| Description: |
|
Product Description
In The Heat Is On, Ross Gelbspan exposes the deliberate campaign by oil and coal interests, teamed with conservative politicians, to confuse the public about global warming and the disruptive weather patterns that mark its initial stages. He shows how these fossil fuel proponents have supported the efforts of a small but highly vocal group of "scientific skeptics" whose statements distort the nature of scientific debate, raising doubts in the public mind about this threat which is, in fact, a matter of solid scientific consensus. Gelbspan sets the record straight with contributions from four of the world's leading climate scientists. Ironically, The Heat Is On also shows that the news about climatic change is now so bad that it may well help to save us as it brings the worldwide insurance industry, saddled with billions in unprecedented claims from weather-related damage, into the battle against fossil fuels. The book explains what this emerging alliance among the insurance industry, environmentalists, and a number of the world's most vulnerable nations must do to save the planet. Capturing both the global scope and the historical uniqueness of our dilemma, it shows that the price of inaction may extend well beyond flood-prone lowlands and drought-prone agricultural lands. One casualty could be democracy itself as nations faced with weather-related destabilization resort to totalitarian measures to control their populations.
Amazon.com Review
The world is behaving strangely these days: grassfires rage across millions of acres in Texas and Mongolia, heat waves kill hundreds in Milwaukee and Bombay, floods ravage North Dakota and Oman. Ross Gelbspan, a veteran journalist, seizes on these and other alarming examples to argue that global warming is fast upon us--and, more to the point, that the multitrillion-dollar energy concerns are doing their best to keep the world public from knowing about widespread changes in the global climate caused, in part, by the fossil fuel-induced destruction of the ozone layer. His polemic is always interesting, if often arguable, and Gelbspan tempers his attack on Big Energy with a reasonable proposal that alternative-energy programs be given greater funding priority in the United States (the rest of the industrial world having already made great investments in geothermal, solar, and wind energy).
|
