom line is this: we like to think of ourselves as ingenious problem solvers, and we certainly can be, but more often than not, our actions have unforeseen and reverberating effects on ecosystems and human populations.

Under A White Sky immensely readable, vividly describing everything from the flooding marshlands of Louisiana to the mind-bogglingly exciting developments in genetic engineering. In each new location, Kolbert dives into the latest technological fix that is being attempted, often to cover up the unintended consequences of the last techno-fix humans tried out. This is a hugely entertaining book that accurately describes some of the most cutting-edge and complex solutions to the environmental crisis that humans have come up with. But it is also a cautionary tale that puts into perspective just how far we’ve gone, and what that has already done to the world.

5. This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs The Climate , by Naomi Klein

Rob Nixon from The New York Times called it “the most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring” . Hard-hitting journalist Naomi Klein uncovers the myths clouding the climate debate, unearthing how powerful and well-financed right wing think tanks and lobby groups are at the source of the climate change denial.

This Changes Everything (2014) challenges the current “free market” ideology, which Klein argues is unable to solve the climate change crisis.

You might also like: 10 Climate Change Movies To Watch in 2022

6. Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet , by George Monbiot

7. the nature fix: why nature makes us happier, healthier and more creative , by florence williams.

From eucalyptus groves in California, forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into cutting-edge research, The Nature Fix (2017) exposes the powers of the natural world to improve health, strengthen our relationships and promote reflection and innovation.

8. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming , by Paul Hawken

Drawdown (2017) gathers the 100 most effective solutions to halt global warming from leading scientists and policymakers, which if adopted, could even reduce the overall greenhouse gasses currently present in the atmosphere . Already firmly anchored in the New York Times bestseller list, Hawken ranks optimal solutions – like moderating the use of air-conditioners and refrigerators, or adopting a plant-rich diet – by the amount of potential greenhouse gases they can avoid or remove.

9. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life , by Edward O. Wilson

Half Earth (2016), written by one of the world’s greatest naturalists and a double Pulitzer Prize winner, proposes an realistic plan to save our imperilled biosphere: devote half the surface of the Earth to nature. In order to stave off the mass extinction of species including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, Wilson urges in one of his most impassioned books about climate change to date.

10. Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet , by Dieter Helm

The first real attempt to calibrate, measure and value natural capital from an economic perspective, Natural Capital (2015) shifts the parameters of the current environmental debate. Dieter Helm, Fellow of Economics at the University of Oxford, claims that refusing to place an economic value on nature risks an environmental meltdown. He proceeds to outline a new framework to couple economic growth with respect for our natural endowment without sacrificing the former.

11. Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America , by Thomas Friedman

Given the recent buzz about the Green New Deal in American politics, we recommend this brilliant book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author who coined the term, Thomas L. Friedman. Hot, Flat and Crowded (2008) speaks to America’s urgent need to expand national renewables and how climate change presents a unique opportunity for the US – not only to transform its economy, but to lead the world in innovating toward cleaner energy.

12. The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet , by Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis

While being a conscious and greener consumer helps, this won’t be enough to bring our greenhouse gas emissions to zero and save our planet. As energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis argue in their book The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet (2022), citizens must push for policies that can make a big difference in seven main areas: electricity production, transportation, buildings, industry, urbanisation, use of land, and investment in promising new green technologies.

13. Sustainable Nation: Urban Design Patterns for the Future , by Douglas Farr

An essential resource for urban designers, planners and architects, Sustainable Nation (2018) is an urgent call to action and a guidebook for change. An architect and urban planner, Douglas Farr details how designing cities and buildings with sustainable criteria can mitigate the humanitarian, population and climate crises.

14. The Uninhabitable Earth , by David Wallace-Wells

While the book does not offer solutions, it does make it clear that we already have all the tools we need to avoid the worst effects. But ultimately The Uninhabitable Earth seeks to make clear the horror of the emergency of the consequences before us. Unless we accept the urgency, how can we expect to get ourselves out of this mess?

15. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History , by Elizabeth Kolbert

Kolbert outlines how humans have driven the extinction of biodiversity, or to the brink of extinction, from the Panamanian golden frog nearly completely wiped out in the wild by a fungal disease to the Maui, which is in peril due to deforestation. We are driving these species to extinction in many ways: some connected to the climate crisis through rising sea levels rising and deforestation, as well as by spreading disease-carrying species and poaching. By fundamentally altering earth’s delicately balanced ecosystems, we are risking our own future too.

16. Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change , by Nathaniel Rich

We have known about the perils of climate change for decades and yet very little to nothing was done about it. This book details the decade from 1979 to 1989 when we were starting to have a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Focussing mainly on the US’s response to the crisis, the book follows the scientists and activists who tried to sound the alarm, and the Reaganite politicians and businesses who worked to make sure that no meaningful action was taken. Rich says that the world came close to signing binding international treaties to mitigate the acceleration of global warming. However, by the start of the 90s, what was once regarded as a bipartisan issue came to be seen as a partisan one after the oil industry “descended and bared its fangs.”Since then, more carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere than in all the preceding years of history of civilisation. Losing Earth is an essential cautionary tale for facing the climate battles ahead.

17. Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change , by Dieter Helm

This book is a measured, balanced view of how we stop causing climate change by adopting a net zero strategy of reducing carbon emissions and increasing carbon absorption. It is a rational look at why the past 30 years’ efforts have failed and why and how the next 30 years can succeed. Like the other books on this list, it is a vital read for anyone who hears ecological activists fighting against climate change, but wonders what they can actually do.

18. Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency , by Mark Lynas

This book delivers an account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist.But how much worse could it get? Are we already past the point of no return? Cataloguing the very latest climate science, Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond. Degree by degree, he charts the likely impacts of global heating and the consequent climate catastrophe.

At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, threatening to end all life on Earth.

These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must stop burning fossil fuels within a decade. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control.

19. On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal , by Naomi Klein

This book gathers more than a decade of Klein’s writing, pairing it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of our immediate political and economic choices.

These long-form essays investigate the climate crisis not only as a political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one as well. With reports spanning from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, the annual smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented “ecological conversion,” Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis.

An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal.

You might also like: 10 Must-See Environmental Films on Netflix

20. Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet , by Noam Chomsky & Robert Pollin

The last on our list of books about climate change, Noam Chomsky, the world’s leading public intellectual, and Robert Pollin, a renowned progressive economist, map out the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change and present a realistic blueprint for change: the Green New Deal.

Chomsky and Pollin show the forecasts for a hotter planet: vast stretches of the Earth will become uninhabitable, plagued by extreme weather, drought, rising seas, and crop failure. Arguing against the fear of economic disaster and unemployment arising from the transition to a green economy, they show how this unfounded concern encourages climate denialism.

The authors show how ceasing to burn fossil fuels within the next 30 years is entirely feasible. Climate change is an emergency that cannot be ignored. This book shows how it can be overcome both politically and economically.

21. Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea , by Callum Roberts

Callum Roberts’ 2013 book, Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea , follows the fascinating relationship between man and water. A powerful warning to save our oceans before it is too late, this book does not hold back – it shows us just how much of an impact overfishing, pollution and climate change have had on marine life.

Instead of speculating about what may happen in the future, Roberts sticks to proven facts and viable solutions. This makes his book stand out from other recent books on climate change and environmentalist works’ inability to offer solutions for the “doomsday scenarios” they present through their barrage of facts and statistics. The last quarter of Ocean of Life is packed with potential solutions that industries, companies, governments and ordinary people can adopt.

22. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis , edited by Ayana Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

This book is a collection of essays and poetry by 60 leading women climate activists. It shows the power that women have in creating the solutions that we need to mitigate the climate crisis.

23. Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: How the Natural World is Adapting to Climate Change , by Thor Hanson

While humans wrestle with net-zero targets and greenwashing, other species have had to adapt to the impacts of climate change. According to American biologist Thor Hanson, plants and animals have “a great deal to teach us about what comes next, because for many of them, and also for many of us, that world is already here.”

24. The Dolphin Among Orcas , by Tom Meinerz

This story brings to light a global problem that is right under our noses, but invisible to our eyes, which is Ocean pollution and its impact on all sea life. A dolphin pod has a rare occurrence; twin sister calves are born. This is then followed by another, even rarer occurrence, the birth of a malformed calf. Courage was born with a back and tail which were deformed, or malformed in dolphin speak. His birth brings first curiosity, but then ridicule, followed by bullying from other dolphins. He and his mother had to travel behind the pod, most often alone. But Courage overcomes his limitations and instead, turns them into an advantage.

This entertaining story helps middle school readers understand the worsening global pollution threat, for which the middle school generation is likely to find the solutions to clean it up. The tale also addresses what bullying is, and what may happen as a result. It tells the story of how perceived limitations can become unique talents, allowing for a successful life.

25. The Climate Book , by Greta Thunberg

The Climate Book (2022) by Greta Thunberg – the world-famous Swedish climate activist and founder of the global movement Fridays for Future – features essays of over one hundred thinkers and experts, from oceanographers and meteorologists to economists and geophysicists, to raise awareness about the climate crisis and equip us with the knowledge to fight climate disasters and halt global warming. Thunberg also shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark.

You might also like: 10 Inspiring and Educational Environmental Books for Kids

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How America Turned Stories Into Weapons of War

In a new book, the journalist and science fiction writer Annalee Newitz shows how we have used narrative to manipulate and coerce.

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This is a cover of a comic book called Sensation Comics. The comic’s title is in bold blue letters on a stripe of red over a yellow circle in which we see an image of Wonder Woman in her iconic tiara and strapless dress. She uses her wristbands to block bullets fired by three tough-looking armed men on the ground below her.

By Jennifer Szalai

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STORIES ARE WEAPONS: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind , by Annalee Newitz

A story can entertain and inform; it can also deceive and manipulate. Perhaps few stories are as seductive as the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves — those reasonable, principled creatures so many of us presume ourselves to be.

As Annalee Newitz writes in “Stories Are Weapons,” propaganda is premised on exploiting the discrepancy between surface beliefs and unconscious motives. A clever propagandist can get any number of people who see themselves as invariably kindhearted to betray their ideals. Newitz gives the example of anti-immigration campaigns: Make humans so fearful that even pious, churchgoing grandmothers will countenance rounding up their fellow humans in detention camps.

Not that Newitz, a journalist and science fiction author who uses they/them pronouns, depicts all propaganda as necessarily evil. “Stories Are Weapons,” an exploration of our culture wars’ roots in psychological warfare, contains a chapter on comic book artists like William Moulton Marston, the psychologist and creator of Wonder Woman, who “wanted to empower women” and believed that “propaganda was a progressive force.” But much of the book is about stories that have been used to undermine, to exclude and to wound: myths about the frontier and the “last Indian”; pseudo-intellectual treatises expounding junk-science racism; conspiracy theories about “pizza-eating pedophiles”; and moral panics about rainbow stickers.

And then there are the stories that sow confusion. Newitz explains that they began researching this book in the middle of 2020, while the pandemic was raging and the president was promoting the healing powers of sunlight and bleach . The gutting of reproductive rights and the introduction of anti-trans bills, Newitz says, made them feel as if they were under siege.

“For anyone who has been told that they should not be alive,” Newitz writes on the dedication page. “Together we will survive this war.” Stories are weapons — but Newitz argues that they can also open up pathways to peace. “As a fiction writer, I knew there were other ways to get at the truth, to make sense of a world gripped by absurdity and chaos. I had to tell a story.”

That story is introduced through the exploits of two central figures. The first is Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, a pioneer in the field that became known as “public relations.” To sell Lucky Strike cigarettes to women, Bernays devised a publicity campaign that linked the product to women’s desires for freedom. “Bernays had successfully turned his uncle’s project to promote mental health into a system for manipulating people into behaving irrationally,” Newitz writes, recounting how he later worked with the C.I.A. to drum up antipathy toward Guatemala’s democratically elected government. A prime beneficiary of the eventual coup was Bernays’s client, United Fruit, which owned huge swaths of Guatemalan land.

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In No Judgment, the novelist and critic explores the perilous activity of literary criticism in the era of social media.

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Money blog: Barclays ditching major perks - but customers will still pay £5

The Money blog brings you personal finance and consumer news, plus all the latest on the economy. Let us know your thoughts on any of the stories we're covering in the comments box below.

Thursday 20 June 2024 06:53, UK

Barclays ditching major perks - but customers will still pay £5
Savings queen shares her top three tips for savers right now
Taylor Swift makes £450 kebab shop order
Interest rate cut won't come today, markets predict

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Ask a question or make a comment

Barclays has announced a major revamp of its Blue Rewards scheme - which will remove its £5 a month cash bonus.

All other product cash rewards for members are being axed as part of the shake-up as well.

As a result, customers will no longer earn rewards worth up to £15.50, including:

£3 for residential mortgages
£1.50 for life insurance
£5 for life plus critical illness
£1 for Barclayloan

The changes will take effect from 4 September.

Despite the changes, Barclays customers will still need to pay the £5 monthly fee to be a member.

Not all the rewards are being cut though - the membership will get you Apple TV+ (worth £8.99 a month), a Major League Soccer Season pass subscription that usually costs £14.99 and access to a Rainy Day Saver account that comes with a 5.12% interest rate on balances up to £5,000.

The bank is also introducing a promotion increasing the value of cashback on Blue Rewards, with customers able to earn 1% on all eligible debit card spend up to a value of £5 each month.

The promotion runs from September to November and rewards are in addition to existing retailer cashback offers.

Barclays said the revamp would give customers fixed benefits worth up to £44 a month - an increase from £35.50 previously - in addition to cashback and higher interest on savings.

Manuel Baldasano, head of customer and digital at Barclays UK, said: "We've been evolving Blue Rewards based on what we know our customers value and, with entertainment high on their wish list, we're delighted to introduce top quality shows from Apple TV, in addition to our best savings rates and cashback programme, all for the same £5 monthly fee.

"Our refreshed Blue Rewards proposition, which sits alongside our fee free account and Premier banking, means that customers can choose what works best for them."

Every Thursday Savings Champion founder Anna Bowes gives an insight into the savings market and how to make the most of your money...

The savings market is a little bit unpredictable at the moment. Some rates are rising and others are falling - and some of the banks and building societies seem to be holding their breath, waiting to see what the Bank of England will does today when it announces its latest interest rate decision. Add a general election to the mix and it's anyone's guess.

What we have seen recently is that the expectation for the base rate cut has been pushed back repeatedly, as inflation remained a little stickier than hoped.

Although in general the top rates on offer are still a little lower than they were at the beginning of the year, because the base rate cut has been delayed, there has been a resurgence of positive activity recently.

All of the top five easy access accounts are paying more than 5% once again, not much less than the top one-year fixed rate bonds and in fact more than the top paying longer-term bonds.

This is a really telling indication that interest rates are still expected to fall in the next few months and years and of course, easy access account rates are variable, which means that when the base rate does start to fall, you can expect the interest rates on these accounts to come down too.

The most amount of activity recently has come from one-year fixed rate cash ISAs - these rates have been increasing, narrowing the gap between the top fixed rate bonds and equivalent ISAs. In January, the top one-year bond was paying 5.5% compared to 5% on the top ISA. Today the top bond is paying a little less, 5.21%, while the top ISA is paying 5.05%, which is actually higher than in January - but that is the Virgin Money 1 Year Fixed Cash ISA Exclusive Issue 13, which needs you to hold or open a current account with Virgin to be eligible.

But the next best is with Shawbrook paying 4.89%, so the gap is still narrower.

The latest inflation figures support the idea that the base rate cut is coming, though whether that is today or at one of the next Monetary Policy Committee meeting in August or September is still to be seen.

Here are our top three tips for saving in these uncertain times...

Don't leave your cash to languish

After the latest inflation figures, it's probably harder to find an account that is paying less than inflation - as most are now offering interest rates that are keeping up with the rising cost of living.

But there are accounts out there that are not!

The Barclays Everyday Saver is paying just 1.66% AER (before the deduction of tax) on the first £10,000 in its Everyday Saver. If you have more, the interest rate you earn is diluted as the balance above £10,000 will earn just 1.16% AER.

And HSBC's Flexible Saver is paying just 2% on all balances from £1 - matching, not beating inflation. But you could be earning more than 5% if you were to switch to a better paying easy access account.

Use your ISA Allowance

As more and more people are breaching their Personal Savings Allowance, they are turning to cash ISAs once again to shelter more of their cash savings from the taxman.

Don't wait until the end of the year to use up this valuable allowance.

The sooner your cash is in the ISA, the sooner it is earning tax free interest.

If you can - fix!

With the Bank of England base rate on the cusp of falling, if you can lock up some of your cash you could protect yourself from immediate interest rate cuts that we expect to see on variable rate accounts.

And, while a longer-term savings account might offer less interest immediately, it could be a wise idea to lock up some of your cash into these accounts, as it would be good to think that at least some of your savings is hedged against falling interest rates and enjoying a return that is higher than inflation for longer - something that is rarely the case.

Couriers for delivery giant Uber Eats will now pick, pack and pay for customer orders inside supermarkets.

Co-op, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are among the supermarkets to sign up to the scheme in the UK.

Uber global head of grocery Susan Anderson said: "It's very clear that grocery shopping trends have fundamentally changed.

"Our busy lifestyles mean we physically go to the supermarket for a big shop less frequently and prefer to rely more on apps like Uber Eats to order fresh grocery ingredients when we want them."

The couriers can engage with customers in real time as they shop - so they can ask shoppers what substitutions they want if items are out of stock.

The driver will then checkout using a pre-authorised payment method before delivering in the normal fashion.

It's not yet clear how much more this will cost customers.

Wall Street's biggest bank is lifting Brussels' bonus cap for its London-based staff , weeks after rival Goldman Sachs fired the starting gun on a post-Brexit era in industry pay.

Sky News can reveal that JP Morgan Chase was in the process of notifying staff on Wednesday that it would preserve some elements of the remuneration packages introduced after the European Union's cap on variable pay came into force in 2014.

The system prevents material risk-takers (MRTs) working in lenders' operations in the EU from earning more than twice their fixed pay in variable compensation.

Sources said that JP Morgan, which employs 22,000 people in the UK, including roughly 14,000 in London, had decided to preserve a significant proportion of the fixed pay allowances used to calculate eligible employees' maximum bonuses.

You can read more of our City editor Mark Kleinman's story here ...

McDonald's is ending its AI drive-thru trial after customers reported errors in their orders - including bacon being added to ice cream.

The fast food chain's AI ordering system, developed by IBM, uses voice recognition to process orders and has been rolled out at more than 100 McDonald's locations in the US since 2021.

However, the technology's reliability has been called into question in recent months, with members of the public sharing videos of order mix-ups on social media.

As well as topping a dessert with bacon, the AI drive-thru assistant added $211 (£166) worth of chicken nuggets to another customer's order.

Mastercard has announced it will be changing the way customers make payments to bring them a contactless experience at online checkouts.

The card company has said it wants all online transactions to be "tokenised" by 2030.

The way it will work means you will input your card details to pay for a product once and then you'll receive a "token" - a randomly generated number.

That number can then be used to make future payments, instead of you having to type in your card details each time.

"Contactless payments have made in-person payments seamless and ubiquitous – there’s an opportunity to bring that same experience to online checkout," it said in a statement.

Mastercard said the move will reduce fraud, improve approval rates, and make it online checkouts "faster and safer".

"As physical and digital experiences continue to converge, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible," said Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard.

"We're focused on bringing best-in-class digital services together to deliver more value, access and safety to our customers and the end-consumer."

It's been a really difficult few years for millions of families paying for their energy.

Many have expressed their anger and distrust in energy suppliers as a result of spiralling prices and shifting goalposts.

But there are signs that's beginning to change.

Overall customer satisfaction is up 10% since last year, a survey of 15,030 energy customers by Uswitch.com has revealed.

The survey found that Utility Warehouse and Octopus Energy were the best and second-best at providing customer service and for value for money.

However, satisfaction with value for money from providers overall is still 17% lower than before the energy crisis, according to the poll.

Uswitch also announced its top five cheapest energy tariffs - see below...

Every Wednesday we ask Michelin chefs to pick their favourite Cheap Eats where they live and when they cook at home. This week we speak to Sofian Msetfi, executive chef at Mayfair's one-starred Ormer restaurant.

Hi Sofian - what are your picks for a meal for two for less than £40 in London?

Berenjak in Soho and London Bridge offers a traditional Persian dining experience - I'd recommend ordering a charcoal grilled kebab for that tables plus a selection of the mezeh-style sharing plates to accommodate a budget of £40 for two. A brilliant dining experience with high-quality and fresh ingredients.

BAO (with locations around London) is known for its creative take on Taiwanese street food. They offer some of the best bao buns in the city which start from just £6, plus there's affordably priced small plates, allowing for a diverse tasting experience without overspending. The restaurants also have a weekday set menu with three courses for £15, which is a steal.

Secret Sandwich Shop in Notting Hill elevates the humble sandwich to new heights – the sheer size of the Japanese Wanpaku sandwiches are incredible and so filling. It's a great find, hidden behind a secret door in Notting Hill, with the signature "Secret Sandwich" priced at £9, meaning you can each get a sandwich plus a generous selection of classic snacks and even some Japanese drinks for £40.

What's your go-to cheap meal at home?

A braised lemon chicken with green olives. You can use chicken thighs or legs in this recipe (which are often much cheaper). It's easy and quick, everything goes in the dish together and cooks at the same time. One of my favourite tips is to use some of the olive brine from the jar when cooking as it really enhances the flavour of the dish.

We've spoken to lots of top chefs and bloggers - check out their cheap eats from around the country here...

Taylor Swift has reportedly ordered 45 large kebabs for her team ahead of her Wembley Stadium show.

The singer is set to perform in front of up to 90,000 fans on Friday in the first of eight Eras Tour shows at the London venue.

But before that, her staff will be tucking into £450-worth of chicken donor kebabs made by Kentish Delight, according to The Sun.

The takeaway restaurant is thought to be a favourite of Taylor's, having featured in the music video for End Game in 2017.

"Taylor adds garlic sauce to hers, as well as heaps of salad," a source told The Sun.

The newspaper previously reported the star bought hundreds of Greggs sausage rolls, steak bakes and bakery goods for her team when performing in Edinburgh.

Cricket salads, lab-grown steaks and azolla burgers could be staples on British menus in 30 years' time, according to the Co-op.

Using AI and research from experts from FixOurFood and the University of York, the retailer predicted what mealtimes could look like in 2054.

They predict a rise in urban indoor farming across Britain, which will in turn see lab-grown meat and seafood - cultivated from animal tissues to produce steaks, burgers, tuna and lobster - become more mainstream.

Another part of the report suggested climate change would result in the likes of avocados and olives being grown in Surrey by 2054 - meaning less reliance on importing vegetables.

"By 2054, British people will have edible insects on their dinner plate, and we may see the crushing up of crickets quicker than wholegrain," project researcher Bob Doherty said.

"We may even see the introduction of 3D-printed food. As we navigate the challenges of climate change, we'll need to embrace these innovations to ensure that we can feed a growing population sustainably."

After spending the morning reacting to the positive news on inflation (and less positive news on interest rates), we're going to start posting other personal finance and consumer news again now.

We'll still have any reaction coming in on the economy.

Our economics and data editor Ed Conway has been poring over this morning's data drop from the Office for National Statistics.

"In one sense this is a watershed moment," he says, inflation having dropped to the target 2%.

But looking at the data another way - at overall inflation over the last three years rather than annual figures - the numbers tell a different story.

By doing so, you can see there's closer to a 20% increase in prices since the start of the cost of living crisis - rather than the 2% increase we've recorded in the 12 months from May last year to May 2024.

And this figure - basically, prices - is still going up, just slower than it was before.

Watch Ed's full analysis here...

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San Diego Union-Tribune

La jolla permit committee approves bird rock and country club projects.

Unlike its previous meeting — when all three proposals that went before the La Jolla Development Permit Review Committee had to return at a later date with more information — all three projects the board considered June 18 were given the OK. All three — two in Bird Rock and one in the Country Club area — are projects for single-family houses. Carrizo Drive The most extensive project of the three calls for a coastal development permit to demolish an approximately 5,000-square-foot house and build a new 15,987-square-foot, two-story single-family residence with a subterranean garage, outdoor terraces, a pool and […]

La Jolla Light La Jolla Light Real Estate

Neil Hamovitch, founder of Soundproof San Diego, gathers with his family.

Business Spotlight: Soundproof San Diego tries to bring peace one decibel at a time

Some La Jolla residents are growing frustrated with the state of the former site of a Jack in the Box at 564 Pearl St. But the lot’s status won’t be changing anytime soon. The property, which contains the vacant former fast-food restaurant, has been unoccupied since being purchased by the adjacent Bishop’s School in September 2021. The school’s plan has been to lease out the site in the short term and later convert it for student use. It is currently fenced off and used for school bus parking. Area resident Mary Montgomery, a former manager of the La Jolla Maintenance […]

Bishop’s School still seeking ‘a good match’ for former Jack in the Box site

La jolla light news.

Community Calendar: La Jolla meetings and more, June 20-28

La jolla news nuggets: national charity league, blood donations, plant research, more, belmont village la jolla hosts ucsd retired artists for showcase, prosecutors still reviewing cases, weighing possible charges for uc san diego protesters, la jolla scientists contribute to global study of nitrous oxide emissions, la jolla light things to do.

The La Jolla Light presents this continuing listing of local in-person events and online activities. Lectures & learning • The Pen to Paper writing class is offered at 1 p.m. Thursdays at the La Jolla/Riford Library, 7555 Draper Ave. The weekly class is open to writers 18 and older of all experience levels. Free. (858) 552-1657 • […]

Best Bets: A quick guide to La Jolla entertainment and experiences

Putting down roots: mainly mozart to open all-star festival at its new artistic home in la jolla, community calendar: la jolla meetings and more, june 13-21, la jolla music society’s 2024-25 season will feature music and dance luminaries in nearly 70-show schedule, la jolla light sports.

La Jolla High’s Tom Atwell completes 300-mile ride and run for breast cancer research

La jolla surfer mike hynson to be inducted onto walk of fame, high school playoff roundup: bishop’s and country day fall in boys volleyball quarterfinals, sports roundup: bishop’s and country day advance in boys volleyball playoffs, high school playoff roundup: la jolla lives up to championship pedigree with cif division i boys tennis title.

IMAGES

Book Review: The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann
Book Review: The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann
“The New Climate War” by Michael Mann
Book Review: The New Climate War, by Michael E. Mann
Book review : The New Climate War by Michael E Mann
Book Review: The New Climate War

COMMENTS

Book Review: The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann
This is according to Dr. Michael E Mann in his recently released book, The New Climate War, a fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality. In a book that simultaneously functions as a historical account ...
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
Review of The New Climate War, by Michael Mann ... His latest book, The New Climate War, provides a thoughtful perspective on the forces impeding meaningful climate action. David Carlin, Forbes Mann offers readers an absorbing and accessible take on an alarming pattern that stands to shape the course of climate action — and our collective future.
PDF Book review: The new climate war
historical power dynamics that have enabled the current climate crisis through his book, "The New Climate War," published in January 2021. Mann frames the crisis as a war between fossil fuel interests and humanity, creating both a sense of urgency—to take action now—and agency—that we are capable of the meaningful change required to win.
THE NEW CLIMATE WAR
THE NEW CLIMATE WAR. by Michael E. Mann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021. An expert effectively debunks the false narrative of denialism and advocates communal resistance to fossil fuels. One of the world's leading climate scientists embarks on a journey into the minds of climate change deniers to try to understand their motivations and ...
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
Paul Hawken, Founder, Project Drawdown " The New Climate War is an insightful treatise on how the polluting fossil fuel industry and their right-wing allies have deflected the blame for the climate crisis. The book charts a common sense course for collective actions to force government and corporations to make real solutions to the climate ...
"The New Climate War" by Michael Mann
This is my review of new book by the climate scientist Michael Mann, titled: "A New Climate War. The Fight to Take Back Our Planet". Mann is professor for atmospheric science at the Penn State university in USA, he is famous for his incessant climate activism and the so-called hockey-stick study he co-authored over 30 years ago (Mann et al ...
The New Climate War review: Reasons to be optimistic about the future
The New Climate War review: Reasons to be optimistic about the future. The forces fighting climate science have not been defeated, just changed tactics. But Michael Mann, a key figure in the ...
The New Climate War : The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
The New Climate War. : Michael E. Mann. PublicAffairs, Jan 12, 2021 - Science - 272 pages. Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle ...
The New Climate War
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E Mann. In The New Climate War Michael E Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, analyzes why we seem to be unable to move forward with combating climate change and pins the blame firmly on corporations. Like tobacco companies and gun makers in the past, fossil fuel companies deflect attention.
The New Climate War
Given the recent increase in extreme weather events, the battle over the scientific fact of climate change is essentially over, Michael E. Mann asserts in his punchy and illuminating new book, The New Climate War.What remains of the opposition has retreated to a new do-nothing battleground he calls "inactivism," a position that will not save us from the severe consequences of climate ...
Michael E. Mann: The New Climate War. Book Review
The old one was about climate change denial and according to the author, it was defeated. Currently, even the right-wing agrees that climate change is happening. A new climate war is about action ...
Scientist Mike Mann's must-read book, 'The New Climate War'
T he New Climate War: the fight to take back our planet is the latest must-read book by leading climate change scientist and communicator Michael Mann of Penn State University. Published January 12, 2021, The New Climate War describes how outright denial of the physical evidence of human-caused climate change simply is no longer credible.
Book Review: "The New Climate War"
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E. Mann. Public Affairs, 351 pages. $29. If you've had enough of climate denialists, doomsayers, distorters, and deflectors, Michael E. Mann's new book supplies an antidote: there is hope to win what many now call the war on climate change. Mann is a member of the US National ...
The New Climate War
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet is a 2021 book on climate change by the American climatologist and geophysicist Michael E. Mann. ... The book received positive reviews. Mann argued in an interview with Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell that a "clean energy revolution and climate stabilization are achievable with current ...
Book Review: The New Climate War « Green Energy Times
By Michael E. Mann, published by PublicAffairs (2021), 368 pages Review by Roger Lohr The book The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E. Mann was released during the early months of the pandemic in 2020 by PublicAffairs books.
The New Climate War
A seat at the table in the climate war room — David Wineberg. Ten to Watch: Our favorite climate change book — Climate and Capital. The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet — The Green Spotlight. If you read just one climate book this year, read "The New Climate War" — Brigitte Van Gerven for Citizens Climate Lobby The Path to (Climate) Victory — Tom Okeefe
The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann
The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War, 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 petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including: A ...
The New Climate War The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. By: Michael E Mann (Author) 371 pages, -. Publisher: Scribe Publications. NHBS. A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility for climate change onto the individual, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told can slow climate change.
A Book Review: "The New Climate War"
A Book Review: "The New Climate War". There is a new type of warrior emerging in the ongoing tussle between the evidence-based science of climate change and the diversionary tactics of fossil-fuel companies and political supporters. This rare but growing cohort in the winnable battle against climate change denial are scientists who can ...
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
The New Climate War's substance and related experience -- provided to you by a scientist who has fought on the front lines of this present war against reason -- is an entirely timely and needed guide. ... I usually don't review books or give less than 3 or 4 stars to books as the limited number of books I've read so far, have all taught me ...
The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann
The New Climate War: the fight to take back our planet (Paperback) Michael E. Mann (author) Sign in to write a review. £10.99. Paperback 384 Pages. Published: 09/06/2022. 10+ in stock. Usually dispatched within 2-3 working days. Quantity.
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
"The New Climate War is an insightful treatise on how the polluting fossil fuel industry and their right-wing allies have deflected the blame for the climate crisis. The book charts a common sense course for collective actions to force government and corporations to make real solutions to the climate crisis-an existential threat to humanity and ...
25 Inspiring Climate Change Books To Read in 2024
But aside from the award-winning writers, world-leading climate scientists, and thought leaders paving the way toward humanity's brighter future, here is our list of the best books on climate change that everyone should read. Best Climate Change Books To Read in 2024 1. The New Climate War, by Michael Mann
Book Review: Cold Rivals: The New Era of US-China Strategic Competition
After a brief note on US-Chinese relations during the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations, Reeves offers suggestions for further reading and implies that the book, while providing a "historical account of US-China relations and [chronicling] its evolution," is not unique in its contributions compared to similar literature, though he does ...
Book Review: 'Stories Are Weapons,' by Annalee Newitz
In a new book, the journalist and science fiction writer Annalee Newitz shows how we have used narrative to manipulate and coerce. By Jennifer Szalai When you purchase an independently reviewed ...
Books & the Arts
A new career-spanning book offers a portrait of Painter's career as a historian, essayist, and most recently visual artist. Books & the Arts / Elias Rodriques.
Browse journals and books
Browse 5,060 journals and 35,600 books. A; A Review on Diverse Neurological Disorders. Pathophysiology, Molecular Mechanisms, and Therapeutics. Book ... Academic Quality and Integrity in the New Higher Education Digital Environment. A Global Perspective. Book • 2023. Academic Radiology.
Money blog: Smoke machines deployed in Tesco; big inflation moment
The Money blog brings you personal finance and consumer news, plus all the latest on the economy. Let us know your thoughts on any of the stories we're covering in the comments box below.
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Local news coverage of La Jolla, including local news and events, business listings, discussions, announcements, photos and videos.

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THE NEW CLIMATE WAR

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“The New Climate War” by Michael Mann – book review

From Denial to Inactivism

It’s all YOUR fault

The Nuclear Option

Political machinations

Geoengineering and Carbon Capture

The Crack of Doom

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