Abstract
This very readable and engaging book by Hannah Reid creates a powerful and evocative picture of some of the challenges, practical solutions and more structural changes required as a result of the world’s reliance on cheap, carbon-derived energy as a driver of the global economy. The book brings two issues together, climate change and human development, and highlights the strong, almost indivisible connections that exist between them in practice. The central argument of the book, made possible by making explicit the links between human development and climate change, is that inequitable economic growth, driven by access to cheap energy, has been the main driver of anthropogenic climate change whilst failing to address some of the key developmental challenges including poverty and inequality.
By framing the problem as ultimately related to the singular focus on growth, the author foregrounds three overarching ‘challenges’ that must be addressed. The first is to stop and reverse the growth in carbon emissions that are responsible for anthropogenic climate change; the second is to support people to live with the changes that are locked into the climate system and are already unavoid able; and the third is to ‘design a new model for human progress and development that is climate-proof, climate-friendly and gives everyone a fair share of the natural resources on which we all depend’ (p. 223). In a nice touch, the book highlights some potential directions for this more fundamental change through the voices of four leading thinkers from or working in the global south (pp. 237–44).
The book is structured thematically and addresses 11 issues: food and farming, water, health, energy, disasters, the natural environment, cities, women, trade, migration, and conflict. In each chapter, the scale and severity of the existing challenge is set out and the links through which anthropogenic climate change will exacerbate the existing situations are highlighted. Having clearly set out the issue, a number of interesting and vivid examples are provided from around the world. These examples are interspersed with often first-person accounts of what this means practically for people living with the challenges of increasingly variable rainfall, drought or urban flooding, for example, as well as the ways in which people are coping and adapting to these challenges. One of the real strengths of the book is the sheer range and weight of examples provided to illustrate not only the challenges that people and places are facing but also the solutions that are already being used to adapt and cope with existing risks and vulnerabilities.
Whilst the thematic approach works well and enables the author to really get to grips with the complexity of issues such as food security and its links with climate change and human development, other themes are given only cursory attention. For example, health, migration, trade and conflict are only addressed superficially which does not do justice to the complexity of these issues. This lack of balance between the different thematic chapters felt unsatisfactory and left me wondering why there was a lot written about some issues and comparatively little written about others. Perhaps some form of explanation in the preface or introduction would have helped to communicate why certain themes were given more weight?
The author uses the introduction and conclusion in the book as a platform to challenge and unpick some of the more fundamental ideas that underpin the reliance on and faith in growth as the only way to orientate the global economy. Whilst the introduction and conclusion present a powerful and coherent argument to do things differently, in some cases radically so, they are let down to a certain extent by the thematic chapters that seem to stop short of this. The solutions that were advocated in these chapters were much more incremental and mainstream rather than radical. I felt that the elephant in the room, the questioning and challenging of the global mode of production and consumption, was often missing and that many of the solutions highlighted in each chapter seemed to be working within and implicitly supporting market-based solutions that further embed and entrench a growth-driven agenda. Prior to the conclusion, I was left with a slightly dissatisfied feeling that the ideas floated in the introduction had not really been followed through as we moved through the book. I wanted to see and hear about radical solutions that were being pursued that actively challenged the status quo, yet these were not forthcoming. Only when I got to page 234, just 16 pages before the end, did I get a more sustained critique of, and challenge to, some of the bigger issues that the introduction suggested would be tackled.
The book is readily accessible to non-climate and development experts and provides a good introduction to some of the key challenges that are pressing for society today. Whilst some issues are portrayed in a somewhat simplistic light, the flip side is that the book does very well in communicating complex issues in a very accessible manner. For example, the way in which the idea of uncertainty is illustrated with an example about a doctor diagnosing a patient communicates this issue simply and effectively (p. 14). As mentioned earlier, the practical and real-world examples interspersed throughout the text give the subject matter that are being discussed a very real feel and bring home the severity of the challenges that we, as a global society, must address. I also liked how the book was able to integrate a more populist writing style with some more heavyweight scientific literature. Overall, I enjoyed the book and was pleased to have been reminded why it was that I chose to work as a researcher in the fields of international development and climate change.