How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate - Tapa blanda

"Goodell explores with infectious curiosity and thoughtful narration this strange, promising, and untested suite of climate fixes." -- BusinessWeek "[Goodell's] provocative account achieves a fine balance between the inventor's enthusiasm and the scientist's skepticism." --Publishers Weekly "Goodell follows Big Coal (2006) with a lively and invaluable introduction to the simultaneously alarming and promising field of geoengineering... Hopefully his incisive and entertaining overview will help shape the debate." -- Booklist (starred review) "How to Cool the Planet is thoughtful, informative, and darkly entertaining. It's the best treatment of this important (and scary) topic you can find." -- Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe "In the highly contentious climate debate geoengineering remains one of the most controversial, yet intriguing, remaining questions. In this vividly written, thoughtful book, Jeff Goodell helps readers explore the audacious question of whether humans can use technology to fix the very problem it's created." -- Juliet Eilperin, national environmental reporter, Washington Post "This could be the most important book written about the climate. Goodell compellingly describes the characters, ideas and motivations of a small band of geoengineers, scientists who would manipulate the very substance of our planet to alleviate global heating. As one of them, I know that what he writes is true, and I share his fear that geoengineering may put us on a path yet more deadly than the one we took to end war by inventing nuclear weapons. Yet if climate change becomes unbearable, we may be driven to geoengineering as a last resort. Read this unforgettable book; once started, you will not be able to put it down." -- James Lovelock, author of Gaia and The Vanishing Face of Gaia

Climate change may well be the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Temperatures in some regions of the world could increase by as much as fifteen degrees by the end of the century, causing rising sea levels and severe droughts. But change could also happen much more suddenly. What if we had a real climate emergency, the ecological equivalent of the subprime mortgage meltdown - how could we cool the planet in a hurry? In "How to Cool the Planet", Goodell explores the scientific, political, financial, and moral aspects of geoengineering. How are we to change the temperature of whole regions if we can't even predict next week's weather? What about wars waged with climate control as the primary weapon? What happens to our relationship with nature when, as Goodell puts it, we all find ourselves living in a giant terrarium? And our options are dwindling. Maybe, Goodell suggests, we need to start taking geoengineering seriously. Maybe it's Plan B for the planet. And if it is, we need to know enough to get it right.