The Climate Book Created by Greta Thunberg
It has been over two years since The Climate Book came into print. Two years is not too late to review this important collaboration between Greta Thunberg, along with the finest scientists and climate activists in our world today. If anything, the catastrophic climate events of 2024 demand us to learn the science explaining the following severe climate events of 2024.
A few samples from news stories:
August 3, 2024, Death Valley Park Superintendent, Mike Reynolds told KLAS news “We just experienced the hottest month in history in the hottest place on Earth. Six of the hottest months have come in the past ten years which should serve as a wakeup call.”
August 3, 2024, Dakota Smith reported in the Los Angeles Times, “Another study from 2019 found about a third of Death Valley’s bird species had declined in the last hundred years because of heat stress associated with climate change.”
Aug 3, 2024, “Astonishing Antarctica Heatwave Sends Temperatures 50 Degrees Above Normal,” CNN. Mary Gilbert, a CNN meteorologist explains, “The latest data shows high temperatures in portions of the East Antarctic where most abnormal conditions are ongoing.” Temperatures that are typically minus 58 and minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit are now close to minus 13 to minus 22 degrees. Antarctica’s typical winter cold should be operating at a level unfathomable to most people in U.S.
July 24, 2024, “Hundreds Of People May Have Died From Heat In One Arizona County” CNN, by Rachel Ramirez. (Maricopa County, Phoenix, Arizona.)
“Suspected heat deaths have soared in recent weeks alongside temperatures. About 100 of the suspected heat deaths this year happened from July 7 to 13, when temperatures hit 118 degrees—exactly the kind of dangerous conditions scientists expect in a world warming due to fossil fuel pollution with more frequent, intense and long-lasting heatwaves.”
Greta Thunberg gained world recognition as a 15-year-old picketing outside the Swedish Parliament, encouraging Sweden to comply with the 2015 Paris Agreements reducing worldwide carbon emissions. What began as “Fridays for The Future” turned into an international youth movement called “School Strike For Climate.” Greta’s international celebrity earned her an invite to address the United Nations where she delivered her blunt “How Dare You” speech—a devastating, rhetorical gut punch into the bellies of the UN diplomats and the monied interests they serve, who knew for three decades that climate change was coming and did nothing.
Greta could not be bought, flattered or awed by power. She stands with humanity, animals, aquatic and plant life, all of whom will suffer injury or die off as Earth’s climate heats and exceeds the global average rise in temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degree Fahrenheit).
“1.5 to stay alive” is a programmatic goal and slogan based on the science indicating that Earth can avoid the very worst consequences of climate change if we can keep the Earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial age temperatures.
At the beginning of The Climate Book, we are given a summary and graphs even before the table of contents:
“Average global temperatures have risen approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial age.
“In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2021 report a group of 234 top scientists from 66 countries concluded that ‘it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
“According to the IPCC’s estimate, our remaining carbon budget for a 67 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius at the beginning of 2020 was 400 gigatons. At the current rate of emissions, we will exceed our carbon budget before 2030.”
Scientists have traced the biggest emitters of CO2 into the atmosphere between 1850 and 2021. The United States has emitted 420.0 gigatons of CO2. China is responsible for 241.8 gigatons. Germany stands at 93.1 gigatons, Japan at 66.7 gigatons.
In The Climate Book, Greta cites, “the richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the people who make up the poorest half of humanity.” [p.3]
On page four there is a chart showing that the “poorest 50 percent of the world’s population [are] responsible for only around seven percent of total lifestyle consumption emissions. To stay in line with our international climate targets we need to get our individual per capita carbon emission down to somewhere around one ton of carbon dioxide a year. In the U.S., per capita emissions is 17.1 tons, compared to China with a per capita of 6.6 tons a year.”
In chapter 4.5, “The Persistence of Fossil Fuels” by contributing author Bill McKibben, he brings up these essential points of how fossil fuels interact in the atmosphere. “If you burn, say, a gallon of gas, which weighs eight pounds you emit 5.5 pounds of carbon; that combines with two oxygen atoms in the air to produce about 22 pounds of carbon dioxide. It is odorless, it doesn’t harm you directly. But since the molecular structure of CO2 traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out into space, the warming of the Earth had begun”
McKibben breaks down the miracle of fossil fuel on page 220: “A single barrel of oil—about 42 gallons—can do the same amount of work as a man laboring for 25,000 hours. Put it another way, figuring out how to use fossil fuel provided each of us in the western world with the equivalent of dozens of servants.”
Greta Thunberg explains, “It is my genuine belief that the only way we will be able to avoid the worst consequences of this emerging existential crisis is if we create a critical mass of people who demand the changes required.” [p.2]
“I have decided to use my platform to create a book based on the current best available science—a book that covers the climate, ecological and sustainability crisis holistically. Because the climate crisis is, of course only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. My hope is that this book might be some kind of go-to source for understanding these different, closely interconnected crises.” [p.3]
Greta Thunberg has accomplished her goal of creating this go-to source explaining the science behind the catastrophes due to climate change and what is in store for our future if we don’t take action. Thunberg is absolutely correct that “a critical mass of Earth’s people needs to mobilize and demand change.”
Thunberg explains:
“The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, called the recent IPCC Sixth Assessment report ‘an atlas of suffering.’ The climate crisis is already impacting people around the world with devastating consequences, particularly those living in poor economies. Even if we could stop all the greenhouse gas emissions today, we have already inflicted irreparable damage to the planet and to the people whose livelihoods and lives have been destroyed by droughts, wildfires and storms.
“Our leaders have failed to take action and that has turned the changing climate into a crisis which can no longer be avoided. They have failed us up until now, but that doesn’t mean we can give up. Far from it.”
Greta Thunberg, like Joan of Arc centuries before her, speaks out for change, urging Earth’s people to salvage our environment at all costs, whether the leaders want it or not. It will be Thunberg’s generation that can mobilize to do this. Joan of Arc embodied virtue, sincerity, and bravery to mobilize an army to kick the English out of France. Thunberg leads a fight for greater stakes—the preservation of our Earth’s biosphere.
It is our goal in the socialist movement to support Thunberg and do our part encouraging the working class, when they have awakened, to provide additional muscle to stand up to the rulers and politicians who threaten to take us down in the name of their profits, wars and intrigue.
Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book is a must read just like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.