Book Review: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. by Mark Lynas. published 2007.

as described on Good Reads:
Possibly the most graphic treatment of global warming that has yet been published, Six Degrees is what readers of Al Gore's best-selling An Inconvenient Truth or Ross Gelbspan's Boiling Point will turn to next. Written by the acclaimed author of High Tide, this highly relevant and compelling book uses accessible journalistic prose to distill what environmental scientists portend about the consequences of human pollution for the next hundred years. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report projecting average global surface temperatures to rise between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Based on this forecast, author Mark Lynas outlines what to expect from a warming world, degree by degree. At 1 degree Celsius, most coral reefs and many mountain glaciers will be lost. A 3-degree rise would spell the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, disappearance of Greenland's ice sheet, and the creation of deserts across the Midwestern United States and southern Africa. A 6-degree increase would eliminate most life on Earth, including much of humanity. Based on authoritative scientific articles, the latest computer models, and information about past warm events in Earth history, Six Degrees promises to be an eye-opening warning that humanity will ignore at its peril.

as reviewed by Jessica on GoodReads, Sep. 2009:

recommended for: every member of an industrialized nation, especially politicians and the captains of industry

Reading this book was like meeting someone, falling madly in love, and finding out she's got a terminal illness, all in the space of twenty minutes. It's been a decade since I've thought about Science, and not being much of a nature girl I forgot how mindblowingly amazing and complex the Earth is. The best parts of this book really reminded me of that. 

Did I say terminal illness? That's a bad metaphor, since disease seems sort of just to passively happen; also, we tend to think of illness as something slow and wasting that takes a long time to kill you. Reading this book is like meeting the most beautiful, fascinating woman who's ever existed, then watching her being sadistically brutalized, gang-raped, and tortured to death. I know that's a bit graphic, but the truth here is nasty. Of course, in an uncomfortable, Twilight-Zoney twist, one can't escape the reality that one numbers oneself among the rapists and torturers.... someone else on here compared this book to a slasher film, and it is one. If you've got a weak stomach or heart, this could be tough going. 

So the premise of this book is that Lynas, a British science guy journalist I think, goes over all these academic articles about climate change and related topics, and describes what our planet might be like when average global temperatures rise by +1, +2.... +6 degrees. A lot of these scenarios are based on what we know about how the planet was the last time it was at these temperatures. Since "chilling" is obviously not the right adjective for these descriptions, I'll just have to warn that you might crap your pants. It's scary! The book has a Dante's Inferno kind of frame, and the whole project really is extremely Biblical. The sense one gets really is that we as a species have cast ourselves out of an incredible Eden and into a spiraling, multi-leveled, intensifying Hell that is, for the most part, not much fun to read about. 

Six Degrees wasn't exactly a page turner. I did not enjoy most of it, which I'd like to blame on Lynas's writing style but which more likely has to do with the topic. Parts of it were really fascinating, especially all the stuff about how weather and water systems work, and the descriptions of geography and the changes over time in the earth's climate were very illuminating for someone like me who knows nothing about all this. But boy, what a downer.... 

Reading about this stuff is intense. I know the world's got a lot of problems and that there's no shortage of things to get one's panties in a twist about, but honestly nothing puts it all in perspective like global warming. I was surprised while reading this by the response I got from my friends. Most people really don't want to think or hear about global warming, which is pretty shocking honestly, since it's (a) kind of the main event and first priority for a lot of obvious reasons, and (b) something we can actually still affect at this point. The thing about all this is that it really is happening fast, as in, in our lifetimes. No one really knows how quickly things will get really bad, and there are certain tipping points and feedback loops that once you go past it's impossible to stop though no one can really say definitively how or at what speed this will all play out. Like, once the Amazon Rainforest burns down, we are irreparably Fucked. And by "we," I mean pretty much all of us creatures who live on this planet. The non-Biblical thing about all this is that it just isn't fair. It's not just the sinners who are being punished here, and the usual suspects will probably feel the heat least -- at least for a little awhile. As temperatures rise due to our bloated Western Sasquatch-sized carbon bootprints, it's the dainty Cinderella-slippered peoples closer to the equator whose habitats will be destroyed first, who'll run out of food and water and come surging up north.... Not the mention the animals, of course, and all other living things. We are taking this mother down with us like an obese and insane mall-shooting suicide, torching the whole place to leave a scorched ugly parking lot where there was once a beautiful shopping mall/planet. 

But yeah, so i found out most people really don't want to think about global warming. You know, everyone's always so down on Holocaust deniers, and I know they're lame, but on some level I understand the impulse to pretend like something so terrible just couldn't have happened. But I don't understand the "global warming is fake" people, because this is a problem we actually can still do something about. It's also not something in the hazy and very distant future; these horrific scenarios Lynas describes could occur within our lifetime (BTW, for those of you looking to feel a bit better about still smoking or being childless, this book could do the trick). At the end of Six Degrees, Lynas basically outlines what he sees as our options right now. According to his information, he guesses there's a 93% chance that we haven't crossed the threshold yet into Completely Fucked (though there is a 7% chance that enough ice has melted that we've activated some of those feedback loops, and are so screwed really fast, no matter what we do now). He says it's pretty much a done deal that global temperatures will climb one and probably two degrees, which will definitely suck and create a lot of problems; however, if we can get our collective shit together and peak emissions by 2015, we do have a chance of stabilizing before we reach three degrees, which is the point from which it seems there is no return, and everything escalates and our world turns to shit. 

Of course, at the moment, nothing like this is happening. Current political realities are incompatible with what science is telling us needs to happen this second, and unless there's a seismic shift really SOON, humanity will almost certainly succeed in the most heinous act of matricide in the history of anything anywhere. At the beginning of the book Lynas takes people to task for complaining that learning about climate change is depressing. He says that's like sitting in your fiery living room being depressed that your house is burning down, instead of getting up and doing something to put out the flames. Reading about this is depressing, though: the damage we've already done, and the global lack of initiative to take action now. It's depressing. 

I finished this book not really sure what I was supposed to do with this information. I'm pretty suspect of this school of independent environmentalism, this very individualistic American idea that if I bring my own bag to Whole Foods I can save the planet from destruction.... Clearly, collective action on a massive, global scale is necessary if this impending disaster is to be averted. Still, that doesn't mean I need to participate actively in grinding broken glass into the face of the woman I love as she dies. One thing this book made me feel is a lot more committed to living in New York. I've thought a lot in the last year about moving back to California, but when I think about being an Angeleno and driving every day, I get a sick feeling in my stomach, and I think that's right, more confidently now that I've read this. My carbon footprint living here's pretty reasonable, for an American, anyway, which is not saying much. I don't drive, I live in a small apartment, the only meat I eat is fish, I fly pretty infrequently, though I suppose I could fly less and buy more local food and what have you.... Reading this did make me think about how I feel good about those things, and then made me think more carefully about what I feel bad about. I could really do a lot better in terms of waste and consumption, and reading this book did motivate me to be more thoughtful about my consumption habits in a way I haven't been really since I moved here from Oregon several years ago. 

Still, I remain really unclear on what the solutions are. Obviously my bringing my lunch to work and not taking airplanes is not going to stop the polar ice caps from melting, so what is? I'd try to think of a brilliant new form of renewable energy, but I'm not very smart. Maybe my contribution will be to call all my scientist friends regularly, and ask them to work on it. Emily? Are you reading this? Could you synthesize a solution in your lab? 

I guess I should stop writing this book report and go do my job, though I have to say I do feel some loss of urgency about social problems. Aren't we just rearranging the deck chairs, really, with all these other things? I guess it's always that way, with each individual life. Still, there's something pretty awesome about the collective end of the world. It puts everything else in perspective, and it's scary and sad. I guess one comforting thought is that global warming now sort of seems like nuclear annihilation did during the Cold War. It's not like that threat is eliminated, but it seems like less of a pressing issue now than it was even when I was a kid. I don't know what needs to happen to be climate change's Berlin Wall or whatever, but I don't think it's impossible. I hope one day I do quit smoking and have kids, and I hope by the time they grow up they can look back at Lynas's book as an alarmist relic, like those old How to Survive the Bomb paperbacks you find in used bookstores sometimes, from the time before humanity started taking this shit seriously and really cleaned up its act.