A knowledgeable and ultimately upbeat look at mitigating climate change.
Mebane offers strategies and insights for dealing with the climate emergency in this nonfiction work.
In his nonfiction debut, a collection of pieces previously published in Wall Street International Magazine, the author presents readers with reflections on many aspects of the ongoing and worsening climate emergency that becomes more apparent and unavoidable with every passing year. At the heart of his book is a resistance to the fatalism that tends to characterize discussions of the subject. The fatalism is understandable; the world’s industrialized nations are a long way from reaching the goals for lowered carbon emissions set by environmental scientists years ago as the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change in the lifetimes of the current generation’s grandchildren (if not earlier). The problem seems too big to be solved; as Mebane puts it, “only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid a climate disaster.” But the author has spent years in the environmental movement, including a stint spearheading Italy’s energy revolution in the 1980s, and he offers what he calls a “story of transformation—a story that proves that even in the face of daunting challenges, the power of human ingenuity and collaboration is essential.” In a series of beautifully illustrated (and well researched—the book’s reference section is extensive) chapters, Mebane looks at the practicalities of green investment in all its forms, from renewable energy sources to improved grids and electric vehicles to what he calls “forest therapy”—the power of green spaces to help with ailments like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and asthma.
The tone of tough, informed optimism the author adopts is crucial to the convincing power of his argument: This work combines the research of a professional with the optimism of a true believer. Mebane never sugarcoats how dire the current climate situation is, particularly in the energy-hungry developing world. He acknowledges that we have “more unresolved problems than solutions” and notes that “the primary issue is how to help developing and evolving countries invest in mitigation and adaptation,” coming to the ethically inevitable conclusion that a large part of any such help will have to come from the developed countries that caused the climate crisis in the first place. Mebane is very skilled a deploying his many charts and graphs in ways that fit naturally into his text—readers never feel bludgeoned with facts or statistics, even though much of what the author is describing can get fairly technical. Readers skeptical of the industrialized world’s ability to reach “net zero” goals by target dates like 2050 will emerge from this book not only immeasurably better informed about every aspect of the challenge, but also invigorated to take it on. Mebane may have spent many years in Italy, but he himself is a Texan and the son of a petroleum geologist, and this background gives the fact-heavy sections of his book an air of authority and personal involvement. This tone is crucial for staving off the despair that readers might otherwise feel when the author hits them with plain talk about how bad things are: “Weather and climate-related disasters are growing exponentially,” he warns. “We may not know the hell we are creating.”
A knowledgeable and ultimately upbeat look at mitigating climate change.Pub Date: May 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781940387093
Page Count: 199
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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